'The Olive Tree Does Not Cry or Laugh'

Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish’s works are seeped in the sights and sounds and sorrows of his beloved homeland. Placed under house arrest in his youth for his political activism and poetry, Mahmoud spent 26 years of his life in exile, between Paris and Beirut. Palestinian cities and villages, lakes and rivers, orange trees and olive groves, garlic and wheat and bread—pivotal symbols of Palestinian culture and history found a place in the poet in exile’s writing. He explored the themes of belonging and displacement, identity and alienation, giving a powerful and passionate voice to the Palestinian struggle. “My homeland is not a suitcase,” he declared. Calling all Palestinians to resist occupation and colonisation, he wrote, “This land promises wheat and stars…We are its wound, but a wound that fights.”

- Mahmoud Darwish

IF we want to 

We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others

We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner

We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan’s gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial

We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer’s belly

We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognizes the importance of small details

We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: ‘Our country is loftier and more beautiful!’

We will become a people when the morality police protect a prostitute from being beaten up in the streets

We will become a people when the Palestinian only remembers his flag on the football pitch, at camel races, and on the day of the Nakba

We will become a people, if we want to, when the singer is allowed to chant a verse of Surat al-Rahman at a mixed wedding reception

We will become a people when we respect the right, and the wrong. 

Green flies