Ghassan Kanafani
Ghassan Kanafani was a refugee, a journalist, an editor and a political
activist. He
was murdered in Beirut by a bomb planted in his car by Israel’s Mossad spy
agency on 8 July 1972. He was 36 years
old.
At the time, he was the official spokesperson of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). And yet, first and foremost, he was a writer.
In this regard, his obituary in Lebanon’s Daily Star stated that he was “a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages.”
Ghassan was very clear on his life’s purpose. And the following quote is an example to all of us who wish to combine our moral, artistic and political objectives.
“I write well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day I leave these principles, my stories will become empty; and the defence of principles is what finally leads to success in everything. The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary… as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
THE RETURN OF REFUGEES
(For Ghassan Kanafani)
Trucks are loaded donkeys loaded
but not with beds linen pots or kettles
loaded with panic with defeat with betrayal
Who owns the past? who will own the future?
trucks are loaded donkeys loaded
loaded at speed loaded at gunpoint
but not with children dogs birds and rabbits
loaded with threats bluster murder and blackmail
Who owns the past? who will own the future?
loaded by the innocent loaded by the weak
at speed at gunpoint
trucks are loaded donkeys loaded
but not with paintings silverware books and prayer beads
loaded with lackeys absent effendi colonizers lying imperialists
long live the past and the future!
and so convoys of stalled generations tripping in minefields
hanging on barbed wire
hanging on the past and the future
carrying photographs diaries and wills
carrying keys boxes of memory
then borders evaded borders crossed
borders spat and trampled on
then camps cast out in camps
cramped in camps camp cities alongside cities
camps to take the place of
places of work of worship
of study places of healing
camps to hold people in check
in reserve in suspension
but then in the camps trucks load defiance and bomb belts
trucks load young militants
long live the past and the future! long live the present!
and heavy with hunger
with stench and with sacrifice
with lineage and longing
with resolutions and rights
loaded with anguish trucks start their engines
race back to the borders
trucks cross over and explode!
long live the past and the future!
free at last in the present