LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

j. kristen urbanbecome part of his tribe. Yes, we do understand that ‘all men are born equal, likeair and water,/ outside the domain of this map’ [Section 2]; we have allmemorised ‘a few lines of poetry’, and find art to be transformative in our lives;we are all ‘of woman born’; and we too can recall that we have chased swallowswith abandon [all from Section 5]. We are swept into the acknowledgementthat in the recounting of this history, we – both the poet’s audiences – have lostenormously through the pursuit of our narrowly defined identities, ourpredilections with either the material or the spiritual, our inadvertent retreatfrom an appreciation for the holistic. Hence, we find in the end that we share inDarwish’s deep sadness for the way the story unfolds – and we want to somehowact in ways to change its ending. Through his performance, the poet hasempowered us to become ‘prophetic poem-makers’, and by means of theexperience we are becoming – in Clements’ words – ‘integrated beings in aworld capable of integration’,notes1. For discussions of other Palestinian and Arab writers addressing the question ofPalestine, see: Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed.), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); M. M. Badawi (ed.), Modern ArabicLiterature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Denys Johnson-Davies(trans.), Modern Arabic Short Stories (London: Oxford University Press, 1967.Reprint, London: Heinemann, 1978); Mohammad Shaheen (ed.), The ModernArabic Short Story (London: Macmillan Press, 1989); Issa J. Boullata (ed.), ModernArabic Poets, 1950–1975 (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1976); IssaBoullata (ed.), Critical Perspectives in Modern Arabic Literature (Colorado Springs,CO: Three Continents Press, 1980); Issa Boullata (ed.), Tradition and Modernity inArabic Literature (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1997); RogerAllen, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction (Contemporary Issuesin the Middle East) (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994); Roger Allen, ModernArabic Literature (New York: F. Ungar Books, 1987); Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri andKamal Boullata (eds), A Land of Stone and Thyme: An Anthology of Palestinian ShortStories (North Hampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group, 1998).2. Edward Said, ‘On Mahmoud Darwish’, Grand Street 48, pp. 112–15. See Said’s‘Introduction’ for a brief discussion of ‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia’.3. This author realises that working with translations is operating in a literaryminefield. It is for that reason that in discussing the English translation of this poem,I have focused principally on ideas and imagery in an effort to minimise themethodological ‘damage’, though certainly distortions resulting from ‘voice’ areconcerns to which I cannot speak.4. The assumption here is that all poetry is at its heart performative, part of the powerresident within poetry being the tension between the written and the oral. AsCharlotte I. Lee and Timothy Gura explain in their hallmark text on performance,Oral Interpretation: Sixth Edition (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), ‘one may— 96 —www.taq.ir