Palestinian Journalist/Author/Poet/Activist Fouzi El-Asmar, R.I.P... El-Asmar was a doting husband, father, grandfather, a devoted friend, and a respected journalist who died this month at age 76, three weeks after the passing of his wife: He had asked to be buried in his native land.

Fouzi El-Asmar recalled how the inhabited land of mandate Palestine became the state of Israel and how the Arab Christian and Muslim natives were turned into second-class citizens... The experience initially recounted in Hebrew, which he mastered, and later in his native Arabic, was "To Be An Arab In Israel," a searing book published in 1975 and later translated into nine languages.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/magda-abufadil/palestinian-journalistaut_b_3975889.html 

Magda Abu-Fadil

Director of Media Unlimited in Lebanon

It's the details one often remembers.

Mine is the memory of Fouzi El-Asmar surrounded by piles of newspapers, documents, and books, at his Washington, D.C. office and Maryland home office.

The noted Palestinian journalist, author, poet and activist par excellence devoured words with relish and produced countless words of his own to fill volumes for over half a century.

The focus, the Holy Grail, was Palestine, the land of his birth and in which he was made to feel an outsider.

After the first recovery from the 1948 defeat, the Arabs of Israel were left in a void. They saw that a new situation had emerged....Arab lands were confiscated under many different laws, and many villagers were expelled and turned into refugees inside the country....READ MORE

 http://www.icmes.net/?page_id=332

Dr. Fouzi El-Asmar was a distinguished Palestinian writer, poet, academic and journalist. He was a publicly recognized authority on the political and social lives and conditions of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. He regularly published articles that are syndicated in the Arabic press throughout the Middle East and in Europe. He wrote numerous books, including Through the Hebrew Looking Glass and the renowned To Be an Arab in Israel. The latter has been published in seven languages, including English, Hebrew and Arabic. Dr. El-Asmar also wrote several collections of poetry, including Poems from an Israeli Prison and The Wind-driven Reed and Other Poems.

Born in Haifa, Palestine, Dr. El-Asmar grew up in a Palestinian area of Israel. In 1958, he became a member of the editorial board of the literary monthly, Al-Fajr, and in 1966 he became editor of the Arabic magazine, Hadha-al-Alam. He attended Central Connecticut State University (then Central Connecticut State College) and received his B.A. degree there with honors in 1975. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter in England.Then in 1979, he became the managing editor of the London-based international newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat.

Dr. El-Asmar lectured and taught at a number of universities, including St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, and Bradford University in England, and the American University in Washington, D.C. He held dual Israeli and U.S. citizenship and resided in Bethesda, Maryland.

palestinianpoetry 

 

The Wandering Reed

Of what benefit is it, if man were to gain
the whole world

But lose the green almond in his father’s
orchard?

Of what benefit is it,

If man were to drink coffee in Paris

But none in his mother’s house?

Of what benefit is it, if man were to tour
the whole world

But lose the flowers on the hills of his
native land?

He gains nothing but deadly silence

Within the hearts of the living.



You look through the mirror of lands not
your own

And see your exiled face;

You recognize your face

Despite the deadly dust of travel

From Jaffa, to Lydda, to Haifa,

Through the Mediterranean to exile;

You recognize your face

And try to deny that face!

Your worship your own face

Even though exile has obliterated its
features;

The hangman of the twentieth century
assumes the countenance

Of the eternal face!

You close your eyes

To worship your face in the darkness of
this century.

You deny…Your worship,

You deny…Your worship,

And the God of truth cries to your face:

“He who denies his face

Is renounced by all the birds of paradise
in this universe,

And those whom silence has turned mute

Will never be heard by the roses of the
field

He who kills the nightingale of his dreams

Will be buried in the forgotten graveyard
of the living.”

You open your eyes

And see the face of your country in the
mirror of exile.



The deadly silence in the hearts of the
living

Strips away the skin of your face;

It cuts and dries your flesh,

Then hangs what remains on poles

Under the forgotten sun of the West.

Fouzi El –Asmar, The Wandering Reed...

 

 

 

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 on twitter: 

IPS remembers Palestinian Journalist/Author/Poet/Activist, Fouzi El-Asmar via @HuffingtonPost: http://ow.ly/paiL0  #Palestine #Palstudies

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