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A review by perfectplaces
Journal of an Ordinary Grief by Mahmoud Darwish
5.0
“In southern Lebanon you understood what homeland was for the first time. It was that thing which had been lost. It was this expected return. And when you returned after a year or two to that thing which was lost, you discovered that you yourself were lost.”
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some of the most beautiful writing i’ve ever read and certainly something that i intend to go back to. my only regret reading this is that i can’t read it in the original arabic (though i can only assume the translation does it justice, because it’s incredibly beautiful), and that it took this month’s escalation in the occupation for me to finally read this. even choosing a line to quote for my review took an insane amount of time scrolling through my many, many highlights. darwish’s writing and muhawi’s translation, a mixture of poetry, prose, and essay, grapples with identity, resistance, memory, and the meaning of homeland in such an incredible way.
the quote at the top is from ‘The Homeland: Between Memory and History’, but i was also especially awed by ‘The Moon Did Not Fall into the Well’, ‘He Who Kills Fifty Arabs Loses One Plaster’, ‘Going to the Arabic Sentence on May 15’, and ‘Silence for the Sake of Gaza’. but really the whole thing is stellar and definitely worth a read.
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some of the most beautiful writing i’ve ever read and certainly something that i intend to go back to. my only regret reading this is that i can’t read it in the original arabic (though i can only assume the translation does it justice, because it’s incredibly beautiful), and that it took this month’s escalation in the occupation for me to finally read this. even choosing a line to quote for my review took an insane amount of time scrolling through my many, many highlights. darwish’s writing and muhawi’s translation, a mixture of poetry, prose, and essay, grapples with identity, resistance, memory, and the meaning of homeland in such an incredible way.
the quote at the top is from ‘The Homeland: Between Memory and History’, but i was also especially awed by ‘The Moon Did Not Fall into the Well’, ‘He Who Kills Fifty Arabs Loses One Plaster’, ‘Going to the Arabic Sentence on May 15’, and ‘Silence for the Sake of Gaza’. but really the whole thing is stellar and definitely worth a read.