Greet our house, O stranger.
Our coffee cups
Are still as they were. Do you smell
Our fingers over them? Do you tell your daughter with
Her plait and thick eyebrows that they have
An absent owner,
Who wishes to visit them, for no reason…
But to enter their looking glass and see his secret:
How they were living his life after him
In his place? Greet them if time permits… /
*
These are the words that we would have liked
To say to him, he heard it very, very
Well,
And he hides it in a quick cough,
And casts it aside, then the buttons on his tunic
Shine as he goes away… Well,
And he hides it in a quick cough,
And casts it aside, then the buttons on his tunic
Shine as he goes away…
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Western Galilee in 1941, the second of eight children. In 1948, after the establishment of the state of Israel, Darwish’s family move to Lebanon for a year, but later settled in Deir al-Asad in the Acre area. Darwish attended secondary school in Galilee and, after graduating, moved to Haifa to work as a journalist. His first collection of poetry, Asafir Bila Ajniha (Wingless birds) was published in 1960, when he was nineteen. He would go on to write many more collections of poetry and be hailed as one of the greatest Arab poets of the modern day. Darwish also became editor of a number of periodicals.
Politically involved throughout his life, in 1961, he joined Rakah, the Israeli Communist Party, and when living in Beirut in 1973, he joined the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, an action which resulted in his being refused entry to Israel. Despite criticism of both Israeli and Palestinian leadership, Darwish believed that peace was an attainable aim. Darwish’s life was marked by constant relocation, he lived in Cairo, Beirut, London, Paris and Tunis, and in the later part of the 1990s, he alternated between Amman and Ramallah. He was married and divorced twice but never had children. He died in August 2008, following complications from heart surgery.
Mohammad Shaheen holds a PhD in English Literature from Cambridge University. He is professor of English at the University of Jordan and the author of many books, including E.M. Forster and The Politics of Imperialism.
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Copyright
Published by Hesperus Press Limited
28 Mortimer Street, London W1W 7RD
www.hesperuspress.com
Why did you leave the horse alone? first published in Arabic in 1995
First published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2014
This ebook edition first published in 2014
Copyright © Estate of Mahmoud Darwish, 1995
English language translation and introduction © Mohammad Shaheen, 2014.
Designed and typeset by Roland Codd
Cover design by Roland Codd
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–78094–341–1