Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
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In this section, I continue on the identity and heritage of Palestine , touching on the features of this identity in the biography of the elites and creators of the Palestinian people, and today I stop at the name of the Palestinian poet Hassan Al-Buhairi. The name of a Palestinian poet has not been linked to his city as the name of the self-made Palestinian poet Hassan Al-Buhairi has been linked to his city of Haifa, the city that is becoming It's more beautiful when you read his love for her in his poetry. Even when the poet Haroun Hashim Rashid wanted to write about him, he wrote his book “A City and a Poet: Haifa and Al-Buhairi.” Haifa was always present in his poetry with symbolism and frankness, and it was most evident in the title of his collection, “Haifa in the Darkness of Eyes.”
Haifa and you are the mood of the soul in my heart... and the depth of the air wound in my throbbing pain.
I am drawn by a longing for you if I dip into it... my hair flies towards the dawning life
And I began to depict love and memory... a tear on my cheek or a letter on paper. My ink dried up
and I did not reach a decision... the wings of my chest were joined together by the burning flames.
Hassan Al-Buhairi was born in the Wadi Al-Nisnas neighborhood in Haifa in the year 1921, several months after his father’s death, so he was named after him. . His mother, Amna Abu Hawash, was in a difficult economic situation after the death of her husband, so she married a mule cart driver and gave birth to him. His stepfather treated him very harshly and prevented him from living with them at home, forcing him to live in an animal stable and work hard labor as a porter. His mother was later forced to take him to the orphanage in Haifa due to her husband’s harsh treatment of him, where he received his primary lessons, studied in the city’s kateb, and then joined the Amiriyya Primary School in Haifa.
When Hassan was in the fourth grade of primary school, his stepfather died, so he left his education to support himself, his mother, and his siblings, so he worked at the Hejaz Railway Station in 1933. Hassan worked in cleaning trains and then in the employment department of the train authority. This work allowed him to frequent Egypt and meet some Egyptian writers.
After he and his family were displaced from Haifa in 1948, he worked as a supervisor for the literary department on Damascus Radio, then as head of the Cultural Programs Department at the General Directorate of Radio and Television until his retirement.
Our poet won the Jerusalem Medal in 1990 in recognition of his literary achievement. He died in Damascus on October 25, 1998, and was buried in the Martyrs’ Cemetery in the Yarmouk Camp.
The poet Al-Buhairi had about 13 poetry collections that were published in two stages, separated by a quarter of a century. He stopped publishing them and did not stop writing poetry in them. The first was before the Nakba: The Afternoons and Evenings (1943) - The Joys of Spring (1944) - Ibtisam Al-Duha (1946).
The second stage after the setback:
Haifa in the Blackness of Eyes (1973) - For Palestine I Sing (1979) - Shadows of Beauty (1981) - Thirsty Rivers (1982) - Blessed be the Most Merciful (1983) - The Garden of Roses (1989) - A Message on Eid (1990) - For My Eyes My Country (1993) - I Will Return (1994) - Colors (1995)...
Chronologically our poet is considered one of the veteran poets who lived through the Nakba and lived as refugees after it, and artistically one of the pioneers of classical poetry committed to meter, rhyme and imagination, preserving the legacy of Arabic poetry in Palestine with the constellation of poets who We discussed their biography as pioneers of the second wave of the literary renaissance in Palestine.
From what he said during the era of the Nakba, it was his poem in which he attacked the Arab leaders when they agreed to stop fighting with the enemy, in violation of the will of their people, and their previous statements: Oh
sheep, you sheep... have left the body of nations ,
how can you be afraid and rule... a group that has sold the debts.
On the same occasion, Al-Buhairi relied on another poem about his people instead of the leaders, in which he said:
Neither the tears that are abundant in sobbing go away...an enemy, nor the moaning that kills, so
dress up for the struggle with the strength of the nights...Leap for the fight, like the leopards,
divide injustice into a home from which you are...a nation that has represented the thrones of eternity.
In his beautiful collection, “Haifa in the Darkness of Eyes,” he addresses the people, revealing the mask of the leaders in his poem “The Idol and the Idol”: So
you worshiped the leadership out of ignorance... an idol fixed on the tablets.
Tell me about the leadership, what... I realized in the arena of reform.
Then the people incite against these leaders in order to liberate Palestine, and he says in some of its verses:
How can life satisfy a humiliated... submissive slave who has not risen to struggle?
You are in the boat of leadership, an oar... the sailor's hand is distracted by it
So shake off the yoke from the shoulders of the humiliated... Throw away the shackles of an arrogant and insolent face ,
and move on after inactivity in the means of livelihood... The mighty one has spread the wings.
Our poet’s poems are not limited to blaming and rousing, but rather he is proud of the people struggling for the sake of liberating the country, especially in his collection “The Smile of the Dawn”, We Choose Part of the poem “Our Strongholds”:
These are our proud strongholds that do not humiliate or relent.
They are the home of eternal glory and the landing place of the faithful spirit. We revolted
against them so that we might restore the truth and the glory
of the forehead. We revolted and remained, as long as grievance befell us, we revolted in them
until the stubborn one softened to us and we achieved clear victory.
The poet has a long and beautiful poem entitled “The Mosque.” Al-Aqsa” from his collection “I Sing for Palestine”, the scope for which is limited here, is characterized by the religious dimension and the influence of the holy places in his poetry, as it begins from Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa and goes to Nazareth, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and Bethlehem.
The religious dimension is highlighted in his poem on the anniversary of the noble birth of the Prophet:
Oh, the day of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.. O, separated in time from its likes
. You were only an example for those who are forbidden.. Time has passed it upon its ages. You
are not a memory of food or drink.. or clothing that tempts the lightnings of its mirage.
You were nothing but a shining memory... Her memory illuminated the path to his righteousness,
and Haifa's lover, Hassan Al-Buhairi, died before he found the answer to his verses:
Will time restore the stillness of the nights... to strangers from families and homelands?
Perhaps the most eloquent conclusion of this article is what his friend, the critic Dr. Sobhi Obaid, wrote in the introduction to the complete works “Sympant of Palestine... Hassan Al-Buhairi”: “Yunnis Al-Buhairi had nothing in his house except his library and his poems, which he yearned for as a father would love his children, in addition to the paintings that Landmarks of Palestinian cities appear. Al-Buhairi’s house is an exhibition of Palestinian pictures, and the poet told me that he is determined to donate his house and everything in it to Palestine so that it will be a Palestinian cultural center bearing his name. The following was stated in his will: My will is that my house be endowed after my death as a cultural center with the name: “The House of Palestine.
Poet Hassan Al-Beheiry Cultural Center”
and I recommended that these two verses remain there hanging on one of its walls:
This is my gift - for my humble efforts - to you,
my people..And I have not singled out anyone for it
, like grass whose freshness is mixed around the grave
and it is not known who lies in its grave.
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