“Goodbye War, Goodbye Peace” is the title of a book by Mahmoud Darwish that includes prose articles and thoughts written in 1974. It came to reflect the embodiment of the historical moment that the Palestinian cause went through in its conflict with the Israeli occupier.
A first reading of the text suggests a conscious creative effort based on well-structured structures, making the recipient feel as if they are dealing with a project whose ideas and foundations were already prepared. In introducing this work, Darwish wrote: “This book… Margins of the October 1973 War… was written during the stages of waiting, explosion, and return waiting. The author dedicates it to the blood of the Arab martyrs and fighters, which drew the features of a new image of the Arab presence in the world. And it left without asking what we should do with its great gifts.” After this introduction to the text, the author gives the book three main titles: First: A Horse Loves a Gazelle; Second: Good Morning, Joy!; Third: What Did You Do with the Autumn… O Sarhan. From this title, the book’s title was derived: “Goodbye War.. Goodbye Peace.” In it, the focus is on closed spaces in the literary work.. One door for more than one cell or: One door for all the cells.” Thus, Darwish begins describing the labyrinth in which “Sarhan” lives inside his cell, to tell us that both the prisoner and the jailer are deprived of freedom. “The guard was asleep. And Sarhan’s dream was wandering, free, in the space of the cell.” The text also highlights the writer’s philosophy on war and peace: “Why did you lose peace? Because I lost war.” Peace is born only from the end of war…” In the textual space, the prison room or “cell” stands out as an important psychological place and a structural indicator of the presence of the prisoner’s character in the literary work. In this regard, it becomes a form of the human experience – in the event of war – and an extension of it, and also to be the stage of the event in which the heroic character (prisoner Sarhan) will appear and establish its connotations in the text through it. “One door to more than one cell. It is: the door of freedom. He wrote down the following sentence: Goodbye, war! He felt that it was an incomplete sentence, and a synonymous sentence fell from it: Goodbye, homeland!”