Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Fayeq Mohammed Ali Al-Ayadhi
Pen Name: Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel
Born
Fayeq Mohammed Ali Al-Ayadhi

(1948-05-05)May 5, 1948
Kuwait
DiedUnknown, missing January 3, 1991 (aged 42) and declared dead June 18, 2006 (aged 58)
His remains were found in a mass grave in Iraq desert, West of Karbala city.
Cause of deathExecuted – Bullet wound to the head
Resting placeKuwait, Al-Sulaibikat cemetery
NationalityKuwait
OccupationPoet
Years active1964–1990
Signature

Fayeq Mohammed Al-Ayadhi (

invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and he was the best known of more than 600 Kuwaiti civilians who were held as prisoners of war by Saddam Hussein
's government. He was never seen by his family or friends again until his remains were unearthed in the Iraqi desert in 2004. The timing and manner of his death is a matter of some enduring mystery.

Life and work

[2] The poet is pictured in childhood in the 1950s.  He is in one of Kuwait City's neighborhoods.

Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel was born in

Federico Garcia Lorca.[2][3]

To earn a living, Abdul-Jaleel worked for the municipality of Kuwait City and also acted as an advocate for the arts for the Kuwaiti Information Ministry, traveling extensively throughout the Arab world. He also ran his own advertising agency. He married his cousin Salma Al-Abdi in 1967 and had five children: Gadah (born 1971), Fares (1972), Raja (1978), Sara (1983) and Nouf (1985).

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

Poem which is in the handwriting of the poet.This heartfelt poem was written during the occupation of Kuwait to inspire Kuwaitis with his songs and poems.[4][5]

When Iraqi forces unexpectedly overran Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Abdul-Jaleel was caught in Kuwait City with his wife and four-year-old daughter Nouf. He embarked on a high-risk adventure to drive his wife and child to the desert border with

1991 Gulf War from the family's kitchen table.[6]
Rather, he joined a loose civilian resistance movement as poet along with a handful of fellow musicians and friends. Together, they wrote and recorded poems and music intended to embolden the Kuwaiti population against the invaders.[7] They had a whole system in place, involving a network of women who hid the cassettes they recorded in the fold of abayahs and distributed them from house to house.

They were, however, victims of their own success. Kuwaitis talked so much about the poems and songs that the Iraqis got wind of them, worked out who was responsible and, on January 3, 1991, arrested the lot of them.

Poem we stay Kuwaiti[8]

We stay Kuwaiti

We stay .... We stay Kuwaiti

We die and live as Kuwaiti

No numbers, no benzene

No society .... No supply

To shake the patriotic people

And we stay .... We stay Kuwaiti

     November – 1990

His last letter to his wife

Dear mother of Fares,

Greetings.. Love.. Appreciation.. For you and the children..

Last letter the poet wrote to his wife.The letter she found when she returned to Kuwait but her husband was imprisoned.

I hope you are steadfast in exile, as I am steadfast at home.

Today, Friday, the time is four oclock in the morning, the place is

my bedroom, and under the light of the lampshades that constantly

stick to my head.

I promised you that I would leave Kuwait Thursday. I went and sat browsing through my

thoughts that multiply and then become one idea. Which is the idea of steadfastness ...

I discovered that staying in Kuwait gives me immunity, strength and toughness, and my

staying here does not mean that I do not need you. I need you most.. But Kuwait

desperately needs me..

Do your national duty in exile to the fullest. And do what you can offer with your Kuwaiti

brothers. Until the hour of joy.[9]

The journey of efforts to release the poet and the Kuwaiti prisoners

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Gadah Al-Ayadhi, who is the oldest daughter of the poet.After the liberation of Kuwait.The British Prime Minister who was holding the poetry of the beloved poet. Promised that she would help to gain the release of her father, and the other Kuwaiti POWS still imprisoned.
Above is another daughter of the beloved poet, Sara Al- Ayadhi in Rome with the Emir of Kuwait where they appeared in the Italian Presidential palace.They met with the Italian President Francesco Cossiga who also promised to push for the release of Sara father, the poet beloved by so many.

After the liberation of Kuwait, the State of Kuwait carried out international endeavors at a high level of representation headed by the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh / Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who accompanied in his international trips Sarah, the daughter of the captive poet at that time, to read a letter asking the kings and heads of those countries to help release the Kuwaiti prisoners in Iraq, including her poet father.[10]

A letter written by the poet from the prison

In 2000, the Kuwaiti authorities found an ambiguous letter in the handwriting of the poet Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel, which was received by a Mauritanian novelist, who was invited to a cultural conference in Iraq. An unknown person (believed to be one of the security elements attached to the Special Security Agency of Qusay Saddam Hussein) came to her carrying that message to her for the purpose of delivering it to the Kuwaiti diplomatic mission in the Mauritanian capital (Nouakchott). The details of that story were mentioned in a television interview with the official concerned with the issue of Kuwaiti prisoners at the Ministry of Interior at that time.[11]

Message text:

I am the poet Fayeq Abdul -Jaleel, I am in Basra, but I do not know the place or the time. I forgot to write, read, poetry, birds and children

My regards to Raja, Fares and the girls... Is mother of Fares present?               

I was sick and the Iraqi authorities treated me well, but I feel alienated, lonely and disappointed

Send news to Kuwait?

Send news to Nizar Qabbani.. I have largely forgotten poetry.. I am here, but where am I?

I wrote these letters with the help of this Mauritanian woman whose name I cannot mention. Send me the news of everything

I'm Fayeq .. I'm Fayeq .. I'm Fayeq

Is Raja present? Is Fares present?

Is Kuwait still Kuwait or not?

Workers inspired by his poems

Many people were inspired by Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel's poems and songs here are some examples:

1- In fact, (Deira Opera.. We stay Kuwaitis)[12] was the first Kuwaiti opera song that expressed Abdul-Jaleel's extreme love for his country it was inspired by poem he wrote during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait called (We stay Kuwaiti) and it was produced under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al- Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait.  This opera was produced and presented at the Amiri Diwan by the Martyr's Office in 2015,[13] many years after Abdul-Jaleel was imprisoned and murdered.[14][15]

2- In 2000 musical score was written by Dr. Suleiman Al-Degan in. This music was inspired by the poem titled (Restoring Life),[16] which was a part of the Diwan (Story of My Silence).

Honoring the poet

Arab Theater Day in 1977 which honored the poet.

1. Honoring on the Arab Theater Day to honor the theater artist - Kuwait in 1977 under the patronage of Sheikh Salem Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah.

2. Honor from the Kuwaiti Theater Troupe in 2003 - for a course in enriching the Kuwaiti theatrical movement.

3. Honor from the National Conference (from Kuwait we start and to Kuwait we finish) - session 10 - 2013.

4. Honoring from the 21st Qurain Cultural Festival under the auspices of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters - Kuwait 2015.

Imprisonment and death

Many mourners attended the official funeral of the poet.  Here his body is being taken to his final place of rest in his beloved Kuwait.[3]

The fate of the Kuwaiti prisoners has never been determined with any precision. The US government now believes they were probably all executed shortly after the end of the Gulf War. But that was not the US position before the 2003 invasion of Iraq; in fact, the return of the prisoners was cited as a secondary reason for launching the invasion in the first place. Throughout the 1990s, the Arab-language media reported occasional sightings of Abdul-Jaleel and other prisoners in one location or another.[17]

His remains were unearthed from a shallow

DNA tests. According to his death certificate
, issued by the Kuwaiti Health Ministry in June 2006, he had been dead for more than 10 years at the time his remains were discovered. However, the DNA test, conducted by the Interior Ministry and obtained by Abdul-Jaleel's family, suggested the remains were of a man in his early fifties – the age he would have been around the time of the 2003 invasion.

June 20, 2006 the ceremony of Fayeq Abdul –Jaleel at the Sulaibikat cemetery in Kuwait.

Abdul-Jaleel's son, Fares Al-Ayadhi, has conducted numerous interviews with people who claim to have seen his father down the years, including an indirect contact with a man who says he was the commander at a prison outside Basra where Al-Ayadhi was held. The younger Al-Ayadhi's information, which has neither been confirmed nor refuted by the Kuwaiti authorities, suggests that Abdul-Jaleel and a number of other prisoners deemed to be of high value to Saddam's government were kept alive for several years.

Al-Ayadhi believes his father was held first in

sentenced to death shortly before the start of the US invasion in March 2003, driven into the desert and shot.[19]

Abdul-Jaleel's body was brought back to Kuwait where he was buried on June 20, 2006, in Kuwait City's Sulaibikhat Cemetery. The ceremony was attended by the deputy prime minister, defence minister, acting interior minister and several other government dignitaries.[20]

Poet's eulogy

Happier days for the poet when in the 1970s he visited London.

On June 20, 2006, Kuwait officially announced the martyrdom of Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel, when the Kuwaiti Minister of Information at the time,

Mohammed Nasser Al-Sanousi, the martyr poet, declared:[21]

((Verily, Fayeq Abdul-Jaleel has never been absent from us and has not disappeared from our minds and hearts. He is a spot of light that takes its place next to the radiant light bouquets that represent our martyrs. He added that the martyr poet is a wonderful and great national symbol in which we pride ourselves through time among peoples and Nations)).

References

  1. ^ [1] Archived October 1, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "الأرشيف". www.aawsat.com. Archived from the original on September 10, 2012. Retrieved November 10, 2010.
  3. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on July 22, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ^ ""نموت.. نعيش.. كويتيين"". العربية (in Arabic). August 16, 2016. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  5. ^ "نبقى.. نبقى كويتيين". النشرة الدولية - Alnashra Aaldawlia - International Daily bulletin (in Arabic). August 2, 2021. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  6. ^ "فائق عبد الجليل.. عاشق الوطن ورجل "المعادلة الصعبة"". Aawsat.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2012. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
  7. YouTube
  8. ^ قصة نبقى, retrieved March 3, 2022
  9. ^ "فائق عبد الجليل "الشرق الأوسط" حقائق عن أشهر أسير كويتي:,". archive.aawsat.com. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  10. ^ ""القبس" تنشر الوثائق البريطانية عن الغزو (1)". جريدة القبس. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
  11. ^ لقاء اللواء المتقاعد فيصل الجزاف في برنامج (ليالي الكويت) عن ملف الأسرى و المفقودين, retrieved March 21, 2022
  12. ^ Deira Opera.. We stay Kuwaitis, retrieved March 21, 2022
  13. ^ "كونا : (أوبرا ديرة..ونبقى كويتيين) عمل أوبرالي كويتي تغنى بحب الوطن - احتفالات - 23/02/2015". www.kuna.net.kw. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  14. ^ "Deira Opera". Kuwait Martyr Bureau (in Arabic). October 1, 2015. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  15. ^ "أوبرا ديرة نبقى كويتيين إنجاز تاريخي فني يؤكد ريادة درة الخليج". www.alanba.com.kw (in Arabic). Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  16. ^ 04 Rud Al Hayat sulaiman aldikan سليمان الديكان, retrieved March 21, 2022
  17. ^ "الوضوح مفتاح أزمات العراق - عبد الرحمن الراشد". www.aawsat.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2010.
  18. ^ "رسالتان أفرحتا الكويت وآلمتاه بعد فقدانه..وصدام حسين تابع ملفه شخصيا..!!".
  19. ^ "زوجة فائق عبد الجليل تكشف لأول مرة لـ "الشرق الأوسط" حقائق عن أشهر أسير كويتي:,". www.aawsat.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2010.
  20. ^ "كونا : حدث في مثل هذا اليوم في الكويت - عام - 19/06/2021". www.kuna.net.kw. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  21. ^ "كونا : وزير الاعلام يؤبن الشاعر الشهيد فائق عبدالجليل - الإعلام - 21/06/2006". www.kuna.net.kw. Retrieved March 3, 2022.
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