San Francisco Chronicle · San Francisco, California · 19 January 2003

CP-2003-010

Unfortunately, It Was Paradise

By Mahmoud Darwish · University of California; 210 pages; $39.95, $16.95 paperback

Jonathan Curiel

Transcribed from the clipping

“If there is one writer who best reflects the hopes and frustrations of the Palestinian people, it is Mahmoud Darwish. For 40 years, the poet has chronicled the Palestinians’ experience with Israel, the Palestinians’ exile from historic lands and the Palestinians’ yearning to return to a kind of normalcy. Yet it would be a mistake to see Darwish as only a ‘protest poet,’ as a new collection of his work makes clear. ‘Unfortunately, It Was Paradise’ covers the full range of Darwish’s career. There are poems about love, such as ‘Lesson From the Kama Sutra.’ (‘Speak to her as a flute would to a frightened violin string, as if you knew what tomorrow would bring’). And poems with references to New York, Paris and other Western cities, like ‘As Fate Would Have It.’ (‘He didn’t look at his watch, nor was he tempted by the trees standing tall under our tenth-floor room in Manhattan. He was wrapped in memories.’). The poems are a window into Darwish’s own diaspora. Born in a village in what is now Israel’s Galilee, Darwish fled with his family to Lebanon during the war that followed Israel’s creation. When Darwish returned to Israel a year later, the government legally considered him a ‘present-absent alien’ — an identity he considers in his poem ‘The Owl’s Night,’ which talks about ‘a present not embraced by the past.’ In his 20s, after being jailed by Israeli authorities, Darwish lived much of his life in Lebanon, France, Tunisia and the Soviet Union. For the past seven years, he has divided his time between Amman, in Jordan, and Ramallah in the West Bank. Many of the poems in ‘Unfortunately, It Was Paradise’ deal with freedom, separation and exile, and about strangers meeting and feeling connected. There are dreams and sadness in these beautiful poems. The full depth of a man and a people are evident. Poet and professor Carolyn Forche and Munir Akash, an Arab American editor, led the team that translated Darwish’s work into English. This book’s publication is a major event — especially for those who can’t read Arabic and have only heard of Darwish’s reputation. Now they can discover what the Arab world has known for decades: Darwish is a literary giant whose voice is passionate and universal.”

Photograph caption

The book jacket of “Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems,” translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein.

Context added by this archive

An American reviewer saying, in 2003, the thing this section is about: that it would be a mistake to read him as only a protest poet, and here are the love poems to prove it. The jailing appears in one clause and the poems get the rest of the column. The phrase the Israeli state used for him when he came home, present-absent alien, is printed beside the line of his it produced: a present not embraced by the past.

Cite this item

"Unfortunately, It Was Paradise," San Francisco Chronicle, 19 January 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-010

Elsewhere in the archive

• Ex-ambassador calls Arafat obstructionistSan Francisco Chronicle · 23 April 2002 · the same newspaper
• Arab Protests Erupt in ViolenceSan Francisco Chronicle · 15 May 1998 · the same newspaper
• Mahmoud Darwish — poet, Palestinian cultural iconSan Francisco Chronicle · 11 August 2008 · the same newspaper
• Israeli forces kill two PalestiniansThe Charlotte Observer · 30 January 2003 · the same year
• Some Israelis contemplate low-grade ‘genocide’ for PalestiniansThe Free Lance-Star · 2 February 2003 · the same year
• Sioux Falls Muslims take their views to the streetsArgus Leader · 22 March 2003 · the same year