Connotations of Home in Contemporary Palestinian Poetry – ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā’s Texts as an Example
Connotations of Home in Contemporary Palestinian Poetry – ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā’s Texts as an Example

Author(s): Yousef Shhadeh
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Poetry
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā; Arabic literature; contemporary Arabic poetry; Palestinian poetry; connotations of home
Summary/Abstract: This study examines the connotations of the word “home” and its synonymsoften used in the poetry of ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā, as well as the various suggestionsthey contain. Home in modern Palestinian poetry has special implications,expressing the peculiar situation of the Palestinian people scattered in thecities and villages of the Occupied Territories, and in the diaspora campswhere millions of Palestinian refugees live, after they were expelled fromtheir homes in 1948 and then in 1976. ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā belongs to a familythat lived in the Galilee region, and was forced to seek refuge in Syriaduring the 1947–1949 Palestine war, after the establishment of the State ofIsrael. Perhaps that is why this Palestinian poet, born in 1964 in the Babbīlarefugee camp near Damascus, attaches so much importance to the notionof “home,” which is mentioned in most of his poems. ʿAbd Allāh ʿĪsā notonly repeats the word “home” (bayt) and its synonyms (manzil, dār), butalso lists words that are associated with it, such as a fence around a house,a garden, a well, and so forth. It can be said that in ʿIsā’s poetry, the word“home” and its synonyms have significant semantic meanings due to theirdifferent symbolic, historical, and socio-cultural connotations. Moreover,these expressions appear in different linguistic and rhetorical contexts,creating meditative meanings, including multiple perceptions of the homein various forms – such as: family home, homeland, sacred places, and soon. Since most of ʿĪsā’s texts contain words associated with home, this studywill be limited to analysing poems published in three collections of poetry,namely: Qiyāmat al-aswār (The Resurrection of the Walls), Ruʿāt as-samāʾ,ruʿāt ad-diflā (Shepherds of Heaven, Shepherds of Oleander) and WaṣāyāFawziyya al-Ḥasan al-ʿašr (The Ten Commandments of Fawziyya al-Ḥasan).

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