BAGHDAD —
Iraq’s renowned communist poet Muzaffar Al-Nawab,
who faced jail time and exile in the 1960s, died Friday in an Emirati hospital
aged 88, Iraqi authorities announced.
اضافة اعلان
The culture ministry said he died after a long
battle against illness, without giving details.
“He lives on in the spirit of all those who sing his
immortal poems,” President Barham Saleh tweeted.
Born in 1934 into a prominent
Baghdad family, Nawab
was renowned for his poems filled with revolutionary fervor, a commitment to
the communist cause and criticism of Arab dictatorships.
His stands led to spells in prison, as well as
periods of exile in Iran, Damascus, Beirut, and European capitals.
Nawab is credited with having integrated colloquial
Iraqi Arabic into his works.
He last visited Iraq in 2011, when he was received
in grand pomp by the presidency.
Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi called
Friday for his body to be repatriated by ministerial aircraft.
The poems of Nawab, who was unmarried and had no
children, were often evoked during the autumn 2019 wave of youth-led
anti-corruption protests that swept Iraq.
“Why did Muzaffar Al-Nawab die in the Emirates? ... Because
you’ve governed Iraq for 19 years, because Baghdad hospitals do not treat
patients, because the country is not livable,” Iraqi journalist Omar Al-Janabi
tweeted.
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