Rashid Hussein (1936-1977) was born in Musmus, Palestine. He published his first collection in 1957 and established himself as a major Palestinian poet and orator. He was the first celebrity poet to appear on Arab – Israeli stage, Darwish called him „the star“, he showed them it was possible to write about „human things“ – bread, hunger, anger.
Hussein was a tortured soul, he wanted to be accepeted by the Israeli Jewish society, he wanted to connect the Palestinians and Israelis. But that wasn’t easy.
His song The locked door was dedicated “to my Jewish friend who asked me – why don’t you describe the Negev and kibbutz and moshav in your poetry?”
You tell me to describe the beauty of the kibbutz and moshav
And the Negev and the Yarkon that drapes its sands as a gown.
But you have forgotten, my brother, that you have locked me out.
Do you want me to be a lying clown?
You’ve locked me out.
Hussein was dedicated to the Palestinian cause, he wanted his Israeli friends(and all the other people) to understand what it meant to be and live as a Palestinian without Palestine.
Without a Passport
I was born without a passport
I grew up
and saw my country
become prisons
without a passport
So I raised a country
a sun
and wheat
in every house
I tended to the trees therein
I learned how to write poetry
to make the people of my village happy
without a passport
I learned that he whose land is stolen
does not like the rain
If he were ever to return to it, he will
without a passport
But I am tired of minds
that have become hotels
for wishes that never give birth
except with a passport
Without a passport
I came to you
and revolted against you
so slaughter me
perhaps I will then feel that I am dying
without a passport
Hussein married a Jewish woman and went on to live in New York. He started to drink a lot, his life was in ruins. He tried to change the minds of his Israeli friends, but it seemed like there were forces in Israel which fear the Arab friend more than the Arab terrorist. Hussein tried to make sense of his life far away from home, he kept on spending the money and drinking.
„It seems telling that almost everyone who writes or talks about Rashid mentions food and drink, and in particular his almost desperate need to shower with edibles all those he loved“ , writes Adina Hoffman in her book My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century (biography of another great Palestinian poet, Taha Muhammad Ali). She also writes:
„He seems to have possessed an uncanny gift for making each of those around him feel his confidant in an instant, as many of his friends were also driven by the need to try and protect him – most pressingly, from himself.“
And really, he was so vulnerable, and his young life (41) ended in vain. His friend, I.F. Stone, said Rashid died of the disease called “homelessness.” Mahmoud Darwish dedicated his poem On Fifth Avenue he greeted me to Rashid Hussein, and I think that one is a great way to end this post. I’ve also decided to put in black and white photos of Palestine, it just seemed right (photos ©Occupied Palestine).
On Fifth Avenue he greeted me (For Rashid Hussein)
On Fifth Avenue he greeted me.
He leaned against a wall of glass.
There are no willows in New York.
He brought tears to my eyes,
He gave the river back its waters,
We drank coffee,
And parted seconds after.
For twenty years
I’ve known him to be forty
Tall as a coastal song
He came to us a blade of wine
And left, a prayer’s end.
He flung out poems
At Christo’s Restaurant
And all of Acre would rise from sleep
To walk upon the sea.
He had roses. He had chains.
Nothing hurt him behind barbed wires
But his mighty wound.
Lovers would pass and promise meetings,
There were seacoasts that we lifted,
There were wild grapes that we tasted,
There were blue herbs that cried out
And we mingled in their cry.
We tore all songs apart,
We were torn apart by gazes
From dark eyes.
We fought and were killed.
While the knights came and went.
In every void
We saw the singer’s silence
Blue to the point of vanishing.
For twenty years
He has been throwing his flesh
In all directions
To the fowl and fish.
The son of two peasants
From a limb of Palestine,
Southern and pious,
He was big of feet
And pale of voice.
Brown to the point of familiarity,
He was poor as any butterfly.
He could see further
Than prison gates
He could see closer
Than studies on Art
He could see us,
See our refugee cards.
Simple, in cafes and in language
He liked the flute, and beer
The prose of meadows
The poetry of wheat.
He visited his family Saturdays
To rest from the terrible, divine ink
And the police’s questioning.
He only published
Two slim books of his early poems
And gave us all the rest.
… Pale as the sun in New York,
From where will the heart pass,
Is there room, in this asphalt wood,
For the feathers of a dove?
My mailbox is empty
And dawn here does not sting
Nor any star burn in this crowding.
My evenings are narrow.
The body of my love is paper
No one wraps around my evenings,
Wishing to be river and cloud.
From where will the heart pass,
Who will pick up the dream
Fallen outside the bank and opera house?
A cascade of pins
Drowns my ancient desires.
I no longer dream
I desire to desire
No. This is not my time.
Give me my limbs to embrace
And my winds to go forth.
From cafe to cafe
I want the other language
I want the difference
Between fire and memory.
Give me my limbs to embrace
And my winds to go forth.
Why do poems evade me when I’m far from Jaffa?
Why does Jaffa vanish when I touch her with my hand?
No, this is not my time.
He disappeared down Fifth Avenue
Or a Northern Pole
And all I remember of his eyes
Were cities that come and go.
He vanished.
We met again in a year
At the airport in Cairo
He said
If only I were free
In the prison cells of Nazareth.
He slept a week,
He woke two days.
He drank nothing of the coffee
But its colour.
We retraced our past steps,
The land that crawls in our blood like insects,
The death of friends,
Those who shared our days,
Then scattered.
They did not love us as we wished them to.
They did not love us, but they knew us.
He would rave when he woke
And wake when he wept.
Life has passed me by
And I’ve lost the essence of it all.
He disappeared with a sunset
Over the deep Nile
And I prepared a eulogy for him,
A funeral of palm.
My continuous suicide,
Can’t we start again from any parting,
Can’t you glow like the plants of Galilee
Or flame like a murdered man?
He disappeared.
On Fifth Avenue he greeted me.
He leaned against a fountain of cement.
There are no willows in New York.
Has anyone of us died? No.
Have you changed? No.
Is the journey still the journey
With the harbour in the heart?
He was so far
That he vanished like a deer
In a lake of fog.
He did not know or ask the time
Nor was he moved by those upright trees
Beneath his tenth floor window
In Manhattan
He only listened to the secret ringing
Of his bell
And saw another winter come.
Are we to remain like this,
Moving to the outside
In this orange day
Only to touch
The dark and vague inside?
I carry the earth’s weight
Girls have taken of my soul and gone.
Birds have nested in my voice,
Then have broken me and flown.
And the singing has dispersed me,
And misplaced me.
No, this is not my time.
No, this is not my flesh.
Translated by Rana Kabbani
In 1960 my father received a Fulbright to teach in Tel Aviv. My brother and I, 11 and 9 were along, as was my mother. After driving around Europe we took the S.S. Herzl to Haifa. On the boat my parents met Rashid and they became fast friends. Many weekends Rashid took my parents to visit Arab villages so they could see “the other side” of the Israeli experience. I’ve never forgotten him–I just have some cameo memories–but he was an extraordinary man, and made a real difference in the lives of my parents and in my life as well.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, it means a lot. Recently I received an e-mail by one of Rashid’s old friends and he said a similar thing – Rashid was a man of great talents, and nice and kind to many. He stays remembered and alive among people, in their memories and through his works.
I wish I had been older so I could have understood more. But it seems that meeting Rashid was a profound thing for my parents. Does he have any family still alive?
I really don’t know, I was also thinking about that some time ago… It would be worth digging deeper into that, for sure.
I am the son of filmmaker Lionel Rogosin who made a film with Rachid and Amos Kennan in 1973. I am finishing a film on this film and am looking for photos with Rachid as a young poet in Israel. I would like to get the pictures you put up and need some more. Can you help? Do you have any leads? There is a portrait of Rachid in my film and a song set to one of his poems. He was very close to my father and the family. Many thanks Michael Rogosin
link to our website
http://www.lionelrogosin.org/
Hi Michael, nice to hear from you.
Concerning the photos – these are from the book The World of Rashid Hussein by Kamal Boullata, published in 1979. I think you would need to look there for more photos and contact the publishers. I think there should be no problems with that, since your efforts are noble and in line with Rashid Hussein’s legacy. Unfortunately, that is all I can tell you/help you with. Looking forward to seeing the film when it’s finished. If there is something else I could help with, let me know. All the best, Ivana.
Looks like the bookstore is available on Amazon…
And just to add – I am a big fan of your father’s work!
That should read “book”
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