LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

darwish’s ‘indian speech’ as dramatic performanceA countermotion takes over, affirming the falseness and self-destructive pathof the West, which is ‘going the wrong way’, and again repetition and parallelstructures accelerate the movement – with a fulcrum halting the motion beforethe delivery of the final line:Euripides, one day, will be lackingand also the hymns of Canaan and Babylon.Solomon’s Song of Songs for Shulamithlily of the valley that yearns: you will lacka memory, white men, to tame the horseof madness, a heart polished by rock in a flurry of violinsthis, and a hesitant gun, you lack.If you must kill, don’t slay other creaturesthat befriend us. Don’t slaughter our past.You will lack a treaty with our ghostson sterile winter nights, a less bright sun, less full moon,for the crime to appear less glamorous on the screen.So take your time as you dismember god. [Section 3]And finally, participation is enhanced in this performance because of thepoet’s traditional role in preserving the values and ideals of his age. 10 ‘You willlack a memory’ (above) is prophesying, you will no longer exist – even ashistorical artefact, because the memory of the past also ensures that there is apresent and a future. Darwish’s audience understand this. Words have meaningand power; words outline the collective memory. He develops this notionfurther in Section 4 with:Winds will recite our beginning and endalthough our present bleeds, our days are buriedin ashes of legend. We know Athens is not oursand know the color of your daysfrom the rising smoke: Athens is not yours.Not only are the values of the poet and his audience different from those ofthe white man and his progressive materialism, but an actual inversion of valueshas occurred for those living as the colonised:What the stranger says, is strange;he digs a well into the earth in order to bury the sky.Strange is what the stranger says!He hunts down our children, and butterflies as well.What promises to our garden, stranger,can you make? Brass flowers prettier than our own?As you wish. But do you knowa deer will not approach grass that has been stainedwith our blood? [Section 4]— 87 —www.taq.ir