Darwish and Ben-Ami Story :herb: || Blog

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Mahmoud Darwish is considered by many to be Palestine’s most eminent poet. While famous during his lifetime for his landmark political activism and literature, it is his love poems that have brought a new generation of fans to his work.

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Mahmoud Darwish, in the 1960s, dated a woman named Tamar Ben-Ami. The name Rita, which is often cited, is the pseudonym Darwish used to refer to her in his poetry.

The two met at a Communist Party rally in 1962. In a town near Haifa. He read poems for the event while she, a singer and a dancer, performed music.

Quickly, Darwish became infatuated with Ben-Ami and, while they wrote and saw each other often, neither was eager to publicize their relationship. But Darwish would come to send her love letters for decades.

Darwish captures the heart of their ionate relationship in his poem “Rita and the Rifle,” which is a lyrical story:

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Over time, as Darwish became increasingly prominent for works such as 1964’s Identity Card₁, a piece for which he was jailed, and for his work as an editor and translator of the Communist Party Newspaper the tension at the heart of the relationship grew untenable.

In 1967, after the 6-day war, Ben-Ami ed the Israeli Navy as part of the naval band, singing songs with lyrics such as “the whole country is in the reserves, only in Israel.”

Her choice to the IDF was, of course, an act of personal and political betrayal to Darwish, it was not the state-sanctioned deception that a lot of people think it was.

Upon discovering this, Darwish wrote her the following:

After the 1967 war, Darwish was put under house arrest in Haifa. In 1971, he left Palestine for Cairo, Beirut, Moscow, and Paris. He would write later, in Journal of an Ordinary Grief, about his relationship with Ben-Ami.

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Despite their relationship being over, Darwish continued authoring poems revolving around this failed relationship, as he wrote:

After her time in the IDF, Tamar Ben-Ami moved to Berlin to work as a choreographer, where she lives to this day.

… and Darwish ed away in 2008

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₁. Identity card:

Write down!

I am an Arab

And my identity card number is fifty thousand

I have eight children

And the ninth will come after a summer

Will you be angry?

Write down!

I am an Arab

Employed with fellow workers at a quarry

I have eight children

I get them bread

Garments and books from the rocks...

I do not supplicate charity at your doors

Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber

So will you be angry?

Write down!

I am an Arab

I have a name without a title

Patient in a country

Where people are enraged

My roots

Were entrenched before the birth of time

And before the opening of the eras

Before the pines, and the olive trees

And before the grass grew

My father descends from the family of the plough

Not from a privileged class

And my grandfather was a farmer

Neither well-bred, nor well-born!

Teaches me the pride of the sun

Before teaching me how to read

And my house is like a watchman's hut

Made of branches and cane

Are you satisfied with my status?

I have a name without a title!

Write down!

I am an Arab

You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors

And the land which I cultivated

Along with my children

And you left nothing for us

Except for these rocks ...

So will the State take them

As it has been said?

Therefore!

Write down on the top of the first page:

I do not hate people

Nor do I encroach

But if I become hungry

The usurper's flesh will be my food

Beware ...

Beware ...

Of my hunger

And my anger

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