About the Author

The established Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1942 to the no longer existing village of Al-Birweh. After the establishment of the State in Israel in 1948, his village among many others were destroyed. He and his family were now considered “internal refugees.” Darwish wrote, “my homeland is not a suitcase and I am not a traveler, I am in love and this land is my lover.” With these words, Darwish was able to capture the displacement of his people. He continued to do so in over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose.

Darwish lived in exile for twenty-six years, he spent a year at a university of Moscow in 1970, later looking at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. Soon after Cairo, he moved to Beirut. Later he moved to Lebanon where he joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O) in 1987. Finally settling in Paris before he was allowed back to Palestine in 1996.

Darwish passed away in August 2008 after complications of heart surgery in Texas. He has left a lasting legacy of prose poetry dedicated to the freedom of the Palestinian people.