VARIETY . SPICE . LIFE

The lyrics include a poem by Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008).

Darwish was impressed by the Iraqi poets Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayati and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.^[6] He cited Rimbaud and Ginsberg as literary influences.^[5] Darwish admired the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai, but described his poetry as a “challenge to me, because we write about the same place. He wants to use the landscape and history for his own benefit, based on my destroyed identity. So we have a competition: who is the owner of the language of this land? Who loves it more? Who writes it better?

[2002 Poet of the Arab world by Maya Jaggi, Originally printed in the Guardian]