Palestinian poet and short story writer Taha Muhammad Ali grew up in Saffuriya, Galilee. During the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, he moved with his family to Lebanon for a year; since then he has lived in Nazareth, where he owns a souvenir shop. Self-taught through his readings of classical Arabic literature, American fiction, and English poetry, Muhammad Ali started writing poems in the 1970s. In a direct, sometimes humorous, and often devastating style, Muhammad Ali combines the personal and political as he details both village life and the upheaval of conflict.
More By This Poet
Meeting at an Airport
You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
“What do you hate,
and who do you love?”
And I answered,
from behind the eyelashes
of my surprise,
my blood rushing
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure . . .
I...