Mahmoud Darwish: The House Murdered

In one minute, the whole life of a house ends. The house murdered is also mass


murder, even if vacant of its residents. It is a mass grave for the basic elements


needed to construct a building for meaning, or for an insignificant poem in a time


of war. The house, murdered, is the amputation of things from their relations and


from the names of emotions, and it is tragedy’s need to guide eloquence to


contemplate the life of a thing. In each thing there’s a being that aches . . . the


memory of fingers, of a scent, of an image. And houses get murdered just as their


residents get murdered. And as the memory of things get murdered—wood, stone,


glass, iron, cement—they all scatter in fragments like beings. And cotton, silk,

linen, notepads, books, all are torn like words whose owners were not given time


to speak. And the plates, spoons, toys, records, faucets, pipes, door handles, and


the fridge, the washer, the vases, jars of olives and pickles, and canned foods, all


break as their owners broke. And the two whites, salt and sugar, are pulverized,

and also the spices, the matchboxes, the pills and oral contraceptives, elixirs,


garlic braids, onions, tomatoes, dried okra, rice and lentils, as happens with the


residents. And the lease contract, the marriage and birth certificates, the utility


bills, identity cards, passports, love letters, all torn to shreds like the hearts of their


owners. And the pictures fly, the toothbrushes, hair combs, make-up accessories,


shoes, underwear, sheets, towels, like family secrets hung in public, in ruin. All


these things are the memories of people who were emptied of things, and the


memories of things that were emptied of people . . . all end in one minute. Our


things die like us, but they don’t get buried with us!

Translated by Fady Joudah