A Central Ontological Transformer
Mahmoud Darwish was born in Galilee in 1941. The specific conditions we are born into is a crapshoot, and Darwish just lost. In 1948 his family fled to Lebanon. He became the poet laureate of Palestine, an expression of a dispossessed people. Like many in his generation his influences included Ginsburg and Rimbaud. In 1971 he moved to Cairo and worked in Al-Ahram. In 1973 he joined the PLO, and was hence banned from entering Palestine.
Published in 1987, his landmark Memory for Forgetfulness expresses the plight of the refugee under siege. This book is an eyewitness account of the peak of shelling in Lebanon during the civil war, called Hiroshima Day. Comparable to Slaughterhouse 5 or Murakami’s The White Sky of Hiroshima, Memories for Forgetfulness is a coherent exploration of a life that is already forfeit, a life of isolation, injustice and alienation.
When he died in 2008, discussions were held with Israel to bury him in his home town. He was buried in exile from that home village so that he could be where all Palestinians can visit. His remains rest in Ramallah at the heart of the disputed West Bank.
What follows is a short excerpt where Darwish recalls going out into the city streets under bombardment.
