Mahmoud Darwish

Celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on 9 August 2008, at the age of 67, after open-heart surgery. Here is a video of his most famous poem "Identity Card" (published in 1964):

A poet of exile par excellence, Darwish died in exile. The village of his birth in western Galilee, al-Birwa (whose Arabic name is said to have been first recorded in Persian poet and traveler Nasser Khosro's Safarnameh), had been demolished, in whose place Moshav Ahihud was built in 1950.

Simone Bitton's 1997 documentary film Mahmoud Darwich: As the Land Is the Language traces some of the paths of Darwish's exile.

Mahmoud Darwich, et la terre comme la langue

Mahmoud Darwish, who refused to rest in peace without justice in his life, will now wander in the hearts of people, not only the Palestinians, but all who have been made homeless by the relentless drive to displacement and dispossession that is the engine of capitalist modernity.