My first attempt at drawing him was without glasses, but I wanted to construct his face out of a map of the Arab world, and by odd chance the territory known as Jordan, which the world has forgotten constitutes 65% of Palestine, superimposed glasses onto him. Back in June 1967, when he became one of the founders of the "al-Naksa", the "June poetry movement", he didn't wear glasses, but the wonderfully evocative photo of him on the website of the Poetry Foundation confirms that, in later life, he needed them; and so Art and Reality have become harmonised, in a manner which sadly has not been repeated in the world of Palestinian politics.
Click here for my piece on Nizar Qabbani, another of the great "al-Naksa" poets, in my "Private Collection" blog.
Click here for the Poetry Foundation page on MD himself.
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David Prashker
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