* Founder of The Arab American Literature
* First Lebanese Arab to:
– Introduce free verse to modern Arabic poetry
– Write and publish a novel in English Writer And Author of:
*
– 29 volumes in English
– 26 volumes in Arabic
Biography
Born in Freike, Lebanon, on November 24, 1876, Ameen Rihani was one of six children and the oldest son of a Lebanese Maronite raw silk manufacturer, then a flourishing local industry. His father had commercial ambitions which beckoned him to America. In the summer of 1888, Ferris Rihani, the father, sent his brother and eldest son, Ameen, to the United States and followed a year later….
A few quotations :
My wish is to live without disliking anyone,
To love without being jealous of anyone,
To rise without being elevated over anyone, and
To advance without stepping on anyone or becoming envious of those above me(translated from Arabic)
THE RIHANI ESSAYS
(Ar Rihaniyat)
I am the East,
I am the corner stone
Of the first temple of God
And the first throne of Humanity…
I am the East,
I possess philosophies and creeds
So who would exchange them with me for technology
(translated from Arabic)
HYMNS OF THE VALLEYS
(Hutaf-ul Awdiya)
Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth always repeats itself…THE PATH OF VISION
….And especially to my friends, the writers, I invite you to travel with me to a land that is magical despite its poverty, to a people that is generous despite its conflicts and disagreements, and to a nation that is free and dignified despite its limitations.
(translated from Arabic)
Introduction to KINGS OF ARABIA
(Muluk-ul ‘Arab) Source
Viva Palestina Convoy Update
19.00 (GMT) Friday 6th March 2009
After a long rest at Matruh, the Viva Palestina convoy started the day late by heading east. Apparently, some were so exhausted that they slept on till late morning.
Divided into groups to make the drive and escort manageable, they were planning to stop for Friday prayers along the way. Some groups were delayed and could not make it.
They are driving to JEMSA (GEMSA) on the coast, their next location for the night. I am told that it is looking like midnight by the time the last vehicle reaches the coastal town. A reception and dinner is being organised by the local authorities.
On that note, Akhbar Elyom newspaper reported today that the General Secretariat of the National Party is overseeing the reception and monitoring the progress of the convoy across various provinces. Working groups have been set up to ensure the various services are provided to the convoy such as accommodation, food and fuel. Young guides and helpers will be on hand to assist convoy members when they stop in their cities.
According to AlJazeera.net today, a source from the convoy confirmed that the name of the convoy has been changed to ‘SOUAD VIVA PALESTINA’ as a sign of respect and commemoration for the Libyan journalist Souad Abu Shiba after her tragic death whilst travelling to cover the convoy story.
Some extra good news arrived today from Egypt where the SCOTISH MEDICAL AID CONVOY arrived this morning in the Red Sea port of Nuweiba. They will be heading north through the Sinai.
The ‘Souad Viva Palestina’ convoy is expected to set off in the morning for the East El Salam Bridge where they will stop for lunch, then a long drive will follow for the town of El Arich where a rally is expected to take place from 7.00pm.
Translated and prepared by Farid Arada
February 17, 2009, 10:40 pm
*Abu Alaa, bringing food for his donkeys and camels
“I worked on farms in Israel for 15 years,” Abu Alaa, the owner of the land said. “We had a good relationship, and the Israeli farmers loved my bread, Palestinian bread, and our baclawa (”baklava”) sweets. I had to stop working there when Israel closed our borders, stopped giving permits to Palestinians to work in Israel.”
Abu Alaa lives in Khan Younis and owns land in the newly-extended “Buffer Zone”, the strip of land along the Green Line which, from North to South, cuts into Palestinian land by a full 1 km now. When the Buffer Zone was ‘only’ 300m, it was already 300 m too much land absorbed by the Israeli military occupation forces.
Date: 14 / 02 / 2009 Time: 09:55
Huriyya Darwish at her son’s funeral
[Ma’anImages]
Bethlehem – Ma’an – The mother of late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on Friday, six months after burying her son.
The funeral procesion will begin Saturday after the noon prayer from her home at Jadeidi, five kilometers north east of Acre.
Darwish’s mother was a central figure in his poetry, immortalized as a symbol for the earth of his homeland in his famous poem, “For my mother” turned into a song by Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifah.
أمي …
أحنُّ إلى خبز أُمي
وقهوة أمي
ولمسة أُمي ..
وتكبُر في الطفولةُ
يوماً على صدر يومِ
وأعشَقُ عمرِي لأني
إذا مُتُّ,
أخجل من دمع أُمي !
خذينيِ إذا عدتُ يوماً
وشاحاً لهُدْبِكْ
وغطّي عظامي بعشب
تعمّد من طهر كعبك
وشُدي وثاقي ..
بخصلة شَعر..
بخيطٍ يلوِّح في ذيل ثوبك ..
عساني أصير ُإلهاً
إلهاً أصير..
إذا ما لمستُ قرارة قلبك !
ضعيني , إذا ما رجعتُ
وقوداً بتنور ناركْ ..
وحبل غسيل على سطح دارك
لأني فقدتُ الوقوفَ
بدون صلاة نهارك
هَرِمْتُ فردّي نجوم الطفولة
حتى أُشارك صغار العصافير
درب الرجوع .. لعُش انتظارِك!!
(من ديوان “عاشق من فلسطين” 1966)
I long for my mother’s bread
my mother’s coffee
my mother’s touch…
and childhood grows in me
one day on another day’s chest
I must be worth my life
at the hour of my death
worth the tears of my mother
Take me, if I return one day,
as a veil for your lashes
and cover my bones with grass
baptized by your footsteps
bind us together
with a lock of your hair,
with a thread waving from the hem of your dress,
I might become immortal
a god, I might…
if I touch the deep floor of your heart
Place me, if I return,
like wood for your brick oven…
and hang me on the roof like your laundry line
because I can no longer stand
without the prayer of your days…
I have aged, mother, so bring back the childhood stars
so that I
along with the swallows
can chart the path
back to your waiting nest
Darwish’s mother, Huriyya Darwish, attended her son’s funeral in Ramallah on 9 August 2008. She died at the age of ninety-six.
i suppose i qualify. mammy, i am scared
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: Israel, anti-Semitism, blog
The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an “army of bloggers,” to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in “anti-Zionist blogs” in English, French, Spanish and German.
The program’s first volunteer was Sandrine Pitousi, 31, from Kfar Maimon, situated five kilometers from Gaza. “I heard about the project over the radio and decided to join because I’m living in the middle of the conflict,” she said.
Before hanging up the phone prematurely following a Color Red rocket alert, Pitousi, who immigrated to Israel from France in 1993, said she had some experience with public relations from managing a production company.
“During the war, we looked for a way to contribute to the effort,” the ministry’s director general, Erez Halfon, told Haaretz. “We turned to this enormous reservoir of more than a million people with a second mother tongue.” Other languages in which bloggers are sought include Russian and Portuguese.
Halfon said volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their contact details by e-mail, at media@moia.gov.il, will be registered according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry’s media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web sites deemed “problematic.”
Within 30 minutes of announcing the program, which was approved by the Foreign Ministry on Sunday, five volunteers were already in touch, Halfon said.
The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim, notes Stuart Littlewood.
While the murderous assault on Gaza continues, I notice there’s a briefing document on the website of the Israeli Embassy in London which has a lie in every line. The West’s mainstream media repeat them, and even the most senior TV and radio interviewers don’t bother to challenge them.
The document is a transcript of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s statement to the Israeli press dated 27 December 2008 – a day that will live in infamy. It is a perfect example of the falsehoods used to dupe not only us westerners but Israel’s own people. The statement shows how the regime’s view of itself is constructed on a web of dishonesty and self-delusion.
For example:
– “Israeli citizens have been under the threat of daily attack from Gaza for years.”
Palestinians have been under harsh Israeli occupation for 60 years.
– “Only this week hundreds of missiles and mortars shells were fired at Israeli civilian communities.”
Only one in 500 Qassam rockets causes a fatality. How many thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, rockets, grenades and tank-shells have been blasted into the crowded city and towns of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s high-tech weaponry?
– “Until now we have shown restraint. But today there is no other option than a military operation.”
The only legitimate option for Israel is to end the occupation and withdraw behind its 1967 border, as required under international law and UN resolution. Israel has been killing Palestinians at the rate of 8 to 1 since 2000, and children at the rate of nearly 12 to 1 (B’Tselem figures). This is somebody’s idea of restraint?
– “We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza.”
Self defence is not a right exclusive to Israel. Palestinians have an equal right to protect their citizens from the terror tactics of Israel.
– “Israel left Gaza in order to create an opportunity for peace.”
Israel never left Gaza. It still occupies Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters and controls all entrances and exits.
AS a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.
“We had one meal today – khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. “Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass.”
Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.
“I can’t remember seeing a fruit,” said Rabab, 12, who goes with her mother most mornings to scavenge. She is dressed in a tracksuit top and holed jeans, and her feet are bare.
Conditions for most of the 1.5m Gazans have deteriorated dramatically in the past month, since a truce between Israel and Hamas, the ruling Islamist party, broke down.
Israel says it will open the borders again when Hamas stops launching rockets at southern Israel. Hamas says it will crack down on the rocket launchers when Israel opens the borders.
The fragile truce technically ends this Thursday, and there have been few signs it will be renewed. Nobody knows how to resolve the stalemate. Secret talks are under way through Egyptian intermediaries, although both sides deny any contact.
Israel controls the borders and allows in humanitarian supplies only sporadically. Families had electricity for six hours a day last week. Cooking gas was available only through the illegal tunnels that run into Egypt, and by last week had jumped in price from 80 shekels per canister (£14) to 380 shekels (£66).
The UN, which has responsibility for 1m refugees in Gaza, is in despair. “The economy has been crushed and there are no imports or exports,” said John Ging, director of its relief and works agency.
“Two weeks ago, for the first time in 60 years, we ran out of food,” he said. “We used to get 70 to 80 trucks per day, now we are getting 15 trucks a day, and only when the border opens. We’re living hand to mouth.”
He has four days of food in stock for distribution to the most desperate – and no idea whether Israel will reopen the border. The Abu Amra family may have to eat wild grass for the foreseeable future.
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