NAJWA Kawar FARAH

KAWAR FARAH In Memoriam Najwa Kawar Farah 1923 - 2015 Najwa Kawar Farah passed away on August 1, in Toronto, Canada, beloved wife of the Rev. Archdeacon, Rafik Farah, sister of Irfan Kawar Shahid, Emeritus Oman Professor of Arabic & Islamic Literature, Georgetown University, mother of Amin, Nabil, Randa and Karma Farah, grandmother of Rima, Jumana, Samir Farah; of Samar, Rima and Saree Farah; of Bashshar Farah; of Tiyana and Alexander Dulanovic. Najwa was born in Nazareth, Palestine, to parents Arif and Adma Marmura Kawar. She studied at Nazareth and Jerusalem, and taught at Nazareth and Tiberia. After her marriage to the Rev. Rafik Farah, she lived in Haifa, Palestine and in Ramallah, and in Beirut, Lebanon, London, and finally, in Toronto, Canada. Najwa passed away full of years and honors. Quite early in her life, she appeared as an eloquent public speaker. She addressed audiences in Nazareth, Acre, and various cities of British Mandated Palestine, and in Amman, Jordan, in London, in Sweden and in Toronto. Her many essays were published in the Arabic periodicals of Bilad al-Sham and also in London and in Holland. Her publications were characterized by diversity: the short story was her forte, all in Arabic; such have been Pedestrians, Roads & Lanterns, and The Meeting; plays and dramas, such as The Secret of Shahrazade, The King of Glory, autobiographies such as Memoirs of a Journey, and The Journey of Grief and Benefaction. Her publications come to fifteen. Although Najwa was a prose writer, poetry, not in its classical form of metered and rhymed verse, but in the modern style since Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot, she wrote; in this style, much of it is still in manuscript form. Many pieces were communions and soliloquies, perhaps inspired by her name in Arabic Najwa, which as a mystic term, means communion with God or Self - a soliloquy or a personal prayer. A major publication of hers, Morning and Evening: The Dictates of Memory, was published by the Palestinian Cultural Ministry in Ramallah, 2013, and was prepared for publication by Lima Nabil and Yusuf Abd-al-Aziz, the poet who wrote an Introduction for the book. It was remembered in June 2014 in Amman, Jordan, and saluted by the Association of Innovative Writers. Her last days on Earth were compounded of pleasure and pain, that of the "innumerable ills that flesh is heir to". She witnessed the wedding of two of her grandchildren, Bashshar and Samir in Canada and England. The Church of St. Andrew in Toronto celebrated her life and achievements as a Christian from the Holy Land, which she remembered in her work. The celebration included touching valedictions from her sons and grandsons. Najwa belonged to a family of priests; her husband is the Rev. Archdeacon, Rafik Farah, her maternal uncle was the Rev. Elias Marmura, Pastor of the Church of St. Paul in Jerusalem, and Michael Kawar (Mikhail) was a distant relative, who was the first convert from the Arab Christian Orthodox Faith to the Protestant. So, in the Christian Faith of the certainty of the Resurrection, Najwa passed away and in the Arabic language she loved: 'Ala Raja' al-Kiyama.'Ala Raja' al-Kiyama.