This poem appeared for the first time in the collection لﯾﻠﻟا رﺧآ The End of Night in Darwish’s Diwan, Volume 1 in 1967 under the titleءﺎﺿﯾﺑﻟاقﺑﺎﻧزﻟﺎﺑمﻠﺣﯾيدﻧﺟin Arabic. This volume covers the period 1964-1977. In English, it appeared as A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips in The Music of Human Flesh, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies in 1980 and as A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies in Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, translated by a team of eight translators in 2003. Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche translated this particular poem. None of the collections or single poems has the same title as the book. The title was apparently chosen by the editor, and probably in collaboration with Darwish himself.
Any profound analysis of Darwish’s poetry must take into account the significance of time as well as the context in which it was written. In the aftermath of the Arab defeat in the June war in 1967, Darwish was still living in Israel, and he shared the fate of his people. As a revolutionary poet, he raised his voice, expressing his concerns in the national poetry he embraced, in an attempt to ease the pain of the Palestinian masses in their daily life under the new conditions. His early resistance poetry reflected the woes of the occupation of his homeland and the rays of hope for liberating it. His poetry then was understood as pure national poetry in light of the Palestinian cause.
Darwish believed in coexistence between the Israelis and the Palestinians on the condition of equality and mutual recognition. Still, talking intimately to an Israeli soldier was by no means possible. Darwish, therefore, built this poem, on an imagined friendly dialogue between himself, as a native Palestinian, and an immigrant Israeli soldier who came from abroad to his ‘promised land’.
The collection title The End of Night invites the reader to ask: ‘what comes after the end of night?’ and to anticipate that the answer is ‘dawn’ or ‘sunlight’. In Arabic literature in general, dawn represents hope and a new beginning. In most poems in this collection, Darwish’s hope was to end the occupation and liberate his country.
Each poem in the book Unfortunately, It Was Paradise was selected in collaboration with Darwish himself, as the editor says in the introduction. The question arising here is: why did Darwish agree to include this 1967 poem in this 2003 volume, and particularly with this title and jacket design of the book? There could be more than one possibility. The title is a contradiction as paradise always means good fortune. It is then ironic rather than real.
From the point of view of a Palestinian like Darwish who lived for a long time in exile and carried the dream of return with him then came back home, Palestine was not to be ‘the paradise lost’ he imagined in his poetry. He found it full of Jews and their settlements. Its geography was changed with walls, roads, and small cantons. Villages were entirely erased and replaced with colonies. The land was fragile and waste. He found out that his poetry was not enough to sustain or restore ‘the paradise lost’.
Adam did not change, but his earthly paradise was lost forever.
From the viewpoint of an Israeli soldier who came to Palestine as his earthly eden or
‘promised land’, Palestine was not found to be a paradise, either. Jews from around the world gathered in Palestine to establish the State of Israel and live in peace there.
They left their native countries in Eastern Europe, the USA, and the Arab World to start a new life, but unfortunately, too, they were confronted with wars instead. The white tulips the soldier hoped to find in the new paradise were just a dream.
A third explanation is possible if we understand the title above as real than paradoxical. As is widely known, Darwish viewed Palestine as a metaphor for Eden, and this is clear in works such as the volume The Adam of Two Edens, published in late 2000. When he returned from exile in 1996, he found it hell instead of paradise.
The book jacket design is a view over the city of Jerusalem, representing Palestine. It is depicted as crowded with settlements. The old features that distinguish it have disappeared. It appears as lifeless concrete buildings, with no water or green trees in the former paradise (see Figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1: Cover of Unfortunately, It Was Paradise
In the poem Darwish relies on the technique of dialogue between himself and his friend, an Israeli soldier who came to Palestine from abroad. The newcomer dreams of white tulips and olive branches in his peaceful paradise. He also dreams of the freedom of birds and the beauty of lemon flowers, but the facts on the ground are different. He is not happy in the new homeland and does not feel a sense of belonging
there. Homeland for him is to return safe at nightfall. He does not feel the land in his blood and heart. In his response to Darwish’s question: ‘would you die for the land?’
he replies: ‘no’. His attachment to the land is no more than a story or a fiery speech, and his love for it hardly equals a glass of wine. He says they taught me to love this land, but he never felt it in his heart. He loves it with his gun and has no other emotional love for it.
Later he tells Darwish about his departure and his mother’s weeping when they led him to the front. In the battlefield he killed so many people that he got a medal for his heroic actions. In describing one of the dead, he says that he was not a well-trained fighter, but a peasant or a worker, and that he found two photographs in his pocket:
one of his wife, the other of his daughter. Nevertheless, he does not feel sad as it is a sin for a soldier to feel sad in the killing fields.
He told Darwish about his first love and wanted to meet him in a city far away. He also expressed his need for a kind heart, not a bullet. But he saw only what he did: a blood-red boxthorn. He came ‘to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting’. His dream of white lilies remains only a dream. Palestine, for him, is found to be hellfire rather than the promised paradise.
4.1.2 Psalm 2
In the early stages of his poetic career, Darwish wrote a number of poems that have the word ‘psalm’ as the first part of the title. Among his poems are Psalm 1 - Psalm 17 respectively and Psalm 151. Darwish calls these poems in Arabic ﻟﺎﺳﺑمﯾ as transliterated from English. The original psalms are a group of love poems to Jerusalem and Biblical songs that are related to David and are known as the Psalms of David in the Bible. In Arabic, they are known as روﺑز zabūr in the Holy Quran, and رﯾﻣازﻣ mazāmīr in the Prophet Mohammad’s tradition. These psalms in general urge people to be good and refrain from vice.
Psalm 2 in the Bible depicts the nations as extremely angry and wasting their time, planning for something in vain. There is a meeting of all the kings of the earth to prepare for battle. The rulers also plot together against the Lord and against His anointed one. They announce their aim of war and cry out “let us break their chains and free ourselves from slavery to God.” The Lord scoffs at them and angrily rebukes
them. He has already chosen a king on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. The Lord addresses the king and says, “If you ask I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the whole earth as your possession”. David asks the kings then to make him act wisely, serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Finally, he reminds them of the great joy they will get when they take refuge in the Lord.
In Psalm1 – Psalm 17, Darwish’s motives revolve around the dangers of exile and losing both home and identity. “In some Psalms, the dying Christ becomes an exile, and suffering consists of the departure from home” (Mansson 2003, p. 122). In another Psalm, Christ unwillingly tries to depart and leave suffering behind. Thus, Darwish makes Christ a model for the exiled migrant who leaves his home in search of identity, but his return becomes quite unattainable. In this respect, he is similar to Darwish who leaves his imprints and memories at home, hoping that his return is at hand, as he says in two lines in Psalm 4:
I left my face on my mother’s kerchief ﻲّﻣأ لﯾدﻧﻣ ﻰﻠﻋ ﻲﮭﺟو تﻛرﺗ
Carried mountains in my memory ﻲﺗرﻛاذ ﻲﻓ لﺎﺑﺟﻟا تﻠﻣﺣو
And went away. .تﻠﺣرو
In the poem Psalm 2, Darwish looks pessimistic, and he views himself as dry as a barren tree that has neither fruits nor even leaves. He addresses himself “to fight or not to fight? That is not the question” and similarly “to work or not to work? That is not the question”. These excerpts are obviously adapted from Shakespeare’s Hamlet
“to be or not to be, that is the question”. However, unlike Hamlet, Darwish is not concerned with physical fighting although they may be similar in having conspiracies hatched against them and in reaching a moment of self-determination. What is important for Darwish is to prove himself to have a strong voice so that he can fight through poetry, the source of his power as he claims.
For Darwish, it seems that seeing the opposite is a helpful way to sense one’s self or, paradoxically, brings one closer to oneself. To remember his house he has to sit in the open and suffer from deprivation, and to remember his homeland he has to live in exile and suffer from homesickness. In order not to forget a fresh breeze in his country, he needs to breathe tubercular air. In order to enjoy freedom in its full range, he must
be seized with painful memories. In order not to forget that the mountains in Palestine are high, he needs to clean his forehead that reminds him of extended plains. Finally, to own limitless freedom, he must not retain anything, even his skin.
Darwish again talks to his homeland: oh my homeland repeated in massacres and songs! I carry you in my heart and memories wherever I go, but what is wrong in mentioning your name before people? Why have you become a forbidden subject and become an object of suspicion like opium, invisible ink, or a transmitter. I have to hide you and smuggle you from one airport to another. But I want to look at your image before all people. I want to draw your tangible form as I see it: scattered through files and surprises, flying on shrapnel and wings of birds, and beleaguered between wind and dagger. I want to draw your real form, a fixed bearing with which to look at and understand myself. I will then be accused of being abstract and of forging documents and photographs.
He once more addresses his homeland: you are no longer real in my view. This is probably because a lot of its villages were erased from the earth, its features were changed, and a new name was imposed there. You turned into a dream. You are unattainable. Through this change, I lost my surprise at your love and beauty, and my feelings froze like a stone. I can no more express you. However, you may be more beautiful in turning into a dream.
Finally, Darwish asks his homeland for the fourth time as repeated in songs and massacres: show me the source of death; is it the dagger or the lie?
The poems Psalms along with other poems were translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, and appeared in the volume يرﺷﺑﻟا مﺣﻠﻟا ﻰﻘﯾﺳوﻣ The Music of Human Flesh published in 1980. Johnson-Davies argues that the key to an understanding of Darwish’s poetry is that “it consists largely of an extended and desperate love affair with his lost homeland” (Darwish 1980, back cover). Ben Bennani, also translated, among many poems by Darwish, Psalms 1-17, and they appeared in the volume Psalms in 1994.