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Cairo: Iraq's renowned poetess, Nazek Al Malaika, famous as the first to write Arabic poetry in free verse rather than classical rhyme, died on Wednesday in a Cairo hospital. She was 85.
"Nazek died of old age in Cairo, where she had lived in self-imposed exile since 1990," said Nizar Marjan, the Iraqi consul in the Egyptian capital.
Born in Baghdad in 1922 to a mother who was also a poet and a father who was a teacher, Nazek, the oldest among seven siblings, discovered love for literature early in life, writing her first poem at the age of 10.
She graduated in 1944 from the College of Arts in Baghdad, where she also studied music. Ten years later, she travelled to the United States to study and received a Master's degree in comparative literature from Wisconsin University.
In 1947, Nazek published her first collection of poems under the title Night's Lover. She was greatly influenced by Shakespeare and Shelley.
In 1949 came her second collection, entitled Sparks and Ashes. Two years later, she won fame outside Iraq. Her third collection, entitled Bottom of the Wave was published in 1957, and the fourth, Tree of the Moon, in 1968.
Nazek left Iraq in 1970, just two years after Saddam Hussain's Baath Party came to power. She lived in Kuwait until Saddam's 1990 invasion, when she left Kuwait City for Cairo.
She preferred solitude and rarely socialised. In her memoirs, she wrote: "I discovered that I was unable to express my mind-set and emotions like others. I chose loneliness, silence and shyness. And when I realised that I have to break this cycle in my nature, I was in a deep struggle with myself. I was taking one step forward and ten steps backward."
In 1961, Nazek married Abdul Hadi Mahbooba, who died two years ago. She is survived by a son.
'Dear daughter of Iraq'
In a press statement from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's office which was carried on Elaf website, she was described as "the dear daughter of Iraq".
"The prime minister has received the news with great sadness," the statement said. "He condoles the family of the late poet, the dear daughter of Iraq, and all Iraqi poets and intellectuals.
"Al Malaika had always been attached to her nation, being the daughter of a good family who taught her about culture, until she became one of the leaders of the modernisation of Arabic poetry."
-Gulf News Report
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