Enough for Me
كفاني
Touqan's brief late poem asks for one thing only — to die on her country's soil and remain there as dust, grass, and a flower. Its lines are carved on her gravestone in Nablus.
كفاني أموت عليها وأدفن فيها
وتحت ترابها أذوب وأفنى
كفاني أظل بحضن بلادي تراباً وعشباً وزهرة
Enough for me to die on her earth be buried in her to melt and vanish into her soil then sprout forth as a flower played with by a child from my country.
(excerpt)
About this poem
“Enough for Me” (Kifani — “it is enough for me”) closes Fadwa Touqan’s autobiography Rihla Jabaliyya, Rihla Sa’ba (1985), published in English as A Mountainous Journey (1990) in Olive Kenny’s translation. In ten short lines the poem asks for a single gift: to die on her country’s earth and to stay in its embrace as a handful of dust, a sprig of grass, a flower a child plays with.
The poem is sometimes confused with al-Mutanabbi’s classical line “It is enough of a sickness that you see death as the cure” (kifa bika da’an…) — Touqan’s text is a separate, modern poem. Its words proved so definitive of her bond with Palestine that they were inscribed on her grave after her death in Nablus in December 2003.
Sources
- Enough For Me — Literary Theory and Criticism (English translation, from A Mountainous Journey)
- الشاعرة فدوى طوقان — Palestinian Ministry of Culture (Arabic text, as inscribed on her grave)