Challenging the myth of “a land without a people”: Mahmoud Darwish’s Journal of an Ordinary Grief and In the Presence of Absence

What is it about?

In his address at the Madrid Peace Conference, the Head of the Palestinian Delegation, Dr Haidar Abdul-Shafi challenged the persistent myth that has defined Palestinian existence for at least a century by saying: “For too long the Palestinian people have gone unheeded, silenced […] we have been victimized by the myth of ‘a land without a people’” (Abd Al-Shafi, 1992: 133). Negation coupled with the trauma of the loss of territory has augmented the Palestinian silence. In this article, I look at Mahmoud Darwish’s Journal of an Ordinary Grief (2010) and In the Presence of Absence (2011), drawing on Edward W. Said’s After the Last Sky (1999), in which the authors recount the untold story of their marginalized people to give voice to the silenced through accounts of a lived and observed experience.

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Why is it important?

The Palestinians have been long marginalized and silenced by history and politics.