About Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish (Arabic: مَحمُود دَرْوِيْش, romanized: Maḥmūd Darwīsh; 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian author and poet. He wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which formally established the State of Palestine in November 1988, and is widely regarded as the country's national poet. His poetry and other literature, for which he won numerous awards internationally, was published in Arabic, while he also spoke English, French, and Hebrew. In his poetic works, Darwish explored Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting "the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry." He served as an editor for several literary magazines in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. == Early and personal life == Darwish was born to a family of land-owning Arab Palestinians in al-Birwa, which was situated in the Western Galilee, on 13 March 1941. He was the second child of Salim Darwish and Houreyyah. While his mother was illiterate, Darwish was educated and taught how to read by his grandfather. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, al-Birwa was captured and subsequently razed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), prompting Darwish's family to flee to Lebanon, where they settled first in Jezzine and then in Damour. A year later, Darwish's family returned to Israel and settled in Deir al-Asad.
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