Biographies: Nizar Qabbani - Actor

Biographies

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A Syrian poet, known as the Women's Poet. He was born in Damascus and obtained a baccalaureate from the National Scientific College School in Damascus. He joined the Faculty of Law at the Syrian University and graduated in 1944. He then worked in the diplomatic corps at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and moved between its embassies in Cairo, London, Beirut, and Madrid, and after the completion of the unification between Egypt and Syria in 1959, he was appointed Second Secretary of the United Republic at its embassy in China, and he continued to work in the diplomatic corps until he resigned from it in 1966. The clerics in Syria had demanded his expulsion from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and his dismissal from diplomatic work in the mid-1950s after the publication of his famous poem "Bread, Hashish, and the Moon". He began writing poetry when he was 16 years old, and published his first collection of poems "The Brunette Told Me" in 1944. He had a large number of poetry collections, amounting to 35, which he wrote over the course of more than half a century, including "Nahd’s Childhood", "Samba" and "You Are Mine". He married twice, the first time was to a Syrian woman named Zahra, with whom he had Hadba, Tawfiq, and Zahraa. Tawfiq died of heart disease when he was 17 years old. His second wife was the Iraqi woman Balqis al-Rawi, who was killed in the explosion of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in 1982. He mourned her in a famous poem bearing the name "Balqis". He had two children with her, Omar and Zainab. He lived the final years of his life alone in an apartment in London.

• 18 July 2024
• Shaimaa Saied