Samih Al-Qasim: A poet resisting on many fronts

Daily News Egypt
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Renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim has passed away after a long battle with cancer last month, on 19 August. (Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)
Renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim has passed away after a long battle with cancer last month, on 19 August. (Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)
Renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim has passed away after a long battle with cancer last month, on 19 August.
(Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)

By Khalid Mahmoud

Renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim, born in Az-Zarqa in northern Jordan in 1939, has passed away after a long battle with cancer last month, on 19 August. His Palestinian contemporaries were Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) and Tawfiq Ziyad (1929-1994).

Al-Qasim, a prominent poet in the Palestinian and Arab arenas, as well as internationally, was subjected to detention and house arrests by the Israeli authorities, and was fired from work.

As he was often harassed, Al-Qasim resorted to different professions; including teaching, journalism, and craftsmanship.

Looking at poets of resistance worldwide, it seems that many of those poets are “lucky” as they all have confronted only one enemy, on one front. But Al-Qasim was different. As a Druze/Palestinian/Communist/Arab-Israeli-citizen, he was forced to fight on many different fronts, unlike his Arab contemporaries Abdel-Wahab al-Beyany (1926 -1999), Mohamed Mahdy el-Gawahrgy (1899 – 1997), Salah Abdel-Sabour (1931 – 1981), Amal Donkol (1940 – 1983), and Abdel-Rahman al-Abnowdy (1939 – present).

Al-Qasim was a Palestinian Druze who was affected by a split in his country among Palestinians, as shortly after 1948 some Palestinians chose to take Israeli nationality in order to survive. As a leftist politician and a member of the Palestinian Communist Party, Al-Qasim fought hard to defend the social and economic rights of the poor families of Palestine.

Al-Qasim was an Arab Palestinian who did not care about the Druze identity that marked him Israeli. He carried the nationality of his enemies, but shouted that he was a true Arab and Palestinian.

Al-Qasim has 70 publications, including poems, plays and books which were translated into several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian. (Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)
Al-Qasim has 70 publications, including poems, plays and books which were translated into several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian.
(Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)

In one of his books, Al-Qasim narrates that he was riding a train with his father to Jordan during the Second World War and passengers wanted to keep everyone silent so that they would not be shelled by enemies. Samih, the child, was crying so loud that the passengers threatened his father to silence him by force. They pointed guns at them. Al-Qasim commented: “They tried to silence me since my childhood. But I will talk whenever I can out loud and no one will be able to silence me.”

Al-Qasim has 70 publications, including poems, plays and books which were translated into several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian. Al-Qasim won two French awards – the Kuwaiti Al-Babatain’s Prize for Poetic Creativity award, and the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

His works include “Sun Parades” (1958), “Road Songs” (1960), “Puppets on My Shoulder” (1967), “Oh God, Why did she kill me?” (1974), “I Do Not Ask Any One for Permission” (1988), “I Will Get Out of My Picture” (2000), and “Hallucinations for Grandchildren Rites” (2012).It is difficult to distinguish between poetry of resistance and normal poetry because every poem is a trial of resistance. Yet, poets of the resistance, such as Al-Qasim, are known for their fierce stance against ideologies such as Nazism, fascism, racism, military dictatorship, and Zionist practices in the Arab region.

Examples of such writers include the anti-fascist French poet Louis Aragon, the dissident Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, the anti-dictatorship Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Toni Morrison and Dennis Brutus who opposed segregation and apartheid in the United States and South Africa respectively.

Aragon (1897-1982) wrote poems that mainly revolved around fascism, Nazism, and evils of the Second World War. His poems, including his masterpiece “Les Yeux d’Elsa” (Elsa’s Eyes) were translated into Arabic by the famous Arab poet Abdel-Wahab al-Bayany. Aragon was sent to prison at an early age and was arrested and given a five-year suspended sentence for publishing his poem “Le Front Rouge” (The Red Front).

Like leftist French writers Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Roger Garaudy (1913-2012), Aragon was a vehement critic of Euro-centrism and its imperial policies, as well as his country’s foreign policy.

Aragon threw his weight behind the Egyptian people in their struggle against the tripartite aggression of the Suez Canal Crisis, the Vietnamese people against the American military, and the Algerian people against the French Occupation which came to an end in 1962.

As a leftist politician and a member of the Palestinian Communist Party, Al-Qasim fought hard to defend the social and economic rights of the poor families of Palestine. (Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)
As a leftist politician and a member of the Palestinian Communist Party, Al-Qasim fought hard to defend the social and economic rights of the poor families of Palestine.
(Photo Handout from Samih Al-Qasim Facebook page)

The Turkish poet Hikmet (1940 – 1973) was at first a supporter of the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who claimed that he was salvaging his country from the embattled Ottoman Caliphate, confronting enemies inside and outside Turkey, and building a modern, emerging country. But Hikmet later spoke out against the regime which suppressed its opponents and put the squeeze on poor families.

Hikmet was then labelled as an dissident and imprisoned. His poems were banned and confiscated. He later fled Turkey.

Hikmet has a famous verse: “If you say it, you are dead. And if you do not say it, you are also dead. So, say it and die!” His poems encouraged the poor in Turkey and worldwide to be confident, powerful and to resist.

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1940 – 1973), took a bold stance against military dictatorship. A Nobel laureate in arts, Neruda was also a presidential candidate who opposed his country’s military leaders.

He was named “The Revolutionary, Love Poet” whose poems touched on both revolution and love. One of the famous verses in his poem “Twenty Love Verses and a Song of Despair”, says “To love you twice, I love you when I do not love you and I love you when I do.”

Neruda died after the military coup which was orchestrated by General Augusto Pinochet (1915 – 2006) and had toppled freely-elected president Salvador Allende (1908 – 1973) in 1972. Back then, the authorities were bent on letting Neruda die normally after his struggle with cancer. But rights groups still accuse the Chilean authorities of assassinating the famous poet and continue to demand that the authorities open a criminal investigation into the case.

The US poet Morrison (1931 – present) and the South African poet Brutus (1924 – 2009) are best known for their resistance against segregation and apartheid in the United States and South Africa. Brutus was detained in Robben Island which hosted South African leader Nelson Mandela before he moved to the United States where he released his poetry collection “Sirens, Knuckles and Boots”.

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