Imran Abdullah
Among the works of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, the poem "Eleven Planets at the End of the Andalusian Scene" belongs to a special tragedy category full of tension, projections, tension, attraction, binary presence, absenteeism, past and present, as if Andalusia was a different temporal and spatial presence of the Palestinian diaspora, refugee, and land loss.
In this poem, Darwish says:
Shortly, we will search for what our history was about your history in distant countries
Finally, we will ask ourselves:
Was Al-Andalus here or there?
On the ground .. Or in the poem?
Darwish (1941-2008) - who lived through the catastrophe, diaspora, political struggle, and even revolution - compares the Andalusian and Palestinian tribulations, and wrote his poem in 1992, one year after the Madrid Peace Conference.
Professor of Arabic at An-Najah National University, Adel Al-Osta, believes that Darwish not only wrote a poem on Andalusia, but also on Andalusia and Palestine.
Al-Osta added to Al-Jazeera Net that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, objected to the two phrases mentioned in the poem: "This peace will leave us a handful of dust" and "Why prolong the negotiation, O King of Dying?"
He continues that it is clear that there are two times in the poem, which makes it a mask poem, and it adds, "It is true that the poet wrote about the departure of the Arabs from Andalusia, but the spirit of the present, as noted by Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said, crept into the poem, and showed pessimism and despair."
Darwish divided his poem into 11 passages, representing the eleven planets that he drew on the Holy Qur’an in the vision of the Prophet Joseph, peace be upon him.
In his article, "The Cohesion of Poetry," Edward Said considers that Darwish foretold the event of the signing of the September 1993 Declaration of Principles by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was later developed for the Oslo Peace Agreement.
Darwish says in his poem:
No love intercedes for me
Since I accepted the (peace treaty), I have no more present.
To order tomorrow near my evening. Castile will rise
Its crown is above the minaret of God. I hear a rattle for the keys in
The section of our golden history, bye bye for our history, is I?
Who will close the last door of Heaven? I am the last exodus of Al-Arabi
Between the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo Agreement in 1993, Darwish wrote his poem that mimics the famous historical account of the standing of Abu Abdullah Muhammad, the last king of Granada, and the tears of heartbreak being poured while he turned last time to Granada, whose keys were handed over to the Catholic monarchs Isabella and Fernando before he left it forever. .
Attendance and Absence
Darwish's poem revolves between history and imagination, as it accompanies the reader on a lightning journey within the corruption of the present, so that he can then take it towards the most important expansion of the journey: "The detailed and surgical panoramic response in the fields of the past’s past on the future, or in the possibilities and complications of that encounter," according to the expression Syrian critic Subhi Hadidi.
Hadidi sees in a study published by the Palestinian Studies Center (winter 1993) that the repeated possession of elements (space and time) creates a sense of communication within absence, and in an unbroken pattern is the opposite of annihilation or extinction that is associated with absence.
Darwish says in one of the passages of the poem:
Pass by the stranger
Carrying seven hundred years of horses. Pass the stranger
Here, for the stranger to pass there. I'll be out in a little while
From the wrinkles of my time, a stranger from the Levant and Andalusia.
This land is not heavenly, but this evening is evening.
The keys are mine, the minarets are mine, the lamps are mine, and I am
for me too. I perpetuate the two paradise, I have lost them twice
Let me go so slow.
They killed me on a hurry,
Under my olives ..
The poem celebrates a variety of lyrical music with multiple rhythms in which Darwish plays, and the Lebanese academic Maher Jarrar notes that Darwish's poem did not depend on any of the verse on the Mushah style, as was the case with many Andalusian rhythms in his later collections.
Jarrar notes the autism between Palestine and Andalusia in Darwish's poem, as "Granada" becomes the place of longing in a similar with Palestinian Jerusalem, meaning that the present is a double mirror that sees the Andalusian past on the one hand and the Palestinian future on the other hand, according to an English-language research published by the American University of Beirut.
Abu Abdullah bin Al-Ahmar
Darwish is the position of Abu Abdullah Al-Ahmar who signed the extradition treaty of Granada, and the departure drama is simulated by enormous human feelings around the time of the signing of the Madrid Agreement.
Although Darwish intentionally left a distance between "I am the poet" and the personality of Abu Abdullah in his poem, bitter questions before the fall, exit, loss, and long absence almost bring together the Palestinian and Andalusian tribulations, as Darwish asks, "I will fall from a star in the sky to a tent on the way ... Where? Where is the road?
In his interview with the Lebanese Literature magazine (July 1974), Darwish says that the relationship of peoples with their “lost paradise” is a relationship of past with fateful destiny, it is free nostalgia and weeping for remembrance and consolation, yet it is also “joy with past ability to accomplish a beautiful past.” .
Darwish avoids falling into the families of pure nostalgia, for he says, "Do not write history as poetry, for weapons are the historian."
Perhaps it is for this reason that Darwish refused in the dialogue conducted by the similar literary magazine with the idea of lost paradise because it was "an acceptance of an existential state that has reached the end of it," according to Darwish.
Darwish continues, "Palestine is not a memory," it is a future existence or "a possible Andalusia", referring to the relationship of the past, present and future, which is still open to the possibilities of the past and the future in light of the burning conflict.
The Palestinian academic, Adel Al-Osta, believes that Mahmoud Darwish appeared pessimistic in the poem, and Edward Said observed the spirit of refraction and despair.
Although the poet has always linked Al-Andalus to Palestine, he was not pessimistic, as in this poem, yet Al-Osta continues that “the pessimism has started to recede, and in his poem in the lament of Majed Abu Sharar, Darwish’s link between Andalusia and Palestine was not hopeless.”
"Do you think it is Andalusia?" Darwish says in the poem.