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“Put it on record–I am an ArabAnd the number of my card is fifty thousandI have eight childrenAnd the ninth is due after summer.What’s there to be angry about?Put it on record.–I am an ArabWorking with comrades of toil in a quarry.I have eight childernFor them I wrest the loaf of bread,The clothes and exercise booksFrom the rocksAnd beg for no alms at your doors,–Lower not myself at your doorstep.–What’s there to be angry about?Put it on record.–I am an Arab.I am a name without a tide,Patient in a country where everythingLives in a whirlpool of anger.–My roots–Took hold before the birth of time–Before the burgeoning of the ages,–Before cypess and olive trees,–Before the proliferation of weeds.My father is from the family of the plough–Not from highborn nobles.And my grandfather was a peasant–Without line or genealogy.My house is a watchman’s hut–Made of sticks and reeds.Does my status satisfy you?–I am a name without a surname.Put it on Record.–I am an Arab.Color of hair: jet black.Color of eyes: brown.My distinguishing features:–On my head the ‘iqal cords over a keffiyeh–Scratching him who touches it.My address:–I’m from a village, remote, forgotten,–Its streets without name–And all its men in the fields and quarry.–What’s there to be angry about?Put it on record.–I am an Arab.You stole my forefathers’ vineyards–And land I used to till,–I and all my childern,–And you left us and all my grandchildren–Nothing but these rocks.–Will your government be taking them too–As is being said?So!–Put it on record at the top of page one:–I don’t hate people,–I trespass on no one’s property.And yet, if I were to become starved–I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.–Beware, beware of my starvation.–And of my anger!”
— Mahmoud Darwish

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