Word: darwish
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Shortly after noon, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish comes by the Commodore. He has written no poems about the war. "I write my silence," he says. "I need distance to be a witness, not a victim." Since words are powerless against tanks, he feels that his silence is stronger than words. Still, a poem has power. Is Palestine itself a poem? "Yes," he says. "Because a poem is an unachieved desire...
...with poetry and refugee camps and walls." He believes that "Beirut is our last stand. From here to the grave, or to the homeland." Then he relents a bit. "We have to save the idea before we save Beirut. Beirut is not the capital of our idea." Darwish is 40. He has been a refugee four times and has been thrown in jail. "If the Palestinians find a homeland, they may discover the same dilemma as the Jews. The Jews were great creators in the abstract. Now only their army is great. Israel is the grave of Jewish greatness...
...seat Parliament. An active feminist, she held her own in a remarkable debate last year with Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, who had come to Cairo to explore the possibilities of a merger between Egypt and Libya. Takla, who is married to Police General and Criminologist Karim Darwish, rebutted Gaddafi's chauvinistic brand of Islamic fundamentalism by arguing that it reduced women to a secondary role. When Gaddafi protested that women were weak, Takla retorted that "only in weak societies are women weak." Among the feminists present who cheered her on: Jehan Sadat, 40, the President's attractive half...