{Alice Oseman, Radio Silence/ Emily Palermo, from Untitled/ Franz Kafka, from Diaries/ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar/ Marya Hornbacher, Waiting/ Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter to Galatea Kazantzaki wr. c. May 1922/ Mahmoud Darwish/ Anna Akhmatova, from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova; "The Old Portrait"/ Lyric Hunter, from "A Garden," Swallower/ Albert Camus/ Varsha/ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Meek One}
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“Killing the flowers will not delay spring.”
(Al-Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Syria)
LITTLE PALESTINE, DIARY OF A SIEGE (2021) DIR. ABDALLAH AL-KHATIB
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This claim, shared widely, reworded, and filtered into the media, is false.
Mahmoud Darwish did not date a Mossad agent. (Rita was not a Mossad spy) He did, however, in the 1960s, date a Jewish woman named Tamar Ben-Ami. The name Rita, which is often cited in these posts, is the pseudonym Darwish used to refer to her in his poetry. He was 22 and she was 16 ½. Ben-Ami was a member of the youth movement The Young Communist League of Israel.
Quickly, Darwish and Ben-Ami developed strong feelings for each other and, while they wrote and saw each other often, neither was eager to publicize their union. “I kept our relationship a secret. I didn’t open it up. I think it was because of Communism, because he was an Arab, I was a Jew,” said Ben-Ami.
In 1967, after the 6-day war, Ben-Ami joined the Israeli Navy as part of the naval band. Upon discovering this, Darwish wrote her the following:
“Tamari, this week I thought of you often. My thoughts made me feel bad. I could see only the criminal in you. I was forced to forget the sweet, beautiful aspects. Do those aspects exist? I hope they do.”
Darvish also wrote-
“I love you despite the nose of my tribe, my city, and the chains of customs. But I’m afraid if I sell everyone, you will sell me, and I’ll return with disappointments.”
A heartbroken Darwish then wrote –
“I felt like my homeland was occupied again.”
After their relationship was over, Darwish continued authoring poems revolving around this failed relationship, as he wrote,
“All roads lead to you, even those I took to forget you.”
He also wrote:
“Maybe it wasn’t important to you, Rita, but it was my heart!”
For her, he also wrote his famous poem, “Rita and the Rifle.”
Finally, he also wrote:
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