Rashid Hussein: 5 Poems

Rashid Hussein (1936-1977) was a Palestinian poet from Musmus, a village outside Umm al-Fahm. Like his contemporaries Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim, Hussein was a ’48 Palestinian (that is, a second-class citizen of Israel). Educated in Hebrew and Arabic, Hussein wrote and translated volumes of poetry, including these poems, taken from his Collected Poems (al-A‘mal al-shi‘riyya; Haifa: Maktabat Kull Shay’, 2004).

Unlike most of his peers, Hussein wrote regularly in the Arabic-language periodicals of the leftist Histadrut labor union and Mapam party. Liberal Israeli literary critics praised Hussein for translating their national poet, Hayim Nahman Bialik. If any figure ever exemplified the possibility of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence during the 1950s, it was Hussein.

Yet, Hussein was an angry poet and his ire was righteous. In his columns and verse, Hussein was unrelenting in his criticism of the violence and corruption of neighboring Arab regimes as well as Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. As Hussein’s political activism grew, however, the contradictions of working as a Palestinian within Zionist organizations intensified until he was finally expelled from Mapam. Prevented from finding employment as a schoolteacher, he left Israel in 1965. Subsequently, he worked as a Hebrew-Arabic translator for the PLO and Syrian broadcasting. He died tragically in an apartment fire in New York City in February 1977.

Refugees

The stars in the night shine like refugee camps

Like some dismal humanitarian organization, the miserable moon heaves off

A load of cheddar cheese, or flour.

This is what the moon has donated to my sad people.

On Poetry

Sing what you like, but…

Let everybody understand.

You have become ink and words.

So why do you talk?

Poet, produce!

But let the worker and the peasant understand.

Let the murdered understand.

And let the fighter understand.

Refugee God

God has become a refugee, Sir

So:

Seize the prayer rugs from the mosque

Sell the church, which now belongs to someone else.

Sell the muezzin on the black market

Light the wicks of stars so they

Might light the way for wanderers

Even the father of our orphans can’t be found

Take them all away as well, sir!

Don’t apologize—who ever said you’re an oppressor?

Don’t get upset—who ever said you’re an aggressor?

You are a liberator! You freed the grazing livestock in the morning when

You gave Muhammad’s field to Abraham.

The horses on the hilltops run free—

Perhaps you, most civilized master, should go near them so that they too can become your property?

The land extends her greetings to you and its wheat,

Thanks gathered in a field of gold!

Did you not liberate her neck from the plower

While the bull takes his rest at the manger?

For you are justice itself, and every tyrant craves that the

Morning of your justice comes with no tomorrow.

You, who murdered Spring and killed my threshing floor:

You are an anger that destroys all, an unextinguished revolution.

Your hands sowed landmines throughout my gardens,

And exploded the rosy season of my almond orchards.

You banished men from their homes so that it might be said, “Most honorable ruler!”

You imprisoned men so that it might be said, “Most just master!”

You fashioned “delegates” so we might obey them,

They are but slaves who weep for other slaves

You wanted me a slave so that I might be bought and sold

You wanted me desperate, so that I might live without diversion

You call out: “You are nothing but the scraps of a nation

Living scattered among caves. Stay put there!”

But you forget that untended coals

Are enough to start a fire… Enough tolight a path for others to follow!

Don’t get upset, these are words with no mouth to speak them,

Don’t be alarmed, these are words with no hand to throw them,

And where did this land come? Why does its soil burn with fire?

How, Sir, do you stand the flame of its furnace?

And where did this wheat come from? How did you steal it…

This grain made from our congealed tears?

When I squeeze your bread in my fists

It is my own blood that flows!

Revolt against Travel (Revolution on the Fly)

Nothing remains of the revolutions, of my most beautiful old dreams

But the traces of a banquet

And the stars on the epaulets of those who profess to dissect defeat.

Nothing remains save an army of articles pregnant

With bank accounts

And explanations excusing crime.

Nothing remains but a chanteuse who

Laments Haifa and Jaffa

While the bank squeezes dinars from ancient Jerusalem.

Nothing remains but for the revolution to begin its alphabet

Nothing remains but for crime to be murdered.

Revolution is born in eyes that have no homeland

Revolution is born as a landless peasant,

As a landowning cop,

A land where all has been imprisoned.

Revolution is born when the illiterate, the writer and the blind know the truth.

Then the letter comes to have no value,

And sincerity loses its worth.

For this reason, Comrades,

I am tired of being stupified by the narcotic speeches of the Arab slave rulers,

And tired of Our Lord who resides in His seven-storied Heaven

But left us nothing but His prohibition of pork

And His tolerance of gold.

I am sick of Our Lord whom my grandfather turned into a merchant of paradises and virgins,

And Who, to burn me, will spend His life gathering wood.

For this reason, Arabs,

Patience has become tiresome,

They have angered me, enraged me, they have infuriated…

Revolution craves moments of rage…

Then what?

A child gave birth to me in the market,

In front of all the high priests,

Then they dragged her to the souk where she remains, a humiliated girl.

Because of this, whenever I write poetry, I am torn apart

As the blood of my mother’s womb pours down my face

At that moment, my poetry goes mad seeking

The faces of traitors.

For this reason, I will spend my life as a peasant

And a poet

Wherever I walk, you will see

The birth of a revolutionary.

Without a Passport

With no passport

I was born

I grew up

And watched my country become prisons.

Without a passport

I raised an entire country in a house, in a line of verse

And a sun

And wheat

And grew within each a tree.

I learned to write poetry

To give joy to the people of my village

Without a passport.

I learned that he whose land has been stolen loves not the rain.

And that if he were to return,

He’d come without a passport.

But I have grown tired of minds that have become hotels

For wishes that give never give birth

Except with a passport.

Without a passport

I’ve come to you

I’ve revolted against you

Stand up, and slaughter me!

So that I might feel what it is like to die without a passport.