Flags were lowered to half-staff at West Bank government buildings on Sunday, ushering in three days of mourning for poet Mahmoud Darwish, who helped forge the Palestinians’ national identity and gave a voice to their yearning for independence.
Darwish died on Saturday, at age 67, following heart surgery at a Houston hospital.
The poet is to be buried on today in the West Bank city of Ramallah, rather than near his home village in what is now Israel, said his brother, Ahmed. The family had initially considered seeking burial close to home. However, this would have required Israeli approval, and would have made it difficult for people from across the Arab world to visit the grave.
“Mahmoud doesn’t just belong to a family or a town, but to all the Palestinians, and he should be buried in a place where all Palestinians can come and visit him,” Ahmed Darwish said.
Darwish will be buried next to Ramallah’s Palace of Culture, and a shrine will be erected in his honor, said Ramallah Mayor Jeanette Michael.
In the past year, Darwish had become increasingly concerned about the political infighting. Underscoring those divisions, it was not clear on Sunday whether the Hamas government in Gaza would join the three days of official mourning declared by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Gaza’s Culture Ministry planned to set up a mourning tent, starting yesterday, officials said. Hamas’ supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, who is based in Syria, said that “with the death of Darwish, Palestinian literature lost one of its pillars.”
Moreed Bargouthi, a Palestinian poet, told the Voice of Palestine radio on Sunday that he had spoken to Darwish before his surgery and that Darwish had expressed his worry about the bitter political divisions.
In Ramallah, flags were lowered to half-staff on Sunday, to usher in the mourning period. Late on Saturday, as news of Darwish’s death spread, dozens of people lit memorial candles in Ramallah’s main square. Some radio stations played Darwish poems set to music.
Darwish’s works are taught in Palestinian schools and are also popular among the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for security offenses. Prisoners traditionally spend their time in jail reading and organizing classes for each other. Darwish’s occasional readings in Ramallah drew overflow crowds.
Darwish’s poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages and he won numerous international awards. He first gained prominence in the 1960s with the publication of his first poetry collection, Bird without Wings.
It included the poem Identity Card that defiantly spoke in the first person of an Arab man giving his identity number — a common practice among Palestinians when dealing with Israeli authorities and Arab governments — and vowing to return to his land.
Many of his poems have been put into music — most notably Rita, Birds of Galilee and I Yearn For My Mother’s Bread — and have become anthems for at least two generations of Arabs.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS