Palestinians gave their national poet Mahmoud Darwish what amounted to a state funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday, mourning a man who articulated their sense of loss, exile and defiance. Around 10,000 people joined the procession that took his coffin, draped in a Palestinian flag, to a hilltop grave. “O Mahmoud, O Mahmoud, you rest and we will continue the struggle,” mourners chanted as the poet was buried to a 21-shot salute. Darwish's poems were recited over loudspeakers. A helicopter had brought his body from Jordan, where it had been flown from the United States. Darwish, 67, died on Saturday from complications after heart surgery in Houston, Texas. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received the flower-strewn coffin at his Ramallah headquarters. “He was the master of the word and wisdom, the symbol who expressed our national feeling, our human constitution, our declaration of independence,” Abbas said in a speech. Darwish crafted the Palestinian declaration of independence adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1988. “Somehow we felt that as long as there is Mahmoud Darwish, there is a sense of goodness, a sense of hope, a sense of possibility for salvation,” said lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi. A vehicle topped with a yellow wreath bore Darwish's casket slowly through the streets of Ramallah to a hill near the city's Cultural Palace, where he read his last poems in July. Black-clad mourners wept and consoled each other. Many carried portraits of Darwish and Palestinian flags. “These crowds reflect the deep loss that Palestinians and Arabs have suffered,” said Khaled Najem, 57, an Israeli Arab from Darwish's home village of Al-Jdaideh, near Haifa. “But his poetry gives us hope and guidance.” Lama Al-Khelleh, a 28-year-old housewife from Nablus, said she felt bereaved by Darwish's death. “He was a symbol of Palestinian identity,” she said. “I feel I have lost my father.” The official funeral organized by the Palestinian Authority is an honor previously extended only to the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004.
