Home » Travel » Arab Culture » Voices From the Homeland (Part One)

Voices From the Homeland (Part One)

© Aida Hasan

Editors note: Due to the increasingly sad events in my ancestral homeland, I'm choosing to focus this article on Palestinian poetry. Somehow poets always seem to express best the injustices done to a people.

Poetry has always held a special place in the cultural traditions of the Arabs. It is the ultimate expression of individual emotion, but for Palestinians, particulary after the creation of the Zionist state in 1948, poetry serves as a collective expression of a peoples resistance, loss and struggle. Virtually any Palestinian lover of poetry today is innately drawn to, indeed almost comforted by, the words of poets like Abu Salma, Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, Tawfiq Zayyad or Ibrahim Tuqan. Individually, they speak of their own losses; collectively their voices speak for a nation of refugees, exiles, and people in pain.

Many have described the history of modern Palestinian poetry as one that is divided into five periods (Elmessiri, 1982). The first period spans from the last decades of the 19th century to 1908 and the declaration of the Ottoman Constitution. Poetry during this period was either religious or neo-classical. The second period was from 1908 to 1920, the end of the First World War. The third period, from 1920 to 1940, was seen as the origin of "resistance" poetry where poets focused on the struggle against the Zionists and British occupying forces. Poets Abu Salma, Ibrahim Tuqan, and Abd al-Rahim Mahmud were among the foremost poets of this period. One of the most notable poems from this period is "The Aqsa Mosque" by Abd al-Rahim Mahmud. Written as a salute to Prince Saud Ibn Abd al-Aziz during his visit to the poets town of Anabata in 1935, the poem is actually a warning --a call-- to the prince and to all to take action against the theft of his homeland, Palestine. "The Aqsa Mosque" later became famous for these prophetic words about the loss of Palestine:

The Aqsa Mosque by Abd al-Rahim Mahmud (1913-1948)

Honorable Prince! Before you stands a poet
whose heart harbors bitter complaint.
Have you come to visit the Aqsa mosque
or to bid it farewell before it is lost?
This land, this holy land, is being sold to all intruders
and stabbed by its own people!
And tomorrow looms over us, nearer and nearer!
Nothing shall remain for us but our streaming tears,
our deep regrets!

Oh, Prince, shout, shout! Your voice
might shake people awake!
Ask the guards of the Aqsa: are they all agreed to struggle