On this earth there is something worth living for.

The Palestinian people will live... You are right, Darwish, and on this land there is what is worth living for.

As we commemorate the memory of the great Palestinian poet, the late Mahmoud Darwish, which fell yesterday, the ninth of August, when he passed away on this date in the year 2008, we must return to his writings, prose, poems and verses in which he embodied the general Palestinian concern, and which are characterized by sadness and revolution, including the book (Diaries of Ordinary Sadness) in which Mahmoud Darwish described in prose the state of the Palestinian people and what they are suffering from the fierce Israeli enemy in the occupied homeland and in exile until his days became long days of oppression and sadness.
It is true that when Mahmoud Darwish began writing, he wrote about himself and his personal suffering, but what the poet suffers is suffered by millions of his people, and this common concern and these heavy days still cast their shadows and darkness on our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, who suffer from the ravages of a barbaric war that has destroyed the features of their lives, burning everything green and dry, and there is no longer any hope of living in Gaza, like Rafah, of which only a few houses remain, after they were razed to the ground, and Khan Yunis, which the occupation invaded for the third time, so that its people live the story of displacement, opening with it wounds and the state of a displaced person saying yesterday (where do we go), so there is no longer a place that has not been violated by the execution machine, even the tents are no longer suitable for sleeping, and northern Gaza has become a cemetery after it was a paradise of dreams, and patience under death and destruction is the impossible itself, so it has become possible in light of our people’s insistence on living and defying the pain.
The lover of Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish, summarized the story of the homeland, and addressed it in some of his poetic selections in his longing for his mother’s bread, when he lives the childhood that grows on his mother’s chest, and he is ashamed of his mother’s tears that are rising today in Gaza with her young children, so who will be baptized from the purity of her heel, and who will tighten the bonds, after the children of Gaza lost the ability to stand without praying during the day and after they grew old, the poet answers: Sing the stars of childhood..
Is it true that Gaza has grown old and its children have grown up prematurely while they are facing this aggression? Is this really their fate and destiny, that they wake up from their sleep, if they sleep at all, every morning to the sound of bullets and the roar of planes, to live in fear, terror and deep anxiety? What kind of life is that for the children of Gaza who carry pots and go on a dangerous journey, hoping to get a bite to eat to satisfy their deadly hunger, only to return empty-handed and sleep with regret, anguish and great sadness?
Excuse me Darwish, but we will quote your most beautiful phrases about the homeland, about Palestine and longing for it because we are living them today, and we say, oh my stubborn wound, my homeland is not a suitcase and I am not a traveler, I am the lover and the land is my beloved.
I am from there and I have memories.. I was born as people are born.. I have a mother and a house with many windows.. I have brothers.. Friends.. And a prison with a cold window.. I have a wave that the seagulls snatched.. I have my own scene.. I have an extra grass.. I have a moon in the farthest reaches of speech, and the sustenance of the birds, and an immortal olive tree. What is the homeland? It is not a question that you answer and move on.. It is your life and your cause together. The homeland is not a land, but it is the land and the truth together.
What is homeland? It is the longing for death in order to restore the right and the land.. Homeland is not land.. but it is land and right together.. The right is with you, and the land is with them.
Register.. I am an Arab, my ID number is fifty thousand, I have eight children and the ninth will be born after the summer.. Will you get angry?!
Record.. I am an Arab and I work with my fellow toilers in a quarry and I have eight children. I bring them a loaf of bread, clothes and notebooks from the rock. I do not beg for alms at your door nor do I humble myself before your threshold. Will you be angry?!
As you prepare your breakfast, think of others, don't forget the pigeons' food. As you fight your wars, think of others, don't forget those who seek peace. As you pay your water bill, think of others who suckle the clouds. As you return home, your home, think of others.
(Don't forget the people of the tents) While you sleep and count the stars, think of others.. (There are those who have not found a place to sleep) While you liberate yourself with metaphors, think of others who have lost their rights.
You are right, Darwish, the people of the tents, they really did not find a place to sleep, they did not find morning sustenance, and despite that we will insist on registering our Palestinian identity, we are fifty of thousands, and we will become millions, the women of Gaza are still in the throes of honorable birth, to give birth to the children of tomorrow, so that they may regain the land and the right, and the birds may provide them with goodness, and they may live next to an immortal olive tree, eating from its fruits, and they will not beg anyone and they will rebuild the homeland because it is the cause and life, and despite the stubborn wound, the people of Palestine will live... You are right, Darwish... because on this land there is what is worth living for, and on this land the lady of the land, the mother of beginnings, the mother of endings, was called Palestine
It became known as Palestine.
My lady: I deserve it, because you are my lady, I deserve life.