After the 1967 Arab defeat, Qabbani’s “Notes on the Book of Defeat” (1967) named political failures with lyrical precision, giving language to a suffocated public grief. Later, “Balqis,” written after his wife was killed in the 1981 bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, became a lament that held space for collective mourning. His truths did not smother; they ventilated—making room for dignity, sorrow, and resolve.
Thus the line becomes his method: speak plainly, but so others can still breathe. In every arena—home, workplace, polis—the test of our truth is the air it leaves in its wake. [...]
