Claiming and reclaiming Mahmoud Darwish

The late Palestinian poet’s verse forms the lyrics to Lebanese singer Carole Samaha’s latest album - to the outrage of some

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Prose penned by Palestine's national poet has been used repeatedly since his death but commentators say this endangers its original purpose.

Claiming and reclaiming Mahmoud Darwish

Shadi Alaa Aldin

last update on 16 Mar 2023

Strange wars are being fought over the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, with popular Lebanese singer Carole Samaha most recently being accused of “plagiarising” his poetry in her latest album.

Darwish, who died in 2008, always felt that the greatest danger lay not in Israel’s military and economic capabilities but in Israel’s ability to produce poets and artists able to propagate a narrative that the land was theirs, which in turn would legitimise Israel’s possession and control of it.

Seen from this perspective, some worry that these later applications of Darwish prose risks lessening the poems, and that music videos that condense Darwish’s poetry, layer it with images, and incorporate the latest technologies, risk transferring its power and meaning away from the subject.

Fighting over Darwish

The battle over Darwish began long before his death, with many who were engaged in the fight for Palestine struggling to reconcile his call for tolerance and his view that Palestinian rights are best be won through narratives not war.

Getty Images — Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian, poet, writer, novelist, portrait, Torino-Turin, Italy, 2005.

Early on, Darwish saw the world as engaged in a battle of cultural narratives and felt that Israel was nothing but a narrative that was able to defend itself, despite all the fallacies and delusions it entailed.

Darwish always felt that the greatest danger lay not in Israel's military and economic capabilities but in its ability to produce poets and artists able to propagate a narrative that the land was theirs

He concluded that the reason for Israel's success was the absence of an opposite voice defending the Palestinian narrative. His battle was fought with language and aesthetics. He felt that the Palestinians had to win the aesthetic war to possess the land.

To many, Darwish's logic seemed fallacious. Some, including those close to him, went as far as to accuse him of treason. Chief among his critics was Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, an advocate of armed struggle who was assassinated in London in 1987.

Cartoonist vs poet

The pair had an almighty feud, which became a talking point across the Arab world.

Shortly before he died, Al-Ali published a cartoon attacking Darwish and his proposal to hold a meeting between Palestinian and Israeli writers.

In Darwish's famous poem 'In Praise of the High Shadow', he wrote about Beirut, where he lived as a refugee after his family fled the fighting during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. One of the poem's most famous lines is: 'Beirut is our last tent.' Al-Ali's cartoon twisted the verse, with the caption: "Mahmoud is our last disappointment."

Al-Ali said Darwish was part of a repressive authority after the latter joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), saying he had joined a "cathartic committee". Darwish wrote of his dispute with Naji al-Ali in an article titled 'He was drawing and I was writing' in Issue 177 of Youm7 magazine in September of 1987, shortly after Al-Ali's death.

For Darwish, the reason for Israel's success was the absence of an opposite voice defending the Palestinian narrative, so his battle was fought with language and aesthetics

"I reproached him," wrote Darwish of their conflict. "He said to me, 'I did that because I love you and worry about you from the consequences of what you are about to do. What happened? Are you talking to the Jews? Get out of this mess you got yourself into and I'll paint your face on every wall!'"

Darwish added: "It was not easy for me to explain to him that our involvement in the Israeli consciousness crisis is not an abandonment of our sacred cause, and that our willingness to talk with Israeli writers who recognise our right to establish our sacred national state on our national soil is not a concession on our part, but rather an attempt to penetrate the enemy front."

Darwish said al-Ali insisted on the sanctity of armed struggle, quoting the cartoonist as saying: "I do not understand these manoeuvres, nor do I understand this policy. There is only one path to Palestine – the path of fire and blood."

Singing the poetry of Darwish

Lebanese singer Carole Samaha recently released a music video for her song 'Satantahi Al Harbu' (The War Will End) featuring lyrics falsely attributed to Darwish. It soon racked up more than 2 million views on YouTube.

Some accused her of plagiarising Darwish, but there is no evidence to suggest that Samaha, video director Basil Nasser, or Palestinian composer Tayseer Haddad knowingly and intentionally did so. Still, there are problems, one being that Samaha sang a fabricated version of Darwish's poem, one pushed through social media

Talking with Israeli writers who recognise our right to establish our sacred national state on our national soil is not a concession. It is an attempt to penetrate the enemy's front

Another is that the video presents a group of fragmented, dissonant scenes. This plays into the Israeli argument that Arabs in general – and Palestinians in particular – lack a coherent narrative. Into the void steps Israeli stories.

Getty Images

Furthermore, the character portrayed by Samaha in the videos looks like a fictional TV heroine such as Vikings' Lagertha, the fighter Xena in Hercules, or Wonder Woman, played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot.In any case, Samaha fails to convince us to relate to her or the subject in any way.

A matter of presentation

When presenting her album of 12 tracks based on Darwish's poems, Samaha said it was born from "the depths of our pain and longing for freedom and security in the face of the injustice we live in our Arab countries". The album's slogan was: "For our identity to remain one, and for our Arab unity to persist."

Yet far from uniting Arabs, the video's creators have succeeded only in antagonising their Arab audience with their questionable decision to shoot the footage in a Western style, but without Western quality. It was a missed opportunity to portray symbolism, and correlate visuals with metaphors and concepts.

Fragmented and dissonant scenes play into the Israeli argument that Arabs in general – and Palestinians in particular – lack a coherent narrative. Into the void steps Israeli stories

Rather than engaging the audience in the meaning of the words, Samaha's offering smacks of a rip-off, a museum of false delights, a cheap knock-off bag posing as a luxury brand, splayed across the pavement until the police arrive.

As regards what the video shows, the scenes veer from the confusing to the offensive. Why, for instance, do several African men adorned in white body paint appear, before chasing a man with machetes? It in no way fits the context or message.

All of this is packaged in Samaha's singing that tries to be operatic, anthemic, enthusiastic, romantic, religious, and mystical, all at the same time. "We cater to all tastes," the video seems to say.

The consumer and the reader

There is a difference between those who read Mahmoud Darwish's poems and those who consume his poetry.

Readers ask the poet to address them aesthetically and intellectually, to engage them from within the language. The reader wants to become the poet's partner in creativity and help develop his vision.

The consumer, on the other hand, wants a useable poet. They want poetry with a function. The Arab left, for instance, employed and imprisoned Darwish's poetry in their framework of struggle and war, which deviated from the poet's original intention.

Consumers of Darwish's poetry want it to be useable. They want it to serve a function. The Arab left, for instance, placed it in their framework of struggle and war

So popular is his poetry that there are now vast consumption networks, of which the invented poem sung by Samaha was only one manifestation. The consumable Mahmoud Darwish is fit for countless distorted reproductions for romantic, emotional, and personal use. We may even see a 'life coach' version of Mahmoud Darwish soon.

Darwish did not have many readers, he had consumers who abandoned him when he tried to force them to become readers. Samaha intended to address the Mahmoud Darwish consumer market, which is by far the bigger.

Whose lines are they anyway?

The version of the poem sung by Samaha has been floating online for years, accompanied by comments asserting and documenting its plagiarism.

In a poorly drafted response to the album, the Mahmoud Darwish Foundation confirmed the plagiarism. It demanded that the artist delete the song and refer back to the Foundation, which holds the rights and license to use the poems.

This meagre response demonstrates how difficult it has been to preserve the poet's legacy, which has contributed to the poetry becoming a consumer product for use in all manner of fields.

There is no evidence that Samaha or her team intentionally plagiarised Darwish, but she did sink a fabricated version of one of his poems

The Foundation was dismissed by the Samaha's lawyer, Jean Kikanou, who said: "The lyrics of the song 'Satantahi Al Harbu' have long been attributed to the poet Mahmoud Darwish in several sources and references without any objections."

This shows the importance of accurate referencing and sourcing. For Samaha's lawyer, the true source of the poet's poems lies not in his collections or his published and documented works, but rather in random web pages.

This is a very dangerous idea if applied to all online content and material. Stripping a poet of his words is an insult to what he was trying to achieve. It is tantamount to uprooting him from his land.

Tackling Israeli discourse

For Darwish, the war was with Israeli cultural discourse in general and poetic discourse in particular. Zionist poems of love and belonging to the land crossed the world when Israel's political and security arguments were collapsing. This helped give the impression that Israelis were defending a place of their own.

Darwish believed that the poems of Yehuda Amichai, Israel's most prominent national poet, were more dangerous than all of Israel's weaponry, because it gave him literary ownership of the land, portraying him as the original owner and cultivator of it.

Darwish took it upon himself to fight against the poetic usurping of the land and its history and memory by attacking the narrative of Israeli poets, especially Amichai, who had become known internationally and had won the most prominent Israeli awards.

Amichai felt that all poetry was political. "Real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making," he told an interviewer for The Paris Review in 1992. "Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics."

Darwish felt that the poems of Yehuda Amichai were more dangerous than all of Israel's weapons combined, because it portrayed Israelis as owners of the land

Around that time, Darwish's poetry began to change, with more linguistic and aesthetic distillation, and deeper historical and mythological references. It started with his 'Eleven Planets' collection, matured with 'Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?' before reaching its peak in 'Mural,' published in 2000.

If all real poems reflect politics, as Amichai thought, then Darwish politicised death itself in 'Mural,' making it a witness to his right to pronounce the land's name.

This sea is mine

This moist air is mine

And my name –

Even if I spell it wrong on the coffin–

Is mine

As for me,

Now that I am filled with all the possible

Reasons for departure –

I am not mine

I am not mine…

A story battlefield

Darwish won the right to both the place and the name by creating a Palestinian narrative in parallel to Israeli efforts. He won the arguments with lyricism, which earned him a place among the greatest poets of the world.

He knew that it was impossible to read poetry in isolation from the cause it defends, so he understood that the coherence of the poem is the only way to create a coherent discourse about somewhere in the world that accepts the language of art.

After all this, he declared that he did not own himself. He gave us himself in a Will carved in the heart of his poems:

Take me, and through me

Write your story along with mine

Do not let the enemies tell the world

About me and you

The world is a battlefield of stories

Whoever loses his

Loses his place and existence

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