One
of Naji al Ali's cartoons
Naji
Al-Ali
I
don’t know when it was that I first met Naji al-Ali
or when his drawings became a necessary companion to my morning
coffee. However, I do know that it was he who made me start
reading the newspaper beginning with its last page.
He was the last person I saw in Beirut after the great voyage
into the sea. His final Beirut was a weeping rose… He
used to make fun of himself because the invaders in Sidon
thought him an old man due to the whiteness of his hair…
He asked me where I was leaving to and I replied: I will wait
until I know. I asked him if he was to stay and he said he
would wait until he knew.
Neither of us was afraid because the dramatic spectacle in
Beirut was larger than any emotion. And so Naji al-Ali drew
Beirut as a single rose but we did not know - no one knew
- that behind that rose lay a monster that was encroaching
on our camps.
All of those who worked with him used to say that he had become
unrestrained; that the wild fire within him was consuming
everything; that his heart was on his brush and that his brush
was quick to react and highly flammable, a brush that made
no account for anything; that he felt Palestine was his own
and that no one else had the right to attempt to express its
sanctity for Palestine would not be returned in installments.
Palestine would be returned in one instance, in one big swoop,
from the river to the sea…
When Naji al-Ali was assassinated, musical notes escaped
my heart and were replaced by darkness and a total suffocation
of the senses, not because yet another friend, a brilliant
friend, had passed away without a goodbye but because our
lives had become exposed - open to complete confiscation,
and because our enemies had been empowered to steer the dialogue
of dispute among us to the their liking. They had been enabled
to give the murdered the image of being a murderer that they
had connivingly drawn up, with his spectators turned into
those who had been killed.
And thus, loyalty to our martyrs and to our selves is not
achieved through totalitarianism but through developing the
essence of our democratic identity, through fighting, unconditionally
and unabatedly, a battle for freedom and democracy for the
Palestinian cause.
He has gone, but he has left behind him our collective heritage,
the heritage of a people that is taking form in every which
way it can…
Mahmoud Darwish (excerpts)
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