Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?
The father, the grandfather and the village of al-Birwa are named here at length for the first time, and a child of 1948 is followed out of a house left with its lamp lit and a horse still tied in the yard. Fifty short poems assemble a family album against a place that was levelled and renamed, the boy's questions left unanswered by adults busy walking. Written as Darwish prepared to return to Palestinian territory after twenty-six years, it moves his subject from the nation to the household.
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