But the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the subsequent Israeli massacres in Gaza removed the dust from what some thought had been forgotten, and prompted me to rediscover one of the most important songs that sung at the time and heralded the return, even if only after a while. The poem was written in 1948 – the year of the Nakba – by the Palestinian poet and politician Haroun Hashem Rashid (1927-2020), the son of Gaza City, and its opening says, “My brother, no matter how much the night guides them, we will see the dawn, and no matter how much poverty subsides us, tomorrow we will destroy poverty, my brother, and the black tent has become a grave for us. Tomorrow we will turn it into a pasture and build a palace over it.” This poem consists of eleven lines, and its author ends it by saying, “Palestine that is gone will return again.”
This poem may have achieved wide fame in literary circles due to the fame of its poet, who was called the Poet of Return, but entire generations do not know that about seventy years ago it was transformed into a song in the voice of singer and composer Mohamed Fawzi. In a painstaking step, I discovered through research and investigation into the Egyptian radio records that Muhammad Fawzi had asked permission from the poet Haroun Hashim Rashid, who was working at the time as director of the Voice of the Arabs radio office in Gaza, which had been under Egyptian rule since 1948, to compose and produce that poem at his own expense. And dedicated it to Egyptian Radio. The song was recorded on January 24, 1956, under the title “You Will Return Again,” before the name was changed to “The Return Song,” according to what was written on the recording tape of the twelve-minute song. Muhammad Fawzi composed and sang this song in the year The same one in which he put the melody of the Algerian national anthem…
(Singer Mohamed Ghazi…did he sing the same poem)
It is noteworthy that Egyptian radio records also indicate the existence of another song with the same name, recorded only two days after this date, in the voice of the Palestinian singer Muhammad Ghazi (1922 – 1979), from the city of Jaffa, who achieved his singing glory in Lebanon with Fayrouz and the Rahbanis. I was not able to find out. Whether it is the same song written by Hashem Rashid and composed by Muhammad Fawzi or not, especially since the tape recording the song does not contain any data, and it was not possible to listen to it in that detective adventure and compare it to the first one. But it seems to me, or likely, that it is not the poem itself, and that the error in recording the data on the tape recording the song is due to the fact that Muhammad Ghazi had received at this particular time an invitation from Ahmed Saeed, director of Sawt Al Arab Radio, to record a group of national songs, including a poem. “This is my land and this is my country,” which was also written by Haroun Hashim Rashid, author of the Song of Return, and that the poem sung by Ghazi was recorded for Egyptian radio on the aforementioned date (January 26, 1956). It is not logical for Mohamed Fawzi to give his song to another voice only two days after recording it, even if that voice was Mohamed Ghazi, who had a strong voice and skillful performance.
(Harun Hashim Rashid)
According to what Haroun Hashim Rashid said about the circumstances of writing this poem, in an interview with one of the Egyptian channels, five years before his death, he wrote it in the wake of the Great Nakba, and he went on to say: “In the year 1948, the biggest explosion of my poetry was when I saw that my brothers and my family were from the cities.” The prosperous Palestine, where people from all over the world used to come, immigrating to Gaza in simple processions, we carried them on our shoulders and took them to mosques and schools as temporary shelter centers, before we set up the first camp for them, and circumstances were such that I would be the first to strike the first stake in the first camp. For the refugees on the shores of Gaza, and until that time I had not published any of my poems, and inspired by what I saw or out of horror, I wrote my first poem, “You Will Come Back Again.” At that time, I began to think about the reality of the families who came from cities that I knew well, such as Haifa, Jaffa, and Lod. And Ramla, and how they lived in luxurious homes and owned orchards, companies, factories, and institutes, and how their situation reached after the Nakba, forcibly displaced and shrouded in despair. So I felt intense fear towards them, and decided to instill in them with my poems hope of returning home, and I wrote: My brother, no matter what the night leads them to, we will see the dawn.. To the verse in which I say: Palestine that is gone will return again, and it is the poem that the great singer Muhammad Fawzi later sings.”
This poem became widespread in Gaza after it was sung by Muhammad Fawzi from Voice of Arabs radio. The Ramadan conjurers in all areas of the Gaza Strip would wake up the fasting people every night with the end of the poem: “Palestine, which is gone, will return again.” A large banner was hung across the width of the Bureij camp, in which the verse was written: The poetry itself did not represent happiness and pride for the author of the poem, who received many titles, including Poet of the Nakba, Poet of Return, and Poet of the Revolution.
Haroun Hashem Rashid, who died in Canada on July 27, 2020, at the age of ninety-three, had begun his career in the field of education, before assuming the position of director of the Voice of Arab Radio office in Gaza, and then held many positions in the Palestine Liberation Organization and the League of Nations. Arabic. He has 22 collections of collections, and more than one play, the most famous of which is “The Fall of Bar Lev,” which was presented by the National Theater in Egypt in 1974, starring Karam Motawa and Suhair Al-Morshedy. Many Arab voices other than Mohamed Fawzi sang his poems, such as Faida Kamel, Mohamed Qandil, and Talal Maddah…
