Shalom - Eugenio Ruberto

Read and Listen to the Poem “Shalom” by Samih al-Qasim

Al-Qasim was born in 1939 in the city of Zarqa in northern Transjordan, today Jordan, while his father was in the Arab Legion of King Abdullah I of Jordan.

He came from a Druze family from the town of Rameh in Upper Galilee. He finished secondary school in Nazareth. His family was forced to leave their home following the Nakba war of 1948. In his book on Principles and Art, he explains,

While I was still in elementary school, the Palestinian tragedy occurred. I consider the date 1948 to be my date of birth, because the first images I can remember are of that war. My thoughts and images originate from the number 48
Samih al-Qasim

Al-Qasim wrote 24 volumes of poetry and published six poetry collections. His poems are generally relatively short, some only two lines long.

As a journalist, he worked for the newspapers al-Ittihad, al-Jadid, Index.

Let’s Read Together

Let others sing of peace
friendship, brotherhood and harmony.

Let others sing the song of the crows
someone will shriek among the ruins in my verses
towards the black owl that hunts debris from the dove’s towers.

Let others sing of peace
while the wheat is consumed in the fields
longing for the echo of the reapers’ songs.

Let others sing of peace.

While down there, beyond the barbed wire
in the heart of the darkness
the tent of the cities is pitched tight.

Their inhabitants,
settlements of sadness and fear
and the tuberculosis of memory.

While down there, life fades,
in our people,
in the innocent, who never did harm in life!

And here, at the same time,
many have lived… in such wealth!
Their ancestors left so much wealth for them
and also, alas, for others.

This heritage—the pain of the years—belongs to them now!
So let the hungry eat their fill.
And let the orphans eat the scraps from the bench of rancour.
Let others sing of peace.

In my land, among its hills and its villages
peace has been killed.

Samih al-Qasim, 1964