Kazim al-Samawi

Kazim al-Samawi
Al-Samawi, 1970s
Al-Samawi, 1970s
Native name
كاظم السماوي
BornKazim Jasir Faraj
1925 (1925)
Samawah, Madatory Kingdom of Iraq
Died15 March 2010(2010-03-15) (aged 85)
Stockholm, Kingdom of Sweden
Resting placeSaiwan Cemetery, Sulaymaniyah
Occupation
LanguageArabic
NationalityIraqi
CitizenshipKingdom of Iraq (1925-1954)
Iraqi Republic (1958–1968)

Kazim Jasir Faraj (Arabic: كاظم السماوي, romanizedKāẓim al-Samāwī;1925 – 15 March 2010), better known as Kazim al-Samawi, was an Iraqi poet and journalist, who flourished in the 20th-century Iraqi poetry by his humanist worldview. From the 1950s, he spent more than half of his life in exile as a political refuge insofar he has been known by title of "The Elder of the Iraqi exiles" or "The Shaykh of Exiles" by Al-Mada. He moved between many countries, such as Lebanon, Hungary, Germany, China, Syria and Cyprus until finally settled in Sweden. Al-Samawi published his first poetry collection in 1950 and was as a result persecuted by the Nuri al-Said government. Later, he and his family faced persecution of Ba'athist Iraq, in addition to the unpleasant experiences of the death of almost all his family members, often in quick succession. Through his poetry in various forms, genres and metres, he was very involved in general human affairs. His family name is derived from his hometown demonym, Samawah. He studied in Baghdad and graduated from the Rural Teachers’ House in 1940, continued his higher studies in Hungary and graduated from the Faculty of Arts in 1956. He worked for a while in journalism in Baghdad with a progressive tendency, founded The Humanity in 1956, a twice-weekly leftist newspaper. He left about seven poetry collections that have been translated into several languages. Al-Samawi died at the age of 85 in Stockholm and was buried in Sulaymaniyah.

Biography

Early years

His full name was Kazim Jasir Faraj and his laqab, Al-Samawi, is a demonym of his birthplace, Samawah. He was born to an Iraqi mother and father in the city of Samawah in 1925, in some sources 1919. According to his own statement, he was born in 1925. There is not much known about his early years. He went to Baghdad to complete his education, and graduated from the Rural Teachers’ House in 1940. He began his poetic career in the late 1940s when wrote two beits in classical Arabic poetry genre. Then he became famous as a left-wing realist poet and committed journalist in the next two decades.

Middle years

He began his life in exile in the 1950s. While he was in Lebanon, the Iraqi government at the time, headed by Nuri al-Said, issued a decision to revoke his Iraqi citizenship in 1954, and as a result of this decision he moved to Hungary as a denaturalized citizen, with the help of its government. He stayed in Budapest for several years. After learning the Hungarian language, he became a member of the Hungarian Writers' Union. He continued writing poetry there, and some of his 1950s poems were translated into Hungarian, and were published in 1956 in a book titled Éji vándor. After 14 July Revolution, he returned to Iraq and his Iraqi citizenship was restored to him. Then, he was appointed director general of Radio and Television Organization in the first Iraqi Republic in 1959. After three years, he resigned in protest against some practices that he saw as inconsistent with the goals of the revolution. He was even imprisoned for several months. But he remained loyal to the principles of the revolution and its leader, Abd al-Karim Qasim , who asked him to be an ambassador to Hungary, but he refused, preferring to stay in Iraq and work in the independent journalism. In 1959, Al-Samawi published the newspaper Al-Insaniyah (Arabic: الإنسانية, romanizedAl-Insānīyah, lit.'The Humanity'), but it did not continue and was closed down in 1961. Al-Samawi criticized one of the statements by Abd al-Karim Qasim, when he gave a speech in an organization, disguising Kurdish nation as a separated people of Arab descent. Al-Insaniyah wrote an editorial in response to the speech entitled “Kurdish nationalism is not a soluble bullet.”

Kazim al-Samawi with his colleagues in Baghdad (bottom right), early 1960s.

Following his denaturalization, his journey began to live in exile for many years and decades, which gained him, despite hardships, new acquaintances. Exile life gave him a new vision and culture that made him to see “what he did not see in his country or what he did not found in books,” as he put it. His life in exile was divided into eight exiles in seven countries. He sought political asylum in Hungary from 1954 to 1958. After the 8 February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq and the Ba'athist coming to power, he was arrested again. After his release, al-Samawi left Iraq in 1964 to East Germany, and did not return home until 1973. But his stay did not last long when the Ba'athists began suppressing the leftist and democratic forces. He left Ba'athist Iraq for China in 1977, stayed there until 1980 when he returned to Beirut, he lived there for two years until 1982. He lived in Lattakia in Syria from 1982 to 1984, then he left Ba'athist Syria for Cyprus in 1984-1993, to return to Syria again in 1993-1996, and in the summer of 1996 he moved to Sweden as refugee. He also was faced the death of almost all his family members, from the parents to his two son, one daughter, and wife. His son Nasir was assassinated in 20 November 1991 in Beijing, where he was studying, and his wife died shortly after Nasir, and his another son, Riyad, was kidnapped in Baghdad, after he returned from Germany, and he was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war and died years later with cancer. In mid-2008, his daughter, Tahrir, died in London.

Al-Samawi was involved in the World Peace movement, and contributed to the establishment of the peace movement in Iraq in 1952, which he represented in many international conferences. He participated in the Asia and Pacific Rim Peace Conference in Beijing in 1952 as the representative of the Arab world. He was also member of the Poetry Society of the Arab Writers Union in Syria.

Final years and death

In 1994, a collection of his poetry from 1950 to 1993 were published in Beirut. An Iraqi writer, Talib Abd al-Amir, used to meet him on more than one occasio in Sweden, and interviewed him twice, about his poetry, journalism and political career. Their last meeting was in Kungsträdgården, Stockholm. Vivianne Slioa [ar], an Iraqi poet who became a refugee in Sweden in 1991, described Al-Samawi in an interview in June 2020 as one of the closest poets to her, stated that "He was my friend and my father's friend. We met almost every day in Stockholm and he always told me about poetry and about the murder of his martyred son, whom he remembered every moment... he was my permanent friend and the closest person to me after my mother and father. I used to talk to him about my life and he was telling me about his life... I was influenced by him and Abd al-Karim Kasid." From early 1990s, he has also been in contact with a Vivianne Slioa's relative, Salim Bolus Slioa. Samawi assured him that he was a campaigner of revolutionary communist ideas against revisionism.

Al-Samawi spent the last decade of his life in a one-room apartment of elderly care in Skärholmen. He did not suffer from a personal or service problem, but he was complaining of loneliness and alienation from his friends while abroad. Al-Samawi died on 15 March 2010 in his last exile, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Upon his death in Stockholm, President Jalal Talabani ordered the transfer of his body to Iraq by a private plane to be buried in Sulaymaniyah, since he was one of the advocates of the Iraqi Kurdish nationalism. His funeral took place in the city of Sulaymaniyah on March 25. At his will, he was buried in the city's Saiwan Cemetery.

Works

Poetry collections:

  • Arabic: أغاني القافلة, romanizedAġānī al-qāfila, 1950
  • Arabic: الحرب والسلم, romanizedal-Ḥarb wa-l-salām, 1953
  • Arabic: إلى الأمام أبدًا, romanizedIlá al-Amām..abadan, 1954
  • Arabic: رياح هانوي, romanizedRiyāḥ Hānūy, 1973
  • Arabic: إلى اللقاء، في منفى آخر, romanizedIlá al-liqāʼ fī manfá ākhar, 1980
  • Arabic: قصائد للرصاص، قصائد للمطر, romanizedQaṣāʼid lil-raṣā.̣ qaṣāʼid lil-maṭar, 1984
  • Arabic: فصول الريح ورحيل الغريب, romanizedFuṣūl al-rīḥ -- wa-raḥīl al-gharīb, 1993

Other works :

  • Arabic: الفجر الأحمر فوق هنغاريا, 1954
  • Arabic: حوار حول ماوتسي تونغ, 1990

This page was last updated at 2022-09-09 08:28 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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