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Tawfik Zayyad (Tawfiq Ziad)

Tawfik Zayyad (Tawfiq Ziad) was a Palestinian poet, writer, scholar and politician. He was born in Nazareth in 1929 and died on July 5, 1994 in a dreadful car crash while on his way to meet Yasser Arafat in Jericho after the Oslo agreements. He participated in Palestinian political life in occupied Palestine, was elected mayor of Nazareth, and served as a member of the Israeli Knesset.

A report he co-authored on Israeli prison conditions and the abuse of Palestinian inmates was reprinted in the Israeli newspaper Al HaMishmar. It was also submitted to the United Nations by Tawfik Toubi and Zayyad after their visit to Al-Far'ah prison on October 29, 1987. The report was subsequently quoted from at length in a UN General Assembly report dated December 23, 1987, where it was described as "Perhaps the best evidence of the truth of the reports describing the repugnant inhumane conditions endured by Arab prisoners."

In addition to his translations of Russian literature and the work of the Turkish poet Nazem Hikmat, Zayyad published a number of collections of his own poems, including “I Press on your Hands,” which is considered an outstanding text in the history of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism. It contains a number of poems about heroism and resistance; some of his poems were set to music and became anthems of the Palestinian resistance.

Zayyad was allegedly targeted for assassination by the Israeli occupation, as he was one of the principal symbols of the steadfastness (somoud) of the Palestinian Arabs. Zayyad played an important role in the “Land Day” strike on March 30, 1975, when thousands of Palestinian Arabs demonstrated against confiscation of Palestinian land and the Judification of the Galilee. At that time, six young Palestinian men were killed, hundreds of others were wounded, and Zayyad’s house was attacked. (Zayyad’s wife allegedly heard an Israeli officer order the house to be burned.) Other assaults against Zayyad and his family occurred after the massacres at Sabra and Chatila in 1982, after the massacre at the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994, and on other occasions.



Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee …
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus thorns;
clouding your eyes
like sandstorms.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls obstructing your chests,
washing dishes in your boisterous bars,
serving drinks to our overlords,
scouring your kitchens' filthy floors
in order to snatch morsels for our children
from between your poisonous fangs.

Here we shall remain,
like brick walls deflating your chests
as we face our deprivation clad in rags,
singing our defiant songs,
chanting our rebellious poems,
then swarming out into your unjust streets
to fill dungeons with our dignity.

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee,
here we shall remain,
guarding the shade of the fig and olive trees,
fermenting rebellion in our children
like yeast in dough.

Here we wring the rocks to relieve our thirst;
here we stave off starvation with dust;
but here we remain and shall not depart;
here we spill our expensive blood
and do not hoard it.

For here we have both a past and a future;
here we remain, the Unconquerable;
so strike fast, penetrate deep,
O, my roots!

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