Sunday, January 30, 2011

Tunisian Poet, Abul-Qasim Ash-Shabi

It has been mentioned that Abu Al-Qasim Ash-Shabi is now the poet of the moment in the Arab world.  Anthony Shadid mentions him today in his article.  But people only refer to two lines of his poetry when he has many other good poems (I wrote about him two weeks ago here).  But now there is a variation (being circulated by Arabs on Facebook and twitter) of his most famous line of poetry which goes like this:
"If people ever willed to live, it is certain that destiny shall favorably respond"
The new variation is: "If people ever willed to live, it is certain that Twitter will favorably respond" (it rhymes in Arabic)
إذا الشعب يوماً أراد الحياة, فلا بدّ أن يستجيب توتر