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Hello, and welcome to Nomad's Past and Present. I'm your host, Maggie, and my guest today is Kobe Peled. Kobe is an architect, historian, and professor at Ben Goryon University of the Negev in the Ben Goryon Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, where his work deals primarily with the cultural history of the Palestinians, and in particular the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. His book Words Like Daggers, the Political Poetry of the Negev Bedouin, it was published by Brill in 2022, and that's the topic that we'll be discussing today.
So thank you so much, Kobe, for joining me. Thank you, Maggie. It's a pleasure. So to start off with the orient listeners to this topic, can you explain in broad strokes sort of the historical and social context of the Negev Bedouin when we say the Negev Bedouin, what does that mean exactly?
Who does that refer to? What's the area of the Negev that listeners should be picturing? How are the Negev Bedouin to be distinct from other Bedouin populations in the Middle East? Well, it's a great question.
Many questions encapsulated in one question. Yes, and a highly political question, of course. Even the name of the territory itself, the Negev, is pronounced a nagap among the Bedouin and in Hebrew and English quite often, the Negev. So actually, it's okay that in the southern part of Israel, Israel is in the Middle East, and the Negev is actually a continuation of the Sinai Desert, it's a desert area, an arid area, and the Bedouin actually still dwell in the Negev.
They have been living in the Negev for centuries. Some of them, small group of them, certain tribal groups have been living in the Negev for centuries and centuries. Others migrated to the Negev mainly from the Sinai, some from Transjordan. Prior to 48, during the first half of the 20th century and throughout the 19th century, the three largest confederations that we held in the Negev were actually confederations, large groups, large political and social alliances of tribal groups who migrated at the early 19th century or so from Sinai.
They're relatives, people of the Azazimid, for example, the Azazimid Confederation, the Tel Aviv Confederation, the Taitia Confederation, those were the three largest confederations, still living in the Sinai, some in Egypt as well, some in the West Bank, some in Jordan, so they are scattered all around. Still today, even though there's a border, very well kept between Israel and Egypt, there are relations between those groups in terms of customary law. Bedouin of the Sinai are still considered among Bedouin of the Negev as authorities in customary law. So if there's a huge issue discussed here in the Negev without the proper judicial answer, then the answer would be given by someone, by a special judge from the Sinai.
It means that relations still exist about the fact that they are part of Israel. They are Israeli citizens, they have been Israeli citizens right from the start, from when the Jewish state was established in 48, but to a large extent, they live separately from the rest of Israeli society, some, of course, maintain contacts, but they have their own schools, they have their own communities, except for the town of the city of Beelsheva, where Jews in Arabs, Palestinian Arab, Israelis, and Bedouin Arab, Israelis live. We are detached from each other to a large extent. There are many things to say about them as a population.
They number some 300,000 as of today, which is not a large percentage, but demographically they are growing. Steel families are very, very large families. A friend who lives not very far from Urai live in the Negev as well, in a place called Sadebokil, and my friend, who is a son of a famous poet, lives some 30 kilometers west from Urai live, north west from Urai live, and would you like to guess how many kids he has? Oh, that's tricky.
I'm going to say 12. Yeah, 12 is the number of women with whom he has been married, currently has four wives, and when you ask about boys, you ask about kids, you may be asking about boys at first, in Arabic you say, come well, in Hebrew, you may be wrong by saying that how many kids you have, but in Arabic you may be saying, I have 18 boys, he has 18 boys and 18 girls, 36. So 36 in total, quite recently he told me I established a little tribe. Yeah, so demographically they are growing, and polygamy, as you may understand, is a real problem.
It's against the law in Israel, in the Negev as well, but it's not enforced unfortunately. Interesting. So let's talk about poetry then, which is the focus of your book, and of your research for this book. So you are using this poetic corpus.
Can you talk about how you collected that, sort of what the nature of that kind of poetic corpus is, and maybe as well also sort of what's the significance of poetry to the Bedouin, to the Negev Bedouin? Well, again, two wonderful questions, actually in terms of the first question of how I collected those poems, I didn't do much, and again, must tell you someone else did all the hard work, and I did some field work myself up in the Galilee, specifically in the upper Galilee. I collected stories and poems as well among the people of the Galilee, both Muslims and Christians and Druze, both city dwellers and the Bedouin as well, and I've been studying stories of families in Wadi'a'a'a'a'a. That's a central region in Israel, where mostly populated by Muslim, Palestinian Arabs.
But here in the Negev, I did very little work of collecting material, very little field work, because a guy and a person called Sason Belzvi was born in Jerusalem of the Mandat period in, specifically in 1924, grew up in Jerusalem, speaking both Hebrew, Latino, and Arabic. He did all the work, and he actually is an interesting figure, this guy, Belzvi. His family origins are from Baszla. He's an Iraqi Jew who lived for several generations.
I mean, the family lived for several generations in Jerusalem, and he was, like many other Iraqi Jews, recruited by the Haganah, the main militia of the Jewish settlement during the British Mandat period. And at a very young age, at about 20, when he was 20, he was sent by the Haganah to the then southernmost point in the Jewish settlement in the Negev, to collect information, to establish contacts with the Bedouin, to see who was friendly to the Jewish cause, to the Zionist cause, and who was unfriendly, and also to work for the acclimatization of the kibbutz in those surroundings. One must remember that Jews did not settle in the Negev until the early 40s. Apart from the town of Belzevah, where Jews settled until the riots of 1921, I mean, there were Jews for some 25 years in Belzevah.
You know, Belzevah, the town of Belzevah was established by the Ottomans as some kind of a town and a stronghold against the British domination of them, Egypt, and Sussanbelzvi was sent to an area largely populated by Bedouin, and very few Jews back then. So in the mid-40s, he was involved in this mostly security activity, I think. But coming into the shigs, the guest-tense of the Bedouin, he established contacts with them and became friends with some of them. And actually, I think he came to, in some way you could say, he came to conquer them, to know them in order to better rule them, if you will, or to understand them, and became conquered by their culture and poetry, and actually started at a very early stage in the mid-40s, together with another person called Riei Rielli, both of them lived in Mitzpervivim, down south in the Negev, they both collected poetry.
Rielli was interested more in the melodies and the music, but the more in words, and then he started collecting poetry, continued collecting poetry while he was an officer of the military government, Bedouin of the Negev, as well as Palestinians in Israel, in general, were put under military government from 1948 until 1966. So after Bercheva was conquered by the Jews in October 48, he moved to the town of Bercheva and became an officer in the military government, due to his knowledge of the Bedouin, until he reached the rank of military governor of the Negev in the mid-60s, by that time the military government was quite weak and it was abolished in 1966. But during those years he collected lots of poems and proverbs and stories, interviewed many people, and when the job was over, he joined the Bercheva, the Bercheva municipality in the early 70s, and he was still in love with Bedouin poetry, with Bedouin culture, so it's an interesting mixture of domination and an interesting contact, which is not pure friendship, is there anything like pure friendship? I believe it's possible, but it's an interesting mix that he had, and you could see from also what the Bedouin say about him, those that still remember him today.
I did some interviews, obviously I did some work myself, but the large body of collecting poems was done by this guy by Sason Belsvi for some 50 years, and until he died in 2012, and two years before he was still in the business, not collecting poems, because there were no real poets, no great poets in the Negev, unlike the neighboring countries where Bedouin poetry is still a living tradition, or a tradition supported by the government, like in the Gulf countries here in the Negev situation is totally different, it's a Jewish hegemony, and in terms of supporting heritage and supporting the old way of life, there is little that is done by the government, so basically these traditions were to a large extent forgotten and forsaken, and actually Belsvi felt that he was rescuing, and indeed he did rescue so many poems from Oblivion. So he did quite a lot of work of collecting poems and translating the poems, transcribing the poems that is, and translating into Hebrew, and actually I followed in his footsteps, and it was more of a field work, and I watched him, he liked to be in the shigs, and he did not contextualize the poems, he did not analyze the poems, he did not try much to interpret the poems, or do he had interesting insights and a great understanding of Bedouin life and poetry, still he was not interested, he had no academic background, he was just interested in preserving the poems, so he left behind him thousands and thousands of pages, full of stories and memories and descriptions of customs, and also hundreds and hundreds of poems, so it's a great treasure of a society, and the treasure belongs to the Bedouin, it was created by Bedouin poets, transmitted by the Bedouins, and mostly forgotten, as of today, so very little, I mean a few people are interested in this tradition, but I believe that sometime in the future they will go back and ask themselves, where are these origins of the little that we know, so I took only the political poetry, but you'd find lots of poems about wandering, about coffee, about tobacco, about love, about agriculture, about all ways of life, and you really have a treasure trove of a culture, so I also will answer the question about the significance, I think. Yeah, so I suppose that's your contribution in your book, right, is taking this huge body of poetry that wasn't otherwise sort of analyzed and identifying the political strains within the poems and identifying how the Bedouin sort of throughout the, what is it, sort of 75 years or so of history that this poetic or was covers, how the Bedouin used poetry to react and respond to the political forces and political changes that were going on around them and that they were also participating in, right? So I suppose I think we can maybe proceed through that history, the way you have laid it out in your book, which is starting in the late Ottoman period, sort of in the late 19th century, and so can you talk a little bit about what that period of history was like for the Bedouin, sort of how they interacted with the Ottoman state, how the Ottoman state kind of perceived the Negev Bedouin, you already brought up the founding of Vershiva as a city founded by the Ottomans, as a kind of town for the Bedouin in the Negev region, so if you can maybe elucidate a little bit on that history, for listeners.
Yes, sure. I think you were very right in the way you described those relations between history and poetry. Actually, I tried to use history and contextualize the poems and carefully read each and every word in order to fully understand it as much as I could, because I couldn't go to the poets and I couldn't go to the Bhats myself. I mean, all these people are already gone, so I have the words, of course I can go to the relatives, I can go to poets who work today, but many of the words are already forgotten, so it is quite difficult to provide a full analysis here, so I tried to use history in order to better understand poetry, but also I tried to use poetry in order to rewrite history, to better understand history, and actually write poetry into history, so there's an interesting dialogue here, I believe, because when you try to understand a period, no matter if it's Bedouin, Ottoman, if it's poetry, if it's Arabic, poetry is always an interesting window or an interesting perspective to understand a culture, intimate things and inner sentiments, and things that quite often are not pronounced in other modes are being pronounced and actually expressed in poetry.
In terms of the poetry of the 19th century, we know quite a lot about that period, mainly through the work of Clinton Bailey, who studied particularly poetry in Sinai, and actually followed in the footsteps of Alifilale, the scholar, and a governor of the Beel Sheva sub-district under the British authorities, and in footsteps of other scholars who studied the Bedouin poetry of the 19th century, it was mostly a poetry of the tribal wars, in terms of the political poetry. Poetry served as a tool, sharper than any lance and a terrible tool sometimes, you know, in a society where words mean so much, and a person's name and dignity and honor are actually governed by words. If you say something about me, if I say something about you, and we were living in such a society across space and across time, these words still exist, so poetry in the time of the Ottoman rule of the Negev was a sharp and dangerous weapon. Anytime a leader would want to offend an opponent in another tribe, he would summon the poet to his chick, to his guest tent, and actually invite a poem to offend an enemy, a poem to gain support, a poem to convince an ally to join the alliance.
So in this sense, the Bedouin lived their own lives quite far away from the Ottomans throughout most of the first half of the 19th century. They were struggling among them for the little resources that we have in the Negev in terms of water and land. If you had a strong group with you, it meant that you would survive. If you had very few men to support you, and some of the poems in the book actually exemplify and demonstrate this insight or this understanding, then with very little men that you couldn't protect the well, you couldn't protect the assets that you had.
So in this sense, poetry was a means of strengthening your position in a difficult surrounding. Perhaps this is a functionalist, a divinistic, somewhat perspective on life, but when you go into desert, this perspective, this functionalist mode of explanation is to an extent viable. Surely, poetry was a way to amuse ourselves, and also it was some kind, I believe, of a theatre to perform what we have in our lives, also in the tribal wars period under the Ottoman rule. But I focused in my research on political poetry, and in this sense, as long as the Ottoman were relatively not so strong and not interfering too much in the Bedouins' wars and lives, then poetry, political poetry, as a weapon thrived.
Now, when the Swiss Canal was inaugurated in 1869, an Egypt conquered by the British in 1882, and things were changing in the world, the Ottomans tried to reform their government, and to get a better control of the Arab periphery, both in Trans-Jordan and in Palestine and in Southern Syria of that time, then their interference with the wars that the Bedouin had and with the Bedouin politics in the Negev intensified. The stronger their influence grew, the weaker the Bedouin leaders became. Surely, the Ottomans towards the end of the 19th century started to interfere with the Bedouin internal struggles, even sending armies and capturing the leaders, the shits, taking them to Jerusalem. Belchéva was not established then, and some of them died in jail in Jerusalem, some were held in prison for years and years, and gradually, Bedouin poetry changed its character.
Some time around the turn of the century, perhaps a little bit before the turn of the century, and with the establishment of Belchéva towards the very first years of the 20th century, as far as I understand it, poets became gradually more and more critical with regard to the weakness of their leaders. And that's a huge change in political poetry. Prior to that, when the Ottomans were relatively weak or they did not interfere, then poets were serving the goal of the tribe and the tribe's leader, the Sheikh, and when the Sheikh became a weak political figure, then poets addressed their verses against this person, and gradually, they became more independent in their verses and in their criticism. Prior to that, the criticism was addressed outwardly towards the enemies, towards the rivals, towards people who were neutral, and after that, after this change, the establishment of the town of Belchéva is a major point here.
They directed their anger with conditions, with the current condition of the Bedouin towards their own leaders. The leaders sought to buy houses in Belchéva. The Ottomans offered land, landed today, cost a lot of money in Belchéva, and in the negative was offered almost for free. And Bedouin leaders bought land and built houses in the town of Belchéva.
The Ottomans wanted Bedouin to become more sedentirized, they tried to make the town of Belchéva as a center for the sedentirization process of the Bedouin. So gradually, the leaders in the eyes of the poets became corrupt. They followed the ways of the city. And this is actually much like in Ibn Khaldun's theory.
City life is a moment of a great achievement in terms of culture, but in terms of the theory, the moment of decline where things start to collapse. So Ibn Khaldun, if he was present at that time, would have described in similar terms, I believe, that process. Yeah, I think it's really interesting what you just brought up about the relationships between the poets and the kind of tribal leaders and how poetry reflects those kind of inter-tribal relations, and not just how the Bedouins interacted with external state authorities, but also how poets sort of perceived and then kind of described their relationships to tribal authorities as well. So maybe this would be a good time to ask about the identities of those poets.
Who should we be imagining those poets were? Was there a function within a tribe solely to be kind of a tribal poet? You mentioned this process of Chéich, like commissioning a poem directed at arrival. Is that how we should kind of imagine that all of these poems were being created?
Was under this kind of Chéichly patronage? Or what did that look like? It's a great question. I'm not sure what it looked like.
I can only imagine out of the little information that we have here in the Negeve, and I could compare also with what we know from other places, neighbouring countries in the Middle East. It could be that the, I mean, during the tribal war periods, the tribal war period in the Negeve, that is the 19th century, I think that would summarize the position of the poets. I do. I should add, I mean, the poet would be summoned to the chig, unless the chéich himself was capable of pronouncing words of being or having a rhetoric ability.
You know, perhaps not everyone could be an accomplished poet. Many people can recite verses, but really invent poetry. Use certain words or even phrases that already exist, but in a creative manner, I think this is a talent, and this talent is like a gift. I'm asking this question, Maggie, posing this question for my fellow friends.
How would you explain this kind of gift? Sometimes you see that there are certain poets in a family. So maybe it's a genetic thing. It's an ability that is being nurtured in a family that quite often one generation speaks poetry, the next generation cannot invent verses.
So I think that in the 19th century, I think pretty much, it is the case, I may add only the fact that a person with a great ability, with a talent for words, had some political position of his own. You couldn't force him to say anything. I mean, you could influence quite to a large extent, because, I mean, if I were the chéich and I wanted a certain poet, but I could not dictate. We see stories, even from the late 19th century, where a poet is unhappy with something.
And because words are so precious and valuable in Arab culture in general, I should say, in an embeddling culture in particular, then my addition is that a person with a rhetoric talent has some kind of his own power. But he wouldn't be able, if he offended the chéich, he would get into real trouble, because the real political power, the ability to summon men to battle in the period of the tribal wars in the most of the 19th century and the entire century was an ongoing struggle for hegemony and for land and water. This was the case. Later it became a little bit different, and we find, specifically in the British Mandate period, we have some dozen of poems, not more than that, that criticize the tribal leaders for selling land to the Jews.
And this is a total difference from what we would find in the tribal wars period that lasted to the end of the 19th century, and to an extent continued partially in the early stage of the 20th century. We find, at first, subtle criticism towards the chéichs, not mentioning their names. Hinting, a person who cooperated with designist movement caused the Jews in the mid-20s, later on in the mid-30s, and still within the Arab revolt of 36 to 39, continued purchasing land, in the Negev, they did not purchase this land from others, but from the Chéichs and all sorts of mediators. And the Palestinian national movement tried to recruit the Bedouin Chéichs and Bedouin leaders to prevent the sale of land, of Bedouin land, of Negev land to the Zionist.
They were unsuccessful. So we find poems directed against these phenomenon. Poems with some of them was also a prophetic tone. I mean, a poet would say, you lose everything if you continue with this.
And the whole poem is not only about criticizing the shares, but also criticizing us. I mean, we follow in the footsteps of the Chéich, we change dramatically. We move to the city of Bercheva, we change our ways. Once our leaders were very strong, we would obey those leaders, and today our leaders are corrupt.
They bid homes in houses, mentions, they are called in Bedouin Arabicales in the town in the city of Bercheva, and they don't mingle with their own tribesmen. They are unaware of the problems that we face and what they do, they take the land according to the poets. And sell it. The land that belongs to the tribe, they sell it to the Zionists.
So to words 46 and 47, the tone intensifies, and the poets harshly criticize those leaders who sold land using their names. It is something, I mean, steel poetry is quite, I mean, I think to an extent poetry is always subtle, and specifically Bedouin poetry, full of insinuations, because words are so precious and words are so harmful. And you could praise someone and you could really destroy a person with words. So they are constantly careful, but also gradually harsher and more daring in their criticism of this phenomenon.
So you addressed what was going to be my next question about the British mandate and the political changes that occur then, and especially how those changes are reflected in poetry and around the theme of land sales and the criticism by the poets of land sales to Jewish settlers. So maybe we can move on to the next kind of stage in the story, which is the end of the British mandate and the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. So what happens to the Negev Bedouin then, you know, what are the effects of the Nakba on the Bedouin of the Negev, and how are those effects in turn reflected in their poetry? Again, a huge topic, Maggie, I think, is a terrible trauma for the Bedouin.
In terms of numbers, prior to the occupation of the Negev in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war by the Jewish side, the Negev was populated by, I mean, we don't know the exact numbers, but somewhat, something like 65,000 Bedouin Palestinian assessments tend to, to say, more than 70,000, even 100,000 Jewish estimations tend to say some 50,000 At a certain point during the war, only a few thousand remained. I don't remember now the exact date, but there is a certain point right after the war when the battles end, that there are some 4000 Bedouin in the Negev. Imagine that out of some, 6, 7% of the Bedouin that dwelled in the Negev before, many, of course, fled to Egypt and Jordan, some were expelled, some were even returned by the Jews in contrast to the Israeli policy of not allowing refugees to return in other areas of the Jews. And so, in terms of the country, except for certain cases where Israel was pushed to return Christians in Galilean villages, for example, for international pressure or Israel's image consideration in the international arena, some 10,000 Bedouin were returned to the Negev in the late 40s and early 50s, but it was a terrible condition for several years for the Bedouin.
So, there are some people who are going inside, going outside, and eventually when this terrible situation, the movement of people and the deportation of people and the return of people and those internal struggles that still need to be studied, we know very little, actually, of the chaos of those very first years. In 1954, some 11 or 12,000 Bedouin were counted in the Negev. So, it is a trauma, a demographic disaster, families were torn apart. I mentioned my friend with the 36 children who lives not far from me.
His father was an accomplished poet who remained with his own mother in Israel in 1948, but the elder brother who was a poet, again, an accomplished poet who favored the Palestinian national movement as far as we can understand from his poetry, because we know very little about those poets. Information is lost, unfortunately. The elder brother had to migrate or had to live under conditions that I do not know. Maybe he was expelled.
Maybe he decided we do not know. It's very difficult to gain information, but he had to live for Jordan. And when I look for information in Jordan, that's very hard, maybe precisely, specifically because I'm a Jewish Israeli, but for others, it's not easy as well. So, a terrible disaster, we felt the Bedouin population.
And of course, they were enclosed. Most of them in a restricted area east of eastern north of Beersheba called the Saeg area were Bedouin, who dwell, for example, in the western Negev, were relocated into this area. So, their lives changed dramatically. All contacts that they had with Arab countries, with neighboring, with tribes in Trans-Jordan and Hensai, these contacts dramatically changed.
Their movements were restricted. What was left of their tribal organization was reorganized by the military rule by people like Sason-Belsvimself in order to better govern them and rule them. Some of the leaders were authentic leaders. Some of them were leaders appointed by Israel.
The groups were not the natural groups, so to speak, that evolved throughout the years during the British Mandite. They were regrouped by the state authorities put together, and Eshech, a leader, will be appointed. Quite often, this leader had an authority. Quite often, the leader was the son of the previous leader, but not always.
In terms of their social organization, and the political organization, there was a huge change, a huge transformation. Eventually, they became Israelis, but until 1966, restricted. And, of course, discriminated against in later periods as well, because the hegemony is in this country a Jewish homeland. It's a Jewish state, and they had to follow those rules.
Their lives really changed in the poetry that we have. I assume that so many poems were composed. At that time, we find some written poetry. You see that an oral culture is changing, and written material enters the scene.
We have a few poems, half a dozen poems or so, from the very early stages of the military rule. We find in these poems opposition and protest. That is, I think that poetry in that period of the early 50s and late 40s actually maintains some kind of a sense of pride, a sense of who we are. Actually, by, it seems to me, through reading those poems and analyzing them, that actually the poets say, we are still active, we are still alive.
Although, what happened in the Knackabout, what happened in the war and the destruction of our lives, we are still capable of saying something. And saying something not only about coffee and tobacco, saying something about our political condition. This is a marvelous thing, I think. But we had a role here.
And then again, an interesting role. On the one hand, he was the eyes and ears of the government. He would spy on those people. But on the other hand, he was very fond of their poetry.
And we see it because he transcribed poems, hundreds and hundreds of poems to a late age. I mean, his own age, until he was an old man, loved poems, poems unrelated to politics. He really liked poetry. That's my understanding.
So, in the early stages of the military rule, we find an interesting situation where poets say whatever they believe, of course, they are careful. But an interesting mix of being careful and daring, and they say to the military officer himself, Dubois V. And sometimes they include his own figure in their poems and not only praises they have for him. Some of those poems describe him as a violent person.
A violent person to admire and to fear and to despise. I mean, the poems are an interesting situation. It's an interesting situation. Later on, we do not know what happens with the poetry because we have some years that we don't have any poems.
I don't know why. Maybe poets compose poems, but did not say them to Dubois V himself. In Bailey's book, there are only two poems of his period. So, I do not know much.
In the late 50s, we have several letters sent to Dubois V as an important figure in the military rule, asking him all sorts of things. People ask the military government, the governor, and bring me my gun back. We have dozens and dozens of examples of written letters sent by Palestinians and by Bedouin to the military government. But because they knew that Dubois V liked poetry so much and they probably knew that it was a way to convince him.
And it's an old thing in Arab culture. If you want to convince someone, you don't just say it. You use meter and rhyme in order to say it. Thus, the weight of your words is heavier.
So bring me my gun back. Make me the appointed Sheikh of this tribe because you remember that I helped you when Israel was attacked by the Egyptians. And some words of thank you to Dubois V. Those poems of the late 50s and early 60s are less critical with regard to Dubois V, maybe because he's become very powerful.
With one word, he could destroy their lives. He was in the position of the poet himself, so to speak. One word from him could change the fate of a person. So in the year 1958, there was a famine and a terrible condition in the negative, no water, no land, pasture for the herds.
And Balsvi and others, of course, allowed the herds to go up north, up even to Bech-An, up to the Galilee, and the British did it as well, and the Israelis continued also for their own reasons. But people were so thankful. So they wrote letters of thank you, letters of gratitude, impotry to Balsvi. Some of those are kept in his collections.
And then in the 60s, we have very few poems that describe the demise of the military woman. Yeah, and so despite what you just said about this kind of assertion in the early years of the military rule of the ongoing presence of poets, the continued creation of poetry, your book, and so some Balsvi's collection of poetry sort of ends around the 1967 war. And as you said earlier, the kind of poetic tradition among the Nege of Bedouin doesn't really exist anymore and has kind of died out among the current generation and the generation preceding it. So why is that?
Why do you think that the creation of poetry sort of stops when it does? Frankly, I don't have a good answer for this question. It needs to be studied. We know or I assume that poetry did not die.
It did not die out. It changed dramatically. If it was in the, I mean, we don't know exactly what happened in the 60s. We do know, however, that in the late 60s and more so, during the 70s and early 80s, the state of Israel beat towns for the Bedouin.
Process of sedentarization began with first the town of Talisaba, not very far from Beul Sheva, in the late 60s, and the largest Arab town in Israel, as of today, the town of Raat, was established in the early 70s. It's the largest city in Israel and it's populated by, solely by Muslim Bedouin. And when these towns and others were established, again, there is a rise of poets and poetry that we find criticizing the process of sedentarization, criticizing the change, criticizing not only the leaders, but mostly in this period from 67, from 67 till 82, when poetry dramatically changes. And those poets, I think those that were left, many of them, die or stop composing poetry, then we find that there is quite a lot of criticism with regard to the state, the process of sedentarization, the attempt by the state to control and occupy Bedouin lands.
They do not live after 66 under a military rule, but struggle still continue for land and for recognition and for their rights. And this is the arena where poets actually say their verses, and then in the early 80s, something changes. You know, Israel changes. I think the Bedouin poetry is not unrelated to what is going on in Israel.
It cannot be. It even may be related to Israeli culture to an extent, do the Bedouin live quite at the periphery of the centers of Israeli or Jewish-Israeli culture. Still, society changes dramatically with the rise of the liquid in 77 and the First Lebanon War. And I think they change and they feel that there may be that also it is time that poetry change as well.
I mean, it is bound to change because it is part of, well, in life and lifestyle, everything changes. Relations between tribes. I mean, the tribe does not stand for what it stood in the past. The sheikh is a very weak person.
It is somehow a meaningless person who was once meaningful. So many things change, dwelling change, values change, gender relations change, and gender relations are used in poetry in order to indicate those changes in the past. A man was a man and he would say his word and there was no return. And now we are governed by women.
I mean, unfortunately these metaphors still appear in poetry of the 80s. And what happened after the mid or early 80s, I do not know much and it needs to be studied. And actually, but the field that the creative energy was lost. And I think Bailey held the same thing until Bailey had the same idea.
Something changes dramatically. It does not mean that poetry dies. There is poetry. But what kind of we know very little?
Again, an area that needs to be studied. Interesting. And so maybe a final question as we are coming up on the end of our time. I was wondering if you could provide an example of one of these poems that you have looked at for listeners.
Maybe if you have a favorite or one that you think is particularly illustrative of the themes that you identified. Well, there are so many themes and so many forms. It is like asking about my kids. Who is the favorite?
There is no answer for this. With regard to the change of values, the change of hearts, and the manifestation of this change in poetry, I could cite an interesting encounter between Baltzi and the father of my friend who has 36 kids and a very sensitive and marvelous poet in my view. His name was Sliman Awad, Sliman Ibn Adi-san. Last Saturday, I visited together with his son, his resting place at the negative junction, not very far from where I live.
But no poem is written on the grave, just a simple grave in the desert. Anyway, some 17 years before he died, he died in 1992. In the mid-70s, he was still living in a tent, not very far from where I live south of Beersheva. And Baltzi came for a visit.
They were good friends. One could say, if you were Baltzi, was an important figure in the municipality and prior to that, he was an important figure in the military government, and he was an important figure, even before the state was established, as a kibbutz member and watchman, and in charge of the relations with the Bedouin. So they knew each other for some 30 years. Actually, they first met in 1945.
Now, the year is 1975. The poet still lives in the tent, and Baltzi comes to visit. The process of building the new Bedouin towns has already begun. It's only a beginning, and the landscape is really changing before their very eyes.
They are sitting in the summer of 1975, hiding from the terrible sun in the shade of even at the sun's tent. And looking just around, they see quite a lot of sheds, quite a lot of new buildings. These are not stone buildings. These are mostly sheds still found today made out of metal.
And it seems to me that Baltzi is witnessing the birth of a poem. I cannot be totally sure about it, but the poet, Sliman Awad, even Aida San, says, and I read in English, and later if you allow me also in Arabic. He says to Baltzi, if you build yourself a shed, you save a loaf of bread. Alibibniletsliff, the waafil al-anafsil riff.
And the meaning is, if you build yourself a shed, that is, you lose the tent, and you close the door. And if someone wants to visit you and someone is hungry, wants to eat with you, you can close the door and no one will enter. The tent did not allow it. The tent was open, specifically the guest tent.
The shig was open. So you save a loaf of bread. It's like an architectural manifestation of those values that change. We do not see generosity as we used to see.
It is a pity. It's an nostalgic tone, but nostalgia is always actually about the present, isn't it? And then it seems that he continues his poem by saying to Baltzi, we wish to say, if the house is of barrels made, then go straight away, don't hesitate. For dinner, chicken, the light, just a lamp, and the car is ready to fly off.
That is, if it is a shed, then you will not find what you want. But there's no generosity. For dinner, you will only get chicken. Now you might think that the chicken for dinner is a good thing, but in better terms of the world of yesterday, it's a bad thing, because an honorable way to respect a guest is not chicken, but lamp.
Chicken is disrespectful for the guests, at least in terms of the old ways. And the light, the true light, was a fire around which people sat and exchanged their experiences and felt together. The warmth and the light itself, the color, just a pale lamp, and the car is ready to fly off. They don't have enough time for you.
And in the past, of course, it was not the car beside the tent, but the camel or the horse. And if a guest came, then you had all the time in the world for a guest. Whenever I speak with my friend, the poet's son, he always says, you can always come. You are always invited.
I'm always at my chig. Actually saying to me something like, I keep the old ways, but his father, the poet, laments this image change. And I read, if you allow me in Arabic, Witten and Goul, a bit stool, a bit shalat, to let it hang out. And I'll show you a judge, a dog, a slag, a bit tail.
That actually is not the cab, it is the private car. Ready to fly off, I don't have enough time for you. I mean, not me, of course. I have over time for you in the world.
But the poet says, we've changed. And it is the continuation of this poem, just three other verses that he says in the same encounter in the same afternoon in the summer of 1975. And he continues this train of thought with those three verses, saying, where are the coffee pots? Where is the coffee ground spile?
Where are the tents resting on seven rows of poles? Man of valor and good deeds are all gone. White tents have been replaced with sheds. The justice has gone and had a twirled hebon.
Truth is a way and the merchants of justice fallen. Where did L'Al? Where did Calvit Mili? Where did Biotia, Al-Saram, done?
Racham Hashanah, by being a Jami'li. U'Alil Fa'weis, by the Luhann Beselfan. Uso dogirach, ukatsal, bilhjalili. Rachisir, utaju, utaju, ukhasan.
That is, the whole world, the world of coffee pots, the world of the coffee grounds, pile, put in a certain place in the tent. Those tents resting on seven rows of poles, that is, tents of wealthy people, that they are always open. You can always find refuge, drink coffee, rest there, eat your meal there, stay a few days. This is all gone.
Because men of valor and good deeds are all gone. Gone, that is Racham in Arabic, the same meaning in English. They are gone, but also dead. They are not with us anymore.
Those tents have been replaced again with Cilfan. The word in Arabic is Cilfan, but it's not an Arabic word. My last insight, if you allow me, is a Hebrew word. It's the plural form of Arabic, of an Hebrew word, and the word in Hebrew is Cilfan.
In Hebrew is a shed. So the poet uses Hebrew to indicate the pejorative aspect of this tremendous transformation, associated with the fact that we live in a Jewish land, with Jewish technology, with Jewish planning, etc., lamenting those old ways. Thank you. That was beautiful.
That was one of the poems that I myself thought was most interesting when I was reading your book, because my research is on architectural practices among the better one. I thought that poem was such an evocative description of how architectural typologies changed and in turn kind of foster social changes. That was really interesting to me. There's a lot more that I would love to talk to you about, but I think I've taken up enough of your time today.
I will say thank you so much for coming on to talk to me about the Negevetoan and their poetry, and thank you for writing your book, which is I found beautifully written, not just the poems that are contained within it, but also how you sort of explicate on the history and culture of the Negevetoan and we've poetry into that story. So I highly recommend the book to readers of all backgrounds. Thank you so much, Maggie. A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors making sure my card doesn't get stolen.
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