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Poetry
International Web
Tamim al- Barghouti
Palestine] 1977
Tamim al-Barghouti was
born in Cairo to an Egyptian mother, Radwa Ashour, and the
Palestinian journalist and poet Mourid al-Barghouti, born in
Deir Ghassanah near Ramallah on the West Bank. Tamim’s
father was expelled from Egypt four months after his son’s
birth, and not allowed to return until 1995. For eighteen
years the father saw his son only during three-week winter
and summer vacations in Budapest, where he was living in
exile.
Here Tamim learnt to speak Hungarian. To his education in
Cairo he owes an excellent command of English and a
knowledge of French and Italian.
He obtained a B.A. in Political Science at Cairo University
in 1999, and specialized in International Relations at
Cairo’s American University, from which he graduated in
2001.
Music has always been a part of Tamim’s life. The toy lute
he received on his third birthday soon made way for a real
one which he learned to play. In 1996 and 1997 he won the
music prize of his faculty at Cairo University, the faculty
which awarded him its poetry prize in 1998. That same year
he won the poetry medal of the High Institute of Applied
Arts. In 2000 he received the poetry prize of the Regional
Cultural Foundation in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Tamim al-Barghouti’s poems have appeared in periodicals in
Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. His first
collection, Mijana, appeared in Ramallah in 1999. He
has presented his poetry at Cairo University, the American
University in Cairo, the Cairo Hanagerr Theatre, the Amman
Poetry House in Jordan, and in the Barghouti’s native
village of Deir Ghassanah. One imagines him there in the
village square, addressing the assembled villagers like his
father Mourid used to. Mourid al-Barghouti describes the
scene in his book I Saw Ramallah, which appeared in
English translation in 2000.
Kees Nijland
Translated from Dutch by Ko Kooman
[Tamim al-Barghouti took part in the Poetry International
Festival Rotterdam 2001. This text was written on that
occasion.]
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