From Acre prison, with love
Banned by the British and memorialized by the masses, Nuh Ibrahim's poetry embodied the Palestinian spirit of resistance in the 1930s.
Three decades ago, a collection of 80 traditional Palestinian thobes travelled from Palestine to the United States, where they were acquired and conserved by 4 Palestinian-American women from the Committee for the Preservation of Palestinian Heritage (CPPH) in Washington, D.C. These remarkable women worked tirelessly to present the thobes to the public in several exhibitions held across the United States.
In November 2018, a CPPH representative learned about the Palestinian Museum through a TV report. They later visited and offered to donate the thobes collection and to achieve the goal that initially prompted the collection: To return them home to Palestine where they belong, under the care of a professional and safe Palestinian museum.
The Palestinian Museum announced its first crowdfunding campaign to bring the collection of 80 thobes and heritage accessories to the homeland, securing their return in 2021. Upon their arrival, they were promptly digitised and placed in a safe collection room as part of the museum’s permanent collection. These unique pieces of Palestinian heritage, and the stories behind them, are now accessible to the general public as part of the museum’s exhibitions, educational programmes, archives, and digital projects.
“I am not just your brother or son, I am the brother and son of our umma [nation]. Do not cry or wail after me… you must sing and be happy… my death should be celebrated… [because the] umma that stands in the face of this misery and fights it, is an umma that will forever survive.”3
Fouad Hijazi shortly before his execution, 1930.
Red Tuesday was also the name of a poem penned by the famed poet Ibrahim Tuqan in memory of these martyrs, written in the eloquent literary Arabic of the educated classes. But though Tuqan was most prominent poet in Palestine at the time, it is not these words that are widely remembered and performed today, but those of a poet who has nearly been forgotten, a round-eyed young rebel named Nuh Ibrahim who wrote poetry in the everyday language of the people.
Born in Haifa in 1913, Nuh Ibrahim lived with his family on a meager income; his father was killed when he was a child.4 After finishing vocational school in Jerusalem at the age of sixteen, he returned to Haifa to work at the printing press of a tobacco factory.5 Unlike the literary elites of Palestine at the time, he composed only zajal: folk poetry recited aloud in colloquial language, semi-improvised and semi-sung. There is no such thing as the definitive version of a Nuh Ibrahim poem, each work exists in the moment it was performed – in different guises – with new lines added, thrown out and changed during the performance. These are poems that live in the moment and are hard to pin down, much like the poet himself who – during his short life – lived and worked in Palestine, Iraq and Bahrain and travelled across the Arab world.6
In memory of Hijazi, Jamjoum and al-Zeer, he wrote:
|
The town crier called, a strike's at hand On Tuesday, they will be hanged Ata and Fou'ad, who are so brave Fear not reprisal, fear not the grave. |
Since the 1930s this poem, From Acre Prison, has been popularized as a folk song. Most famously, it was recorded in the 1980s by the band al-‘Ashiqin, who have performed it in festivals from Palestine to Algeria and Yemen.
Though known at the time as the poet of the , Nuh Ibrahim also had a lighter side. In one poem, he curses the devil that tempted him to waste his entire paycheck on gambling, cognac, and a curvaceous dancer who consumed nine bottles of whiskey in one sitting.
It is hard to imagine him as the same man who was a favored disciple of the legendary anti-Zionist leader and imam Izzeddin al-Qassam , and the same man who–as soon as he heard that a revolt against the British and Zionists had started–left his job in Bahrain and returned to Palestine to join the effort.7
In 1937, Nuh Ibrahim was himself sent to Acre prison for five months. There, he became known for writing poems for the prisoners and reciting them. His most famous work during this time, Mr. Bailey, became the anthem of political prisoners, both men and women, during the British Mandate.8
After being released from prison, he joined fellow fighters in the revolt while continuing to write zajal, and his work became so popular that the British press censor issued a ban against its publication:
“Based on my jurisdiction as censor of the press, and as established by the emergency laws, I, Owen Tweedy, warn against the printing or publishing of the book containing the collection of poems by Nuh Ibrahim which was printed outside Palestine, and which is also known as “The Song Collection of Nuh Ibrahim”, whether printed or published in the open or secretly.”9
Nuh Ibrahim's fame as a poet was fated to last only four years. In 1938, he died at the height of his fame–only 25 years old–in an ill-matched battle with the British in the Galilee .10 His death personified the spirit of sacrifice that he praised in his poetry, and it is this authenticity that makes him so compelling. He was not only a poet but rather shahed wa shahid: a witness and martyr.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- 1“Siyasat al-Dima'. Hal Takun Wasila lil Salam? [The policy of blood. Is it a means to peace?]” Filastin, June 25, 1930. Barakat, Rena. Thawrat al-Buraq in British Mandate Palestine: Jerusalem, Mass Mobilization, and Colonial Politics, 1928-1930. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago, 2007.
- 2Barakat, Rena. Thawrat al-Buraq in British Mandate Palestine: Jerusalem, Mass Mobilization, and Colonial Politics, 1928-1930. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago, 2007.
- 3Quoted in Barakat. “Thawrat al-Buraq” Second bracket in the original.
- 4Shaheed, Samih. “Poetry of Rebellion: the Life, Verse and Death of Nuh Ibrahim during the 1936-39 Revolt.” Jerusalem Quarterly 25 (2006), p. 65.
- 5Hijab, Nemer. Al-sha‘ir al-Sha‘bi: al-Shahid Nuh Ibrahim [The Popular Poet: the Martyr Nuh Ibrahim]. al-Yazori Press: 2006.
- 6Ibid. And: Shaheed. “Poetry of Rebellion," p. 66.
- 7Hijab. "The Popular Poet."
- 8Shaheed. “Poetry of Rebellion,” p. 66.
- 9Ibid, p. 67. Note that this is not the English version of the warning, but rather a translation from the Arabic.
- 10Ibid, pp. 65-78.