“Indian” speech

The penultimate before the “white man”

Mahmud Darwish

Did I say dead?

There is no death, but a change of worlds.
-Duwamish Chief, Seattle

1
So on the Mississippi we are who we are. For us there is what remains of yesterday

But the color of the sky changed, and the sea to the east changed. Lord of the whites! You,
lord of the horses, what do you want from those who go towards the trees of the night?

Elevated our spirit, the sacred pasture and the stars

words that illuminate... if you fix your gaze on them you will have read our entire story: we
were born here between fire and water... and we will be reborn in the clouds
on the shore of the lapis lazuli coast after the day of Judgment… soon
Then do not continue killing the grass, there is a spirit in the grass that defends in us a spirit
on Earth
You, lord of the horses! Teach your horse to ask forgiveness from the spirit of nature for what
you have done to our trees. Oh tree, my brother
They have tortured you like they tortured me, do not ask for mercy
for whom he cut down my mother and yours…

2
...The lord of the white people will not understand the ancient words here, in the free souls
between the sky and among the trees... But Columbus has the free right to find India in any
sea, and he has the right to call it "pepper" or “Indians” to our ghosts, can also break the sea
compass so that it aligns
along with the erroneous North winds, but he does not believe that humans are the same as,
outside the realm of the map, air and water are!
And that they are born like people are born in Barcelona, even if they venerate the God of
nature that they find in all things... and do not worship gold...
And Columbus, the free one, searches for a language that he did not find here, and searches
for gold in the skulls of our kind ancestors, and had his share of the living and the dead in us.
So
Why does he continue with the war of extermination, from his grave, until the end?

And nothing remains of us, except an ornament for the ruin and light feathers on the hearts...
it is enough, enough for you to return from our death as a king.
on the throne of the new Era... but is it not already a foreign time, for us to meet like two
strangers in the same era?
And in the same place, how strangers find themselves on the edge of the abyss?
For us, what is for us... And for us, what is sky is yours. For you, what is for you... For you,
what is for air and water is for us.
For us, what is pebbles is ours…. And for you, what is iron is yours...
Come, let us share the light in the force of the shadow, take what you want from the night,
and leave us two stars to bury our dead in orbit and take what you want from the sea, and
leave us two waves to fish and take the gold of the earth and the sun, and leave for us the
land of our names and return, stranger, return to yours... and seek India.

3
…Our names, trees made of divine speech, a bird flying higher than a gun. Don't cut down
the name trees, you come
at war from the sea, do not release your burning horses on the plain
For you your Creator and for us ours, for you your faith and for us ours
So do not bury God in books that, as you claim, have promised you a land on our land.
And do not make your creator a “chamberlain” of the king's court!
Take the roses of our dreams to see what we see of happiness!
And sleep under the shadow of our willow so that doves may fly... doves... as our good
ancestors have already flown and returned in peace... in peace... You white people will lack
the memory of leaving the Mediterranean
And they lack eternal solitude in a forest that does not appear on the edge of the abyss
And they lack the wisdom of ruptures, a relapse in wars is missing
And you lack a stone that does not obey the swift current of the river of time, you will lack a
moment to meditate on anything, for a sky necessary for the earth to grow in you, you will
lack a moment to hesitate between one path and another path, They will lack Euripides one
day and the songs of Canaan and the Babylonians will be missing...
the songs of Solomon about the Shulamite, they will lack a lily for longing, they will lack, white
men, a memory to tame the horses of madness and a heart that scratches the stones to
polish itself at the call of the violins... they are missing and they will be missing the hesitation
of the gun: but if they must kill us
do not kill the creatures who have given us their friendship, do not kill our yesterday. They will
lack a truce with our spirits in the barren nights of rain and a less burning sun, and a less full
moon, so that crime appears less festive in the big screen, so take your time to kill God...
…We know what this eloquent ambiguity hides for us. A sky that falls on our salt gives rest to
the spirit. A willow walks on the path of the wind, a beast founds a kingdom in
the emptiness of space wounded... and a sea salted the wood of our doors, and the earth
was no heavier before creation, but something
We had known such before time... the winds will tell us our beginning and our end, but we
bleed our present today and bury our days in the ashes of myths, Athena is not for us, and
we know what the metal-master prepared today for us and for gods who have not defended
the salt in our bread
and we know that the truth is stronger than the right, we know that time has changed, since
the shape of weapons changed. So who will raise our voices
towards a dry rain in the clouds? Who will wash the light after us and who will live in our
temple? And who will preserve our traditions of metallic roar? “We announce civilization to
you,” said the stranger, and he said, “I am the master of time, I have come to inherit the earth

4
from you. Come before me, to count them, corpse by corpse, on the surface of the lake.” “I
announce civilization to you.” civilization” he said “so that the gospel may live” he said, “then
pass so that the Creator may remain only for me”, because dead Indians are better for our
Lord in the heights than living Indians, and the Creator is white and white is this day : for you
a world and for us a world... The stranger says strange words, and digs a well in the earth to
bury heaven. The stranger says strange words
and hunt our children and butterflies. What have you promised our garden, stranger? Can
flowers more beautiful than our roses? Whatever you want, but do you know that the deer will
not eat the grass if it was touched by our blood?
Do you know, foreigner, that the buffaloes are our brothers and the plants our sisters?
Don't dig the ground even more! Don't hurt the turtle
In whose shell the earth sleeps, the earth, our grandmother, the trees are her hair and her
flowers our jewel. “On this earth there is no death”, so do not change the fragility with which it
was created! Don't break the mirrors in their gardens
and do not shock the earth, do not inflict pain on the earth. Our rivers are her waist and her
grandchildren are us, you and us, so don't kill her... We will be gone soon, so take your
portion of our blood and leave her as what she is,
like the most beautiful thing that God has written about water,
for him… and for us.
We will hear the voices of our ancestors in the winds, and we will hear their pulse in the buds
of our trees. This land is our entire holy grandmother, stone by stone, this land is a hut for
gods who lived with us, star by star, illuminated for us the nights of prayer... We have walked
barefoot to touch the spirit of the pebbles and we walk naked to May the spirit, the spirit of the
air, dress us as women who give us back the gift of nature. Our story was hers: we return her
spirits to the earth
little by little. And we preserve the memories of our loved ones in vessels with salt and oil,
before we hung their names on the birds in the streams.
We were the first, without a roof between the sky and the blue of our doors
and without horses to eat the grass of our deer in the field, and without foreigners passing
through the night of our wives then leave the flute to the wind... it is crying over the people of
this wounded place... and it will cry over you tomorrow...

5
And while we say goodbye to our fires, we do not return the greeting... Do not write about us
the testaments of the new God, the God of metal, and do not ask the dead for a peace
agreement, because no one is left of them.
to announce to you how to make peace with yourself and with others, and we would be here
building even more if it were not for England's rifles and French wine and influenza,
and we would live as it should live next to the people of the deer
and memorizing our oral history, we would announce innocence and chrysanthemums
For you your creator and for us ours, for you your yesterday and for us ours, and Time
It is the river, and when we stare at it, it advocates in us at the same time...
Don't you memorize a little poetry to stop the massacre?
Weren't they born by women? Haven't they sucked like us
the milk of nostalgia for the mother? Have they not dressed like us with wings to reach the
swallows? We wanted to announce spring to you, so don't draw your weapons
we could have exchanged gifts and songs
Here was my town. My people died here. Here the chestnut trees
They hide the spirits of my people. My people died here. Here the chestnut trees hide the
spirits of my people. My people will return in the form of air, light and water, take my mother's
land with the power of the sword, but I will not sign with my name a reconciliation agreement
between the dead and the murderer, I will not sign the sale of a single palm of thorns around
the cornfield…
And I know that I am saying goodbye to the last sun, wrapped in my name
And falling into the river, I know I'm returning to my mother's heart
so that you, lord of the whites, may enter your era... Then raise statues of freedom over my
corpse, do not return the salute and erect the metal cross, the song of collective suicides,
when they veil their distant history
and I will release into it the birds of our voices: right here the foreigners conquered the ear of
wheat in us, and extended the telephone and light cables. Here the eagle committed suicide
from melancholy, here the foreigners defeated us.
And in this new era nothing was left for us
Here our bodies disappear, cloud by cloud, into space
Here our spirits twinkle, star by star, in the space of song

A long time will pass for our present to become a past as we We will march to our end, first,
we will defend the trees that we wear and the bells of the night, and a moon that we wish
over our huts and the indiscretion of our deer we will defend, the mud from our pottery we will
defend
and the wing feathers of the last songs. Soon they will build their world on ours: and their
paths will burst through our cemeteries towards the artificial moon, this is the era of the
artificial. This is
the age of metals, from a piece of coal the champagne of the strong will emerge... There are
dead and colonies, dead and diggers, and dead
and hospitals, and dead and radar screens that capture the number of dead who die more
than once in a lifetime, who live after death, and dead who breed the beast of civilizations
with death, and dead dying to carry to the earth on his remains…
Where, sir of the white people, are you taking my people... and yours? To what abyss is this
robot armed with planes and aircraft carriers taking the earth? To what wide abyss are they
climbing?
For you whatever you want: a new Rome, the Sparta of technology
an

d
the ideology of madness, And we will flee from a time for which, yet, we have not prepared
our obsessions
We will go towards the homeland of birds like a flock of human beings from the past, seeing
our land from the pebbles of our land, from the gaps in the clouds, seeing our land, from the
words of the stars, seeing our lands from the air of the lagoons. , from the fragile grain of
corn, from the flower in the grave, from the leaves of the poplar, from all things They are
besieged, white, by dead dying, dead in life, dead that return, dead that reveal the secret,
So give the earth time to tell the truth, the whole truth about you and about us… and about us
and about you!
7
There are dead people who sleep in rooms that you will build, there are dead people who visit
your past in the place that you are destroying, there are dead people who pass over the
bridges that you will build, there are dead people who illuminate the night of the butterflies,
dead people who come at dawn to have tea with you, calm just as your riflemen left you, so
leave, guests of the place, empty chairs for the hosts... so that they can read to you the
conditions of peace with the dead!

Introduction
So that the eagle revives (Chronicles of the flight of a poem)
Here the eagle committed suicide from
melancholy… M. Darwish

Here the story of the flight of a poem is told. The Indian Speech. The penultimate one against
the white man, by Mahmud Darwish, arrived in Mexico, to the gardens of our English
university. With a strange familiarity, the pilgrim-poem - originally written in Arabic - evoked
the famous speech of the Duwamish chief Seattle while seeming to continue a natural and
centuries-old dialogue with the native peoples of Mexico. Carousel of languages: we read in
English while listening in Spanish to echoes of the 68 linguistic groups that - patient and
generous - have sheltered us on this earth for centuries.
In 1992, the Palestinian poet echoed a five-hundred-year-old voice: that of the hidden
Indian. Weak-strength of a translation where 1492 is condensed to cry out in the language of
the expelled Moors, due to the plundering of the peoples we conquered. In another poem
from the same book, the author presents himself as “the Adam of the two paradises”,
because he says he has lost Eden twice. Biblical Adam is the paradigm of the exile. The
Palestinian poet sings of his double exile in Arabic. 1492, the expulsion from Granada; 1948,
the exile of Palestine. The Nakba is exile of the Andalusian exile: 1948 is the farce that
repeats the tragedy of 1492. It is a farce because it only makes sense in its critical function: if
in 1492 Moors and Jews suffered the tragedy of the expulsion from Spain, who could
seriously accept that 450 years later the latter - exiles - arrived in Palestine to expel the first?
At the Institute of Philological Research of the UNAM, the poem was hosted within the
Seminar Workshop “Heteronomies of justice: of exiles and utopias.” This is a research project
that, from the perspective of heteronomous ethics, addresses two current topics: exile in its
different senses and also utopias. Heteronomy, as its Greek origin indicates, refers to
listening to an imperative (nomos) coming from another ( heteron ). By demanding that the
self take responsibility for him, regardless of his will, the other grants him the status of
subject (subject to his relationship with his neighbor). If the other comes first, there is a
change in perspective from a self-centered self to a hetero-centered one. This gives rise to a
hetero-logic (or logic of the other, which is not reduced to the principle of identity) whose
horizon is justice. The subject in time understands itself as part of a generational chain that
does not reduce temporality to its fleeting present portion. Space is not an object of
possession and - depending on the religious perspective from which it is approached - we are
strangers on the earth that belongs to God ( Leviticus 25:23), or we are children of that which
gives shelter to the gods. Language, within the framework of heteronomous ethics, is
understood as a translation of the word of the other (past generations) given to another
(those to come). From the point of view of heteronomy there is no pure language (or its own),
but the good news consists of discovering the promise that lies in the Babelian plurality. In a
world that privileges power and property (in a feverish search for “security”), heteronomy
does not have a good reputation, because it forces us to confess that the only thing “properly”
human is vulnerability and dispossession. In other words, the exiled Adam is the figure of the
heteronym.
If language is on the horizon of heteronomous justice. in itself - implies translation as
an exodus towards the other, the interpellation of the Indian, in Darwish's poem, breaks into
the “own” language to take it out of exile. The multilingual translation that we present here
constitutes in itself a heteronomous act, because it obeys the mandate that we heard - within
the framework of the Project - when reading this poem-letter written in exile. It is worth
clarifying that geographical distance, for the poet exiled by the Nakba, offers the temporal
framework of the poem, and in his words, it "should not respond immediately"... Mediation, in
this book, becomes heteronomy “to the fourth power”: if every poem is by definition an
inspired word (that is, received from another, often called a muse: first heteronomous
moment), Darwish lends his wedding so that through The Indian speaks of his own. Word of
those who suffer colonization (American Indian) through the language of those who suffer
occupation (the Palestinian poet): heteronomy squared. But hearing the Duwamish chief
Seattle's invocation of the poetic word, imitating the “white man,” enhances heteronomy in us
(obsessed with justice). Reading the poem challenged us to translate it into our Spanish
language, responsible for the Andalusian exile: heteronomy cubed. And, as expected, the
translation of unleashed the fourth power. Those who inspired Darwish finally read him in the
language that continues to colonize their ancestors. The poem, which attempts to translate
his voice, challenges them and - in the sense of assuming responsibility - they begin to
respond for him in their inherited languages.
How was this translation, which is assumed to be heteronomous , developed? At the
beginning of 2015, fifteen members of the project began to jointly translate aloud the poem
originally written in Arabic. This was thanks to the participation of Shadi Rohana, a
scholarship recipient of the project, of Palestinian nationality, whose mother tongue is Arabic.
It was a translation compared to those that exist in English and French. The first stage took
several months, because the work had a communal character where almost every word was
passionately discussed. The discussions gave substance to a cooperative, genuinely
heteronomous work, where it was not about imposing one's own voice on others, but rather
about making the poet's claim heard better, which is his hand extended to the damned of the
earth in this extreme west. . Once this stage was completed, we invited some young poets
and translators of languages native to Mexico to translate the poem from Spanish in the way
that each of them considered most appropriate, consulting the original version in the same
dialogic form that characterized the first part of the work. (that is, once translated from the
agreed Spanish version, in the manner of a musical canon, the new version was compared
with the original, taking the Spanish translation as a provisional bridge). It was pleasant to
note, on more than one occasion, the rhythmic, semantic and sound complicities between
Arabic and indigenous languages. It was instructive to see how some inconsistency with
Spanish could be resolved when faced with Arabic.
The members of the PAPIIT project “Heteronomies of justice: of exiles and utopias”
are actively working on the cooperative translation into Spanish: Dánivir Jent, Hugo César
Vázquez, Luz Tafoya, Gabriela Macedo, Bernardo Cortés, Satya Chatillon, Rafael
Mondragón, Alexis MIllań, Renato Huarte, María Cataño, Jorge Rodríguez, Mateo Martínez
Abarca, Andreas Ilg, Sara Sutton, as well as Shadi Rohana, the undersigned (responsible for
the project) and other “interns” who left their mark, such as Mara Pastor. For the second
stage, Rafael Mondragón, Luz Tafoya and Rasheny Lazcano found the translators who
generously responded to our call. This book houses the translations of Gloria Martínez
Carrera (Mazatec translator from the community of San Juan de la Unión), Alicia Gregorio
Velasco (Chinantec translator from the community of San Antonio Analco, Oaxaca), Yasnaya
Elena Aguilar (translator of ayuujk or ayuujk from Ayutla), Víctor Cata (translator of diidxazá
or diidxazá del Istmo, from Juchitán) and César David Can Canul (translator of maaya t'aan
from the community of Mesatunich, Municipality of Motul, Yucatán). Each translation is
preceded by a few words from the translator about the meaning that this experience had for
him. The question arises, why these five languages and not others? Mexico's linguistic
multiplicity is promising because Spanish is not the national language. From the point of view
of heteronomous justice and also of utopia, we consider that just as the land belongs to those
who work it, the language belongs to those who speak it. That is why the criterion for
selecting the native languages that inhabit this book consisted of contacting young translators
who, in addition to the noble job of bringing Spanish texts into their mother tongues, write
poetry in them. The translations presented here seek to be heard on community radio
stations, read in bilingual schools in the interior of our land. These translations poetize and in
this sense are returns of a living word.
Here is a multilingual seed book that will have an interactive online version, where the
versions will be heard in the voice of native readers. But the characteristic of this
heteronomous translation, as we announced before, is its openness: the idea is to create, in
a third stage, an open book on the website of the Philological Research Institute, which will
include new translations into more languages of Mexico, and then to other languages on the
continents, and so on... “Returns”, in plural, is its name: in a spatial sense, because of how
unapproachable the Right of Return is for Palestinian exiles; but also in a temporal sense
because Darwish's poem makes the letter of the Duwamish chief Seattle return - reappear -
updated; and finally, return in the musical sense of the term: the return (plural) that the singer
receives and allows him to perceive with his ears his own voice returning multiplied from the
outside.
This work carries a dialogic force of centuries: echoes of the Toledo school of
translators resonate in it today, a place that witnessed the cordial dialogue between the three
monotheistic religions. In 1492, Spain expelled the Moors and Jews, while “discovering” the
“new continent” by covering up its original inhabitants. This translation implies a promise:
Spanish serves as a bridge between the language of the expelled Moors and some
languages of the conquered peoples. The Palestinian poet sings in Arabic of love full of pain
to another shore, for the indigenous Americans to hear. In Mexico (at UNAM) we received the
message in the bottle, we gave our Spanish language the possibility of being the vehicle to
transport the poetic word of freedom to the native peoples.
We want to offer these voices of our motley Mexico to the people of the poet's land.
Like the sea, in its double movement, we will take the poem - with polyphonic power - back to
its place of origin. It is a utopian exercise in the best sense: a call for justice, for friendship
among those who are in home exile. This word of freedom and love for the land, which was
created in the Arabic language remembered from Andalusia, is a word given to another that -
like a ray of light passing through the prism of the Spanish language - returns, multiplied,
diverse and divergent, from his others.
The poem is presented as “the penultimate” speech of the “Indian” against the “white
man.” Perhaps the last one is an ongoing speech that for some time - in the form of an
incalculable environmental crisis - has been giving to that “grandmother” of both of us, which,
as the poem reminds us, is the Earth. In Mexico, our continent and in the world, today we
witness deaths and disappearances often related to the defense of rivers, mountains, land,
languages and knowledge. Entire communities today live in a paradoxical situation that we
will call “domestic exile”: despite continuing to live in their land, they are continuously subject
to dispossession by a minority that operates in the absence of national states. Palestine also
pays with the blood of its children for the criminal plundering of the land, of the water, of the
olive trees... The pain of the land due to a predatory economy sustained by accumulation
through dispossession can be heard in more and more languages (even recently , in the
voice of the Vatican.” The cry for heteronomous justice is strengthened by the hope that, one
day not too far away, that minority - drunk with domination and pretensions of ruthless and
suicidal progress that goes out in search of "security" - will be able to hear the voice of the
other. massive. Today, its much-feared vulnerability is reflected in the mirror of this letter-
poem that announces the eagle's lethal melancholy.
Translating, says JB Pontalis, is rediscovering the foreign in language. Issue of
migrant words, fertile exile of languages, liberating heteronomy: “All languages are foreign.
They all fly from one world to another”, If the eagle that Chief Seattle reported missing, in the
Arabic poem committed suicide, in the land of the cactus and the snake we attended to it in
Spanish so that the indigenous languages could take care of healing it. In the pages that
follow, the words of melancholy translated - for now - into the five languages that we present
today wave their wings so that the eagle may revive.

Silvana Rabinovich
IIFL-UNAM