Summary
Lebanese-born poet, American University of Beirut graduate, settled in Palestine, presented by Kanafani as a progressive intellectual who led resistance poetry’s early political interventions.
Details
-
He was the first to warn against the Balfour Declaration and its challenges, the very month it was issued (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.15 / printed p.28).
-
In January 1920 he wrote the reply poem in Haifa’s Karmel to Ma’ruf Al-Risafi’s poem for the British High Commissioner, a poem Kanafani calls a unique political document addressing Jewish immigration, Britain’s role in fragmenting the Palestinian Arabs, and the Balfour Declaration (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.15 / printed p.28).
-
On 28 March 1920 he led a demonstration chanting a song he had composed, and at the ensuing inquiry denied having used a seditious line on the ground that it violated the metre and rhyme (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.15 / printed p.28-29).
-
Kanafani quotes a description of Prophet’s Birthday celebrations turned into nationalist rallies under the direction of the Mufti of Haifa and al-Bustani (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.17 / printed p.33).
-
Manna gives his later life: Wadi’ al-Bustani (1888–1954), AUB graduate, famous author, poet and translator fluent in English and French as well as Arabic, arrived in Haifa in 1917, studied law late and was licensed in 1930, defending many farmers whose lands faced appropriation or sale, and grew disillusioned with British support for Zionism (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.277-278).
-
He remained in Haifa after the Nakba, one of the very few independent, university-educated Arab intellectuals left, but found it unbearable to be treated as an undesirable minority and cut off from the Arab world, especially family and friends in Lebanon; he left Haifa in 1953 for his village Dibya in Lebanon and died there the following year (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.277-278).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Resistance Poetry, Ibrahim Tuqan, Nakba and Survival, Haifa