“I felt the ecstasy of a person who had not emigrated. I felt as though I had not emigrated, and that the time and geographical spans that had separated me from my family, friends and people had been metaphorical, because I had always been there, for even when I had visited far-flung corners of the earth, my point of reference had always been there, my heart had been there, and so had my first language.”
[Sometimes, I could be relatively indifferent about the issue of Right of Return ...I'm not sure why... sometimes I think - though not believe - if it's the sole issue standing in the way of a stop to the chaos, bloodshed and injustice and the only issue getting in the way of peace then perhaps we can make concessions ... perhaps compensation can work instead ... however, deep within me I strongly believe that each Palestinian exiled from his homeland has the right to go back and live in it... and reading what Mahmoud Darwish says - as his words apply to all exiled Palestinians - about going home reinforces my belief in the Right of Return...]
You said when you felt the reality of your arrival “I am happy to the extent that I am jealous of myself.” What sort of joyous feeling created those words?
I experienced a strength of morale which I did not know how to use. And now, after that visit, I am not who I was a month ago. I feel that I am approaching life anew, that I can rearrange the progression of my life once again because I have actually just been born, and am going through life as though I were seeing it for the first time, because the magic of the place there and the beauty of the people overwhelmed me with the sensation of immediately coming to this life once again. And so, I had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with my birth. I had not been given such an opportunity before!
How did you enter your home? Did you say “In the name of God”, and what was your first memory as you stepped over the doorstep?
I was not aware of whether I entered on my own two feet, but my heart was jumping like a mischievous sparrow. I was taken up with all the hugging, and I forgot. The only words I had were tears, and all I remember of what I said is “Thank God.”
Did you drink coffee at home? How much coffee did you drink, and who made it: you or your mother, Hourieh?
Yes, I drank my mother’s coffee in her room without paying attention to who had brewed the coffee– myself, her or one of her pretty granddaughters. This time, the aroma of coffee did not transport me somewhere else as it used to do, but it took me back to another time far away. My mother accompanied me to my old study which was still the same, full of my first books, my first pictures and my late father’s pictures, and then she took me to his grave in the evening to recite Al-Fatiha. I did not spend much time with her because of the many guests, and she, for her part, did not try to monopolize me. From her far corner, she was a witness of her son’s return, as though she were admitting to people that he was not her son alone. This explains her unabashed ululations when I arrived in the courtyard. Those ululations did not address me by my first name, but by my full, official name, Mahmoud Darwish, as though she were addressing her gift to people.
Thousands of Arab young men and women who are away from home send messages to their mothers on the radio using your words, your song, “I yearn for my mother’s bread, my mother’s coffee and my mother’s touch.” Did you ask her whether she had known that her coffee was the one that was being referred to whenever that song was played?
Unfortunately, I was not able to do so, because the song returned to its original elements, and I became sensations melting into sensations. So why nostalgia, why words, and why the poem? I felt the lightness of my liberation, to a small or great extent, from literature, and the person was liberated from the text, and so I asked her another question: Why did you used to hit me when I was little? [ :)]
As you returned from Haifa, did you feel that you needed a certain woman to tell her things about Palestine that could only be said to her?
I never felt such a need as I do now. How I need that woman. “I pass by your name when with myself I am alone As a Damascene by Andalussia does pass . . .”
What would you add to such a simile in a way that leaves no ray of nostalgia that would imprison your voice? How can we remake the Damascene spring within us?
I wish I could say, “Within your name I sleep” because I need to sleep within a name, or within the warmth left on a pillow or a cover by the name and the named. That formulation is the business of the poet who is preoccupied with documenting absence.
(from a 1997 interview highlighting Mahomud Darwish’s return to Haifa after more than 35 years in exile.)
