"Otherwise, if she said 'nice' I used to feel a large comfort, she is my first reader and first teacher in poetry and in life", al-Maghut declared.
Nizar Qabbani never recovered after his wife died in an explosion in the US Embassy, is his poem Balqis the best eulogy written? Ahmed Rami, was in love with Umm Kulthum all his life, he didn't want more than to be in love, for he was an Oriental man! Here Rests the Last Childįour years after Balqis al-Rawi, Syrian writer and poet Saniyah Salih died in Paris after suffering a health crisis, leaving behind her husband Syrian poet Muhammad al-Maghut to lament her passing.Īl-Maghut elegized his wife stating that she was his "mother, wet-nurse, love and disease", pointing out that her opinion in his work was fundamental, for if she hesitated in front of him if only for a second, he tore what he had between his hands, and started again. That those involved in the killing, wanted to That our Arab age is specialized in the slaughter of jasmines To drink a glass on the grave of the martyr Here are some of its words:įor my love has been killed… and now you are able To commemorate ten years of marriage, Qabbani dedicated a poem to his wife in which he said that no other woman understood the game other than her, that no other woman withstood his foolishness other than her, and that no other woman made him feel like a child other than her.Īfter her passing, Qabbani dedicated a recorded elegy – eighteen minutes long – titled "Balqis". Qabbani was in love with Balqis whose family refused her marriage to him, until notable personalities in Iraq intervened. In 1981, the celebrated Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani lost his Iraqi wife Balqis al-Rawi while she was in the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, after a car bomb exploded, killing over sixty people. Many have attempted to write down the feelings accompanied with the departure of a loved one, perhaps with the hope that these elegies would reduce from the pain of the death, or that it would somehow reach the concerned person. Often, tears dry up with death, and words are trapped – what can be said? And can words express the sheer scale of sadness or anger without betraying true feelings? Zak's elegy to his departing wife takes us back to other messages that carry personal pain between their lines: the pain of a departure that is difficult to get past, especially that which often increases with the passage of time. As for her mother, Fartuun Adan, she founded the Elman Center for Peace, an organization that works towards entrenching peace in Somalia. Her father Elman Ahmed was assassinated in 1996 – while her sister Ilwad was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
In his message, Zak wished that his wife – who worked in the field of social justice, women’s rights, and rehabilitating children affected by conflict in Somalia – to land in the "highest place in heaven", and for him to "reunite with her soon" – finishing his message: "I love you forever."Įlman comes from a family with a track record of working to entrench peace in Somalia. Two years ago you held my face when we got married, today I held your face when I went down in the grave with you.
#NIZAR QABBANI POEMS ONJ GRIEF SERIES#
In a series of tweets Zak wrote on Twitter, he said: " I lost the love of my life, my best friend, my soul mate. With these words, Zak elegized the passing of his human rights activist wife – or as he called her, the "activist of peace" – Somalian-Canadian Almaas Elman, who was killed along with her unborn child on the night of 22 November, after being shot in the head in the Somali capital Mogadishu by an as of yet unknown shooter. "I cry for the future we lost, but grateful for the past and the memories we had.
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