Ghassan Kanafani Quotes

لن أرتد حتى أزرع في الأرض جنتي أو أقتلع من السماء جنة أو أموت أو نموت معاً

كلّهم يتحدّثون عن ِالطريق ، يقولون : تجد نفسكَ على الطريق ! وهُم لا يعرفون منَ الطريق إلا لونها الأسود وأرصِفتها !

إن الانتصار هو أن تتوقع كل شيء..و ألا تجعل عدوك يتوقع..!

بالدم نكتب لفلسطين We write with the blood for Palestine

If the prisoner is beaten, it is an arrogant expression of fear.

-أتعرفين ما هو الوطن يا صفية ؟ الوطن هو ألا يحدث ذلك كله .

They steal your bread, then give you a crumb of it… Then they demand you to thank them for their generosity… O their audacity!

إذا كنا مدافعين فاشلين عن القضية..فالأجدر بنا أن نغير المدافعين..لا أن نغير القضية...!

Everything in this world can be robbed and stolen, except one thing; this one thing is the love that emanates from a human being towards a solid commitment to a conviction or cause.

لك شيء في هذا العالم..فقم..

المدرَسة لا تُعلِّم شيئاً ، لا تعلِّم سوى الكسَل .. فاتركها وغِص في المقلاة مثلمَا فعلَ سائر ُالبشَر .

I heard you in the other room asking your mother, 'Mama, am I a Palestinian?' When she answered 'Yes' a heavy silence fell on the whole house. It was as if something hanging over our heads had fallen, its noise exploding, then - silence. Afterwards...I heard you crying. I could not move. There was something bigger than my awareness being born in the other room through your bewildered sobbing. It was as if a blessed scalpel was cutting up your chest and putting there the heart that belongs to you...I was unable to move to see what was happening in the other room. I knew, however, that a distant homeland was being born again: hills, olive groves, dead people, torn banners and folded ones, all cutting their way into a future of flesh and blood and being born in the heart of another child...Do you believe that man grows? No, he is born suddenly - a word, a moment, penetrates his heart to a new throb. One scene can hurl him down from the ceiling of childhood onto the ruggedness of the road.

Why didn't you bang the sides of the tank? Why didn't you say anything?

After all, in the final analysis, man is a cause.

You have something in this world. So, stand for it.

لقد اكتشفت انا -كما يجب أن تكون اكتشفت أنت منذ زمن بعيد - كم هو ضروري ان يموت بعض الناس …من أجل أن يعيش البعض الآخر..انها حكمة قديمة ..أهم ما فيها الآن …أنني أعيشها I have discovered what you have probably discovered a long time ago: how inevitable it is for some people to die for some others to live.. The most significant thing about this ancient wisdom is that I’m living it now..

إن الرجل الذي يلتحق بالفدائيين لا يحتاج بعد إلى رعاية أمه

الأمور تمضِي بشكلٍ أفضَل ، حينَ لا يُقسم ُالمرءُ بشرفِه !

My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite.

...suddenly [I] began to cry for no reason at all—or perhaps for everything for which I had no name.

I started with reading Chomsky and slowly became very interested in anything that had to do with Israel/Palestine. Reading Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, John Berger, Tanya Reinhart, Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein . . . all became part of my daily routine.

A person is courageous so long as he has no need for courage, but he collapses when the issue becomes real, and he is forced to understand courage as an act of “surrender,” a detachment from human involvement, and is content himself with being a spectator rather than a participant in life.

It is not enough to hate and believe in the past to make a revolution. Hatred and belief in the past are sufficient prods for the rebellion phase. We must love and be future-oriented if we wish to carry out the revolution.

It was in another country that I earned my harsh subsistence, a place that had everything and nothing, that same country which gave you everything in order to deny you it.

I have an ability - that I haven’t seen in my life - to imagine and see you. And when I see something or hear a word and comment on it in my mind, I hear your answer in my ear, as if you were standing next to me with your hand in mine. Sometimes, I hear you laughing, and sometimes I hear you refusing my opinion and other times you’re the first to make a comment, and I stare at the eyes of those standing in front of me to see if they saw you with me.

اسمع ماذا جرى لهذا المحارب المهذب.. لقد كان سائقاً لسيارة عمومية، وشاهد امرأة يهودية تعدو هاربة أمام مجموعة من الأطفال كانوا يرجمونها بالحجارة.. كانت الحوادث في بدء توترها، فما كان منه إلا أن نهر الأطفال، وأمسك المرأة من يدها، وقادها إلى حيث أوقف سيارته، وذهب بها إلى أهلها في تل أبيب، هل تعرف ماذا حدث هناك؟ لقد سرقوا سيارته، وقتلوه. مزقوه ورموا جثته مقابل جامع الشيخ حسن.. فكيف يريدوننا أن نحارب أناسًا من ذلك النوع؟ بالورود؟

إنــنــي أعض عبثــا عـلــي أمـــل ..لا يــريــد أن يبـقي معــي!!! I am vainly biting on a hope that does not want to stay with me!

Gazelles like to die among their people. Falcons don't care where they die.

For a brief moment the entire future was contained in my mind in the form of a lightning flash that illuminates the enormity of the unknown.

It is not enough to hate and believe in the past to make a revolution. Hatred and belief in the past are sufficient prods for the rebellion phase. We must love and be future-oriented if we wish to carry out the revolution.

وما لبث أن استنتج شيئا هاما: أنه يضحى آمنا أكثر كلما اقترب من "البندقية، وأكثر عرضة للموت كلما ابتعد عنها

Go back to writing stories? I write well because I believe in a cause, in principles. The day I leave these principles, my stories will become empty. If I were to leave behind my principles, you yourself would not respect me.

I was sure that the god we had known in Palestine had left it too, and was a refugee in some place which I did not know, unable to find a solution to his own problems. And we, human refugees, sitting on the pavement waiting for a new fate to bring some solution, were responsible for providing a roof under which we spend the night.

Target killing of Palestinian leaders, including moderate ones, was not a new phenomenon in the conflict. Israel began this policy with the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani in 1972, a poet and writer, who could have led his people to reconciliation. The fact that he was targeted, a secular and leftist activist, is symbolic of the role Israel played in killing those Palestinians it ‘regretted’ later for not being there as partners for peace. In May 2001 President George Bush Jr appointed Senator George J. Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East conflict. Mitchell produced a report about the causes for the second Intifada. He concluded: ‘We have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity; or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the [Government of Israel] to respond with lethal force.’13 On the other hand, he blamed Ariel Sharon for provoking unrest by visiting and violating the sacredness of the al-Aqsa mosque and the holy places of Islam. In short, even the disempowered Arafat realized that the Israeli interpretation of Oslo in 2000 meant the end of any hope for normal Palestinian life and doomed the Palestinians to more suffering in the future. This scenario was not only morally wrong in his eyes, but also would have strengthened, as he knew too well, those who regarded the armed struggle against Israel as the exclusive way to liberate Palestine.

Like the characters in the short novel Men in the Sun, by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, however, they did not always find this route easy, for it often involved alienation, isolation, and, as when Palestinians attempted to cross frontiers with their refugee papers, even tragedy

Desde a primeira vez, sempre que ele se atirava de peito na terra sentia aquela pulsação, como se o coração da terra forçasse sua difícil passagem até a luz desde as profundezas do inferno. Certa ocasião, ele disse isso ao vizinho com quem compartilhava a colheita na terra que deixara havia dez anos, e o homem respondeu zombando: “É o som do seu coração. Você o escuta quando encosta o peito no chão”. Que tolice perversa! E o cheiro? Aquele que, toda vez que ele sente, ondula na fronte antes de jorrar delirante nas suas veias. Sempre que ele inalava o cheiro da terra, deitado no chão, imaginava o cheiro do cabelo de sua mulher ao sair do banho, depois de lavar a cabeça com água fria. O mesmo cheiro… uma mulher que acabou de se banhar com água fria e lhe cobre o rosto com o cabelo ainda molhado. A mesma palpitação… como se carregasse ternamente um pequeno pássaro entre as mãos.

Qual é o problema com você, pensando assim? Pensar não combina com você, Marwan. Você ainda é jovem, e a vida é longa…

Estou feliz que esteja indo para o Kuwait, porque você vai aprender muitas coisas por lá. A primeira delas é: primeiro vem o dinheiro, depois a moral.

Quer saber? Eu comparo estes cento e cinquenta quilômetros à senda prometida por Deus às criaturas, que a percorreram antes de serem direcionadas ao paraíso ou ao inferno. Se alguém cair, vai para o inferno, e, se atravessar com segurança, chega ao paraíso. Quanto aos anjos… aqui seriam os guardas da fronteira.

Aquelas gotas salgadas eram lágrimas ou suor correndo pela sua testa em chamas?

He knew his father through and through, and he knew that the past was, for him, a solid wooden box locked with a thousand keys that had been cast into the depths of the ocean.

وما لبث أن استنتج شيئا هاما: أنه يضحى آمنا أكثر كلما اقترب من .البندقية، وأكثر عرضة للموت كلما ابتعد عنه

La guerra empezó en la radio y en la radio terminó.

Eu o vi ensanguentado com meus próprios olhos. Carregavam-no pela escada envolto em dois casacos sujos. Seu braço pálido balançava entre os homens, para frente e para trás, como se me chamasse para segui-lo, e subi os degraus, em prantos, por entre os passos pesados e firmes daqueles que o carregavam. Você dirá que é imaginação minha, mas eu jamais me esquecerei disso... Vou lhe contar um segredo que nunca revelei a ninguém: um dia, invadi o quarto deles. Não sei bem por quê, mas logo que abri a porta e cruzei a soleira, vi os dois na cama. Acho que estavam nus, mas me lembro apenas de seu braço, moreno, forte, em volta da cintura branca dela. Virei-me rapidamente, com os olhos fechados, e saí correndo. No dia seguinte, ele veio a mim, sentou-me diante dele e iniciou uma conversa. Não me lembro de nada agora, isso é tudo o que recordo de meu pai... Tudo. Tudo isso... Este é ele... Apenas um braço: uma vez, abraçando minha mãe; outra vez, ensanguentado, morto... Isso é todo meu pai. Todo ele.

Fixei meu olhar o máximo que pude naquele ponteiro preto que rastejava sobre o fundo branco do relógio, e pensei: que trabalho ele tem o dia todo para realizar um breve encontro, enquanto a outra flecha curta, parada, o espera com frieza, pendurada como uma estaca sobre a cabeça! Apesar disso, se ambos se encontrassem, se abraçassem e lá permanecesse, morreriam ali, como todos os desejos que se esvaem ou diminuem quando se realizam.

A condição de estar só atiçava em mim o desejo de defender minha vida com ferocidade.

Que espera, Mariam. Uma longa espera que fez de você apenas uma passagem! Que espera! Seus passos batem na parede durante a noite, passam sobre você no caminho de... E no caminho para... Batem. Batem. Batem. Escapam entre os dedos como areia, enquanto sua longa viagem termina em algo tão insignificante como isso. Uma passagem. Tudo o que você havia desejado ter e nunca terá passa por cima de você.

Enquanto aquele assovio se derretia na escuridão e girava em torno de si, violento, seco e desconhecido, os dois sentiam essa imensidão que não tem fim, forte, distante e resistente, que os cobria por todos os lados, estendida para mais longe do que pensavam e com mais profundidade do que podiam imaginar. O horror. O ar transparente, portador de todas as surpresas. O corpo que não tem limite, que ama e que odeia, e não esquece. O que pertence. Enraizado no tempo até o mais profundo de seu ser. Amor e silêncio. Violência e fúria. Mas, antes de tudo e sobretudo: resignação.

غريبون أهل المدن، كأن الأمر لا يعنيهم