This popular poem by Mahmud Darwish has had more than one translation in English. It is a striking poem and rare in its subject matter. It humanizes the enemy and, more specifically, the soldier enemy who invades one’s country. In political and military conflicts the Other is often demonized or at best turned into an icon of brutality and aggression. Darwish in this poem writes almost tenderly of an anonymous Israeli soldier whose dreams attest to his nonviolent nature. His dream of an “olive branch” in a poem written in 1967 foreshadows the speech of the late Yâsir ‘Arâfat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who addressed the UN General Assembly in November 1974 calling for a peaceful settlement of the Palestine question: “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

The poem revolves around a conversation between an unnamed Israeli soldier and the named poetic persona (Mahmud) in a bar or café. One infers the setting from casual indications; for instance, “When I filled his fourth glass” and when the soldier addresses the speaker as “Mahmud, my friend.” The dialogue is presented in the English translation in italics (in contrast to the regular font of the lyrical narrative): “He drew on his cigarette. He said, as if fleeing from a swamp of blood. / I dreamt of white tulips, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn on a lemon branch.”

This dream of peace opens and ends the poem and is recalled in the midst of it, thus constituting its poetic backbone. The point of the poem is that soldiers are pushed into war by propaganda or go unreflectively. They are made to think this is the way to be patriotic. Their authentic feelings of wanting to live peacefully are smothered by a mobilizing discourse. The dream stands for the soldier’s repressed wish not to die or kill.

The poetic dialogue shows how such a peace-loving soldier ends up murdering others who cannot defend themselves: “I saw what I did: / a blood-red boxthorn / . . . / Like a tent he collapsed and died, his arms stretched out like dry creek-beds. / When I searched his pockets for a name, I found two photographs, one of his wife, the other of his daughter.” The dead ones were peasants and workers, not well-trained fighters, yet the soldier says that he did not feel sad for them since “sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield / . . . / I was there like a machine spitting hellfire and death, / turning space into a black bird.”

Antiwar poems proliferate in our conflict-ridden world. While a poet like Wilfred Owen wrote magnificent personal poems about his experience in World War I, Darwish writes imaginatively and empathetically of a young Israeli soldier who would rather not be engaged in combat but instead relax at home, drinking his mother’s coffee.

Bibliography

Darwish, Mahmud. “Jundi yahlam bi’l-zanabiq al-bayda’.” In Diwan Mahmud Darwish. Vol. 1. Beirut: Dar al-‘Awda, 1979, 311–322.

———. “The Soldier Dreams of White Tulips.” In Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, edited and translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 165–168.

———. The Soldier Who Dreamt of White Lilies. Bilingual edition. Translated by H. Martens, A. Bushnaq, and A. R. Yaghi. Amman: n.p. [University of Jordan?], 1969.

Categories: Literature, Palestinian Literature, War Literature, World Literature