“I long for my mother’s bread
My mother’s coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I must be worth my life
At the hours of my death
Worth the tears of my mother”
-Mahmoud Darwish
In the middle of the courtyard of Ramalla’s Cultural Palace, where he had given his last poetry reading, the grave was ready, to give the land’s dearest son a welcome embrace and a whole-hearted acceptance into her heart. On the winding road that led to the cremation ground, there were thousands, on their way to see their beloved poet for one last time. And in the midst of them was she, brought on a wheel chair: Houria, aged 92, the mother of Mahmoud Darwish. A blessed life. A blessed death.
4 comments:
I want a five-minute truce for the sake of coffee. I have no personal wish other than to make a cup of coffee. And coffee, for one who knows it as I do, means making it with your own hands and not having it come to you on a tray, because the bringer of the tray is also the bearer of talk, and the first coffee, the virgin of the silent morning, is spoiled by the first words. Dawn, my dawn is antithetical to chatter.
Coffee, the first cup of coffee, is the mirror of the hand. And the hand that makes the coffee reveals the person that stirs it. Coffee is the public reading of the open book of the soul.
Gently place one spoonful of the ground coffee, electrified with the aroma of cardamom, on the ripling surface of the hot water, then stir slowly, first clockwise, then up and down. Add the second spoonful, then stir up and down, then add the third. Between spoonfuls take away the pot from the fire and bring it back. For the final touch, dip the spoon in the melting powder, fill it and raise it a little over the pot, then let it drop back.......turn off the heat, and pay no heed to the rockets. Take the coffee to the narrow corridor and pour it lovingly and with a sure hand into a little white cup: dark coloured cups spoil the freedom of the coffee.
Now light your first cigarette, made for this cup of coffee, the cigarette with the flavour of existence itself, unequaled by the taste of any other except that which follows love, as the woman smokes away the last sweat and the fading voice.
Now I am born. Caffeine and nicotine, and the ritual of their coming together. No coffee is like another, and my defense of coffee is a plea for difference itself. Everyone's coffee is special.........Coffee with the flavour of coriander means that the woman's kitchen is not organized. Coffee with the flavour of carob means the host is stingy. Coffee with the aroma of perfume means the lady is too concerned with appearances. Coffee that feels like moss in the mouth means that its maker is an infantile leftist. Coffee that tastes stale from too much turning over in the hot water means its maker is an extreme rightist.
And the coffee with the overwhelming flavour of cardamom means the lady is newly rich. I can tell coffee from faraway: it moves in a straight line at first, then zigzags, winds, bends and turns on flat rocky surfaces and slopes.........
The aroma of coffee is a return to and a bringing back of first things because it is the offspring of the primordial. It is a journey begun thousands of years ago, that still goes on.
Coffee is a place.
Coffee is not for weaning, coffee is a breast that nourishes men deeply.
Coffee is geography.
I remeber reading this long before.Wonderful symbolization of coffee to fear of existence during the Civil War.
Hi Mea, great to see you back, thanks for the wonderful, lovely prose. (From where it's been taken?) And yes I know it:"Caffeine and nicotine, and the ritual of their coming together."
A friend of mine, send it to me long before. When I read your post, I just remembered reading this, dug into my personal folder where I keep some of my favorite literature works. That’s where I took this.
“Were you trying to convey that my understanding of the poem as personal and not as metaphorical – that is mother as Palestine- was wrong?”No yaar… please! I just wanted to share something that I have read.
I think that was an extract from Mahmoud's "Memory for Fogetfulness".
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