Critical Appreciation of the poem "Passport"

 

Critical Appreciation of the poem “Passport” By Mahmoud Darwish 

 

                Mahmoud Darwish is a Palestininan poet many of his poem are translated by himself.  This poem “Passport” takes about how Palestinian are affected.  Especially, when they want to go to other country’s they come across many problems.  The speaker of the poem is the writer.

          In the first stanza, the speaker tried to tell that he was in an airport and he handled his passport.  But they did not acknowledge or recognize him.  They even collected his photographs to be shown to the tourist.  It made the speaker so angry. 

          “They did not recognize me in the shadow

           That suck away my colour in the passport

          And to them, my wound was an exhibit

          For a tourist who loves to collect photographs”

Then the speaker said that he was not worried even though they did recognize him existence.  He did not care how he was treated became he convinced himself that he had to key moving forward and did not let him become weaker .  The speaker would not allow himself without sunlight and fade away as the moon disappeared,  because the trees and the rain recognized him.

          “They did not recognize me

          Ah, don’t leave

          The palm of my hand without the sun

          Because the trees recognize me

          All the songs of rain recognize me

          Don’t leave me pale like the moon”

The speaker, then explained or wondered why they did not recognize and admit him.  In fact the whole birds came to the distant airport to convince him.  Likewise with all the wheat fields, prisons, barbed boundaries and waving handkerchiefs joined to the speaker as by they respresented him.  But the guards still threw his passport.

          “All the birds that followed my palm

          To the door of the distant airport”

The writer thought that the speaker finally exposed his anger to them.  He condemned their actions.  He was stopped carried about what others had done to him, even the speaker forbade  people to ask all about himself and his hometown.

          “Stripped of my name and identity?

           Or soil I nourished with my own hands?”

At the end of the poem, the speaker concluded that he would continue to love his homeland, although he was  not recognized by others.  He further felt that his home town was not based on the passport but his hometown was in his heart.  Thus he considered the passport was simply a collection of papers that made trouble.  Therefore he would continue to fight,

          “All the hearts of the people are my identity

          So take away my passport”

The poem, thus highlights the Israle’s  Government’s attempts to define Darwish’s identity and separate him from his homeland by taking away his passport.  In response, Darwish draws on nature to demonstrate that his Palestinian identity does not depend on a document.