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Mureed Barghouti

Palestinian Poets

Barghouti is one of the most famous Palestinian poets. He was born in 1944 in the village of Deir Ghassani and lived most of his life in the Diaspora. He worked as a teacher in Kuwait for four years and at the “Palestine Radio” in Cairo. He lived in Budapest as a PLO representative. He currently lives in Cairo. His works started as patriotic poems, and evolved into a modernist sensibility and produced some of the most compelling poetic experiments among Arab poets of his generation. He has several collections of poetry. He was awarded Cairo's American University 1997 Mahfouz Najib Literature Prize for his first essay Ra’ayt Ramallah (I saw Ramallah) about his return to Palestine after years of exile. The book was translated into English by the AUC. Barghouti is a member of the Sakakini General Assembly.

Certainty
Slow is the hand of evening as it closes the window
draws the heavy blinds
and gathers the ashtrays overflowing with stubs.
She draws her face close to the mirror for a minute
"they are late..they are very late"..
the clock on the wall ticks in the ordinary way
slow are her steps to bed
cold is the evening
the touch of the blanket.
She pulls the cover over the body
and leaves the lights on in all the rooms
Exception
All of them arrive
river and train
sound and ship
light and letters
the telegrams of consolation
the invitations to dinner
the diplomatic pouch
the space ship
they all arrive/all but my step toward my own country..