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<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another selection from The Manuscript:<\/p>\n
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The sense of loss among Arabs was powerful and profound. A poem by Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, \u201cThe Arab Refugee,\u201d gives voice to this. Notice its lament over the lost Arab town of Jaffa, whose orange groves, now in Jewish hands, supply Europe with a substan\u00adtial proportion of its fruit in the winter. Notice, too, the memory of Arab greatness symbolized by the illustrious anti-Crusader hero, Saladin. This memory is only the more painful because, betrayed and sold by Saladin\u2019s corrupt and unworthy successors, it lies so far in the past. I quote a part of the poem:<\/span><\/p>\n Ants gnaw his flesh<\/span><\/p>\n Crows peck his flesh<\/span><\/p>\n The Arab refugee nailed to the cross.<\/span><\/p>\n The Arab refugee<\/span><\/p>\n Begs and spends his nights in railway stations Crying his eyes out.<\/span><\/p>\n And Jaffa is just a small label<\/span><\/p>\n On a box of oranges.<\/span><\/p>\n Stop knocking on my door<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s no life left in me.<\/span><\/p>\n And Jaffa is just an orange label It leaves the dead undisturbed.<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019ve sold the memory of Saladin They\u2019ve sold his horse and shield They\u2019ve sold the grave of refugees\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Ants gnaw his flesh<\/span><\/p>\n Crows peck his flesh<\/span><\/p>\n The Arab refugee begging at your door.[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Al-Bayati, from Iraq, writes with bitter anger about the sheer humiliation of continuing Arab powerlessness before Israel. Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, on the other hand, is a Palestinian, born at Bethle\u00adhem, and his poignant poem about exile is much more gentle than al-Bayati\u2019s. Indeed, it seems reminiscent of Jewish yearnings for that same small plot of land, expressed through the centuries of their own diaspora, <\/em>or dispersion from their home. With their wander\u00adings in the desert, portrayed in Jabra\u2019s poem, the Palestinians are made to seem a modern equivalent of the children of Israel. \u201cWhere,\u201d he implicitly asks, \u201cis their <\/em>Moses?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Spring after spring, In the deserts of exile,<\/span><\/p>\n What are we doing with our love,<\/span><\/p>\n When our eyes are full of frost and dust?<\/span><\/p>\n Our Palestine, green land of ours;<\/span><\/p>\n Its flowers as if embroidered of women\u2019s gowns;[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n March adorns its hills<\/span><\/p>\n With the jewel-like peony and narcissus;<\/span><\/p>\n April bursts open in its plains<\/span><\/p>\n With flowers and bride-like blossoms;<\/span><\/p>\n May is our rustic song<\/span><\/p>\n Which we sing at noon,<\/span><\/p>\n In the blue shadows,<\/span><\/p>\n Among the olive-trees of our valleys,<\/span><\/p>\n And in the ripeness of the fields<\/span><\/p>\n We wait for the promise of July<\/span><\/p>\n And the joyous dance amidst the harvest.<\/span><\/p>\n O land of ours where our childhood passed<\/span><\/p>\n Like dreams in the shade of the orange-grove,[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Among the almond-trees in the valleys\u2014 Remember us now wandering<\/span><\/p>\n Among the thorns of the desert, Wandering in rocky mountains; Remember us now<\/span><\/p>\n In the tumult of cities beyond deserts and seas; Remember us<\/span><\/p>\n With our eyes full of dust<\/span><\/p>\n That never clears in our ceaseless wandering. They crushed the flowers on the hills around us, Destroyed the houses over our heads,<\/span><\/p>\n Scattered our torn remains,<\/span><\/p>\n Then unfolded the desert before us, With valleys writhing in hunger<\/span><\/p>\n And blue shadows shattered into red thorns<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bent over corpses left as prey for falcon and crow.<\/span><\/p>\n Is it from your hills that the angels sang to the shepherds Of peace on earth and goodwill among men?<\/span><\/p>\n Only death laughed when it saw<\/span><\/p>\n Among the entrails of beasts<\/span><\/p>\n The ribs of men,<\/span><\/p>\n And through the guffaw of bullets<\/span><\/p>\n It went dancing a joyous dance<\/span><\/p>\n On the heads of weeping women.<\/span><\/p>\n Our land is an emerald,<\/span><\/p>\n But in the deserts of exile,<\/span><\/p>\n Spring after spring,<\/span><\/p>\n Only the dust hisses in our face.<\/span><\/p>\n What then, what are we doing with our love?<\/span><\/p>\n When our eyes and our mouth are full of frost and dust?[4]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Translated by Abdullah al-Udhari, in his collection Modern Poetry of the Arab World <\/em>(New York Viking Penguin, 1986), 36-37.<\/span><\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Traditional women\u2019s dresses in Palestine are well known for their embroidery.<\/span><\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Again, the nostalgic yearning for the orange groves seized by the Israelis.<\/span><\/p>\n