Put it on record — I am an Arab And the number of my card is fifty thousand I have eight children And the ninth is due after summer. What's there to … - Mahmoud Darwish

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Put it on record — I am an Arab
And the number of my card is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is due after summer.
What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record. — I am an Arab
Working with comrades of toil in a quarry.
I have eight childern
For them I wrest the loaf of bread,
The clothes and exercise books
From the rocks
And beg for no alms at your doors, — Lower not myself at your doorstep. — What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record. — I am an Arab.
I am a name without a tide,
Patient in a country where everything
Lives in a whirlpool of anger. — My roots — Took hold before the birth of time — Before the burgeoning of the ages, — Before cypess and olive trees, — Before the proliferation of weeds.

My father is from the family of the plough — Not from highborn nobles.
And my grandfather was a peasant — Without line or genealogy.
My house is a watchman's hut — Made of sticks and reeds.
Does my status satisfy you? — I am a name without a surname.

Put it on Record. — I am an Arab.
Color of hair: jet black.
Color of eyes: brown.
My distinguishing features: — On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh — Scratching him who touches it.
My address: — I'm from a village, remote, forgotten, — Its streets without name — And all its men in the fields and quarry. — What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record. — I am an Arab.
You stole my forefathers' vineyards — And land I used to till, — I and all my childern, — And you left us and all my grandchildren — Nothing but these rocks. — Will your government be taking them too — As is being said?

So! — Put it on record at the top of page one: — I don't hate people, — I trespass on no one's property.
And yet, if I were to become starved — I shall eat the flesh of my usurper. — Beware, beware of my starvation. — And of my anger!