In a small valley in Irbid around 1899, just as the 19th century was about to come to a close and the 20th was about to begin, a mother lay in a small house about to give birth. Her husband waited by her side as his mother and the townswomen helped his wife through the trials of childbirth. The father, Abu Mustafa as he would later be called, was not worried, as his wife was described as “blasphemously stubborn” according to her child’s close friend and biographer Ya’qoub Al-Oudat many years later.

Finally, on the 25th of May 1899, Mustafa Wahbi Tal was born to an illiterate father and a stubborn mother. This young child would go on to become the most celebrated Jordanian poet and political commentator in history.

Childhood

From a young age, Mustafa suffered from rhotacism, a speech impediment characterized by the inability to pronounce ‘r’ sounds. His family, Bedouins descended from the Bani Zaydan tribe, had migrated from Najd in Arabia to the Levant around the 18th century. They were called “Tal” because the family had made their home under the Citadel in Amman, which was built on a hill, or in Arabic, “tal.” Three decades later, they relocated to Irbid and decided to stay there.

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Not much is known about his childhood, but we do know that in 1911 Mustafa finished his primary school education, and in 1912 he headed to Damascus to complete his studies, where he almost immediately got into trouble. He and his classmates led a strike against the Ottoman administration in the city. During the strike, the Ottoman governor of Damascus, Ismail Fazıl Pasha, and the Turkish Education Principal came to visit the school. In a show of his true Jordanian heritage, the young Mustafa – in the middle of the principal’s speech, mind you – walked right between his classmates, pointed his finger at the governor, and loudly shouted, “This man is a charlatan liar!”

This was the start of Mustafa’s constant trouble with authorities, and the school administration took notice, calling him by his new nickname “field mouse” due to his constant challenging of authority and the pranks he led.

Young Adulthood

It had been two years of constant war in Europe as the “war to end all wars” continued to rage, but in the small city of Irbid, a young Mustafa was coming back home for his summer vacation, and his mother’s stubborn genes were starting to come out in full force. So stubborn was Mustafa described during that short summer vacation that his father decided his son had a little too much of the freedom of Damascus and forced him to stay in Irbid and work at the local private school called the Ottoman Salihhya School. Of course, Mustafa got bored quickly and decided that a change of scenery was in order. So, on 20 June 1917, Mustafa and his friend Mohammad Subhi Abu Ghnaimeh headed to the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul, for a visit – but he never got there.

Adventures of the Youth

As Mustafa and his friend made their way to the capital, they passed by a small village hidden in the Anatolian mountains called Arapgir, where Tal’s uncle and his friend’s brother lived. Instead of heading to Istanbul, he stayed there and decided to marry Munifa Baban, a Kurdish woman from the area. Looking to settle down a little, he began working for Eskişehir, a small local magazine.

But as we know, that’s not the end of the story. In true fashion reminiscent of his chaotic youth, he became bored after five months of working at the magazine and resigned in March 1919. He left his wife at his uncle’s house and returned to Irbid in April. He spent the summer there and convinced his father to send him back to Anbur School in Damascus to complete his high school education.

Run-in with the Law

While studying to complete his education, in 1919 he published a joke in the Damascene Brotherhood Magazine:

بين الخرابيش لا حرص ولا طمع
ولا احتراب على فلس ودينـار
بين الخرابيش لا مـال ولا نسب
ولا احتراب على حرص وإيثار
ولا هيــام بألقـاب وأوسمــة
ولا ارتفاع ولا خفض بأقـدار
الكـل زط مســاواة محققــة
تنفي الفوارق بين الجار والجار

– So our friend is sick?
– Yes, he has kidney stones.
– It appears his heart has made its way to his kidney.

Mustafa was promptly arrested, as his joke was very clearly directed at Ali Rikabi, the Military Governor of the Arab Kingdom of Syria, a kingdom established in the Levant following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire towards the end of World War I. Shortly after being released from jail, and in another episode of Mustafa’s rebellious and stubborn temperament, he and the students at Anbur demanded that the school principal provide them with military training to fight the French authorities in Syria. The principal told them that those who wanted to join the military should volunteer, while those interested in science should stay in school. Mustafa told him he wanted to make the school a military training camp, to which his principal replied, “You want it to be a military training camp with a cigarette in your mouth?”

Mustafa promptly threw the cigarette right at him, burning the principal’s pants.

Turkish Travels

 

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Before graduating, Mustafa participated in another strike that resulted in his expulsion to Aleppo with his friend Abu Ghnaimeh. During his time in Aleppo, Mustafa mastered Turkish and learned some Persian. Al-Oudat stated that it was during his stay in Aleppo that Mustafa read the Rubaiyat of Persian poet Omar Khayyam and translated Après La Bataille from French. Mustafa somehow obtained his high school degree from the Aleppo Preparatory School after his years of antics. The Arab Syrian Kingdom was toppled by the French in 1920, and an Emirate over Transjordan was established in early 1921 by the Hashemite Emir Abdullah of the Hejaz as a British protectorate. Mustafa returned to Transjordan and worked as an Arabic literature teacher in the city of Karak, where he met Al-Oudat for the first time. Al-Oudat wrote in Mustafa’s biography:

“One day in April 1922, I got up from my bed in the city of Karak, perched on the western edge of the desert. A young man with a rectangular face, sharp looks, and Bedouin features was being hosted in our house; he was Mustafa Wahbi Tal Arar (…) What caught my eye about this brown genius was his rakish figure, venerable face, charcoal hair that he wore long over his shoulders like Greek philosophers, and his rhotacism that prevented him from pronouncing r sounds (…) I joked to Mustafa: Why did you grow your hair as if you were Jesus or John the Baptist? He said: I am following the example of Omar Khayyam.”

Political Activism

In the 1920s, now going by his last name ‘Tal,’ he became politically active in Transjordan and Palestine. He began writing articles in the Jaffa-based Al-Karmil newspaper, owned by Palestinian Christian journalist Nagib Nassar. He wrote political essays, literature, translations, and news about Transjordan. In 1922, Tal began advocating Arab nationalism and visited Nazareth, warning about the dangers of exploiting religion.

He wrote a poem warning about the 1917 Balfour Declaration by the British government promising the Jews a homeland in Palestine:

يا رب، إن بلفور أنفذ وعـده
كم مسلم يبقى وكم نصراني؟
وكيان مسجد قريتي من ذا الذي
يبقـي عليه إذا أزيل كيانـي؟
وكنيسـة العذراء أين مكانهـا
وسيكون إن بعث اليهود مكاني؟

O God, if Balfour fulfills his promise
How many Muslims remain, and how many Christians?
And will the mosque of my village
stay if my existence is removed?
Where will the Virgin Mary’s church be
if the Jews replace me?

Tal’s Relationship with the Dom/Nawar Community in Transjordan

In May 1923, Tal was appointed as the Administrative Governor of Wadi Al-Seer, an area west of Transjordan’s capital, Amman. He remained in his job until he was dismissed on 8 July 1923, the day he was arrested along with Auda Qoussous, Shamsudeen Sami, Saleh Najdawi, Ali Sharkasi, and other Transjordanian intellectuals who sided with the Adwan tribe during the Adwan Rebellion. After his release, he was appointed as Administrative Governor of Shoubak. Following riots in the village of Wadi Musa near Shoubak, he was removed from his position. He refused to interrogate the rioters and was accused by the British Representative in Transjordan of being unable to restore order. Two years later, he was acquitted of these charges. Tal was appointed as a teacher in 1926 for two months. He was arrested again on charges of displaying the Bolshevik emblem, becoming inebriated in a public bar, and publicly reciting a poem that insulted the Emir, the Prime Minister, and the law.

Before leaving Shoubak, he began his long-lasting relationship with the nomadic Dom (gypsy) community in Transjordan, called Nawar in Arabic. This friendship deepened as he spent nights in their quarters between the areas of Madaba and Ajloun’s Wadi Al-Yabis valley, with the Nawar’s donkeys, rebabs, dancers, and singers. He was so deeply affected by his time with them that he named his only diwan (poetry collection), Ashiyyat Wadi Al-Yabis, which means “The Evening in the Valley of Drought” after the valley in Ajloun that he spent so much time in.

Tal viewed the Kharabeesh, the tent-like structures where the Nawar people lived, as places of safety and security where he found the justice and equality he believed was lacking in Transjordan’s cities. He saw the Nawar as marginalized, simple, and generous, with no classism.

بين الخرابيش لا حرص ولا طمع
ولا احتراب على فلس ودينـار
بين الخرابيش لا مـال ولا نسب
ولا احتراب على حرص وإيثار
ولا هيــام بألقـاب وأوسمــة
ولا ارتفاع ولا خفض بأقـدار
الكـل زط مســاواة محققــة
تنفي الفوارق بين الجار والجار

Between the Kharabeesh there’s no eagerness or greed,
Nor fights over a fils or a dinar.
Between the Kharabeesh there’s no money or lineage,
Nor fights over eagerness or altruism.
No interest in titles or decorations,
Nor rise or decrease in worth.
All are completely equal,
Rejecting differences between neighbors.

Civil Service

In 1928, Tal was preparing to publish his own newspaper under the name “Al-Anba'” (The News). He wrote most of its articles before he was banned from publishing them. Later, he was appointed as Administrative Governor of Shoubak for the second time. In 1931, Tal was exiled to Aqaba for four months because of an article he published in “Al-Karmil”. There, he befriended an Afghan sheikh, and the two would often drink together, with Tal drinking alcohol and the sheikh drinking tea. Tal was released after writing a poem apologizing to Prime Minister Abd Allah Siraj.

In 1931, Tal worked as a teacher in his hometown of Irbid. During this time, he enjoyed a good relationship with Emir Abdullah despite their previous altercations, even accompanying him on several visits to the Badia (desert). Tal transitioned from the Ministry of Education to the judiciary after passing a legal examination at the end of 1929. He served as the Chief Clerk of the Irbid Court of First Instance, then the Commander of the Amman Procedure Court, Chief Clerk of the Court of Appeal (1935), and finally as the Public Prosecutor of Al-Salt and its Deputy Attorney General.

In his role as Deputy Attorney General, he filed a case against Transjordan’s Prime Minister Ibrahim Hashem, who had exiled him to Jeddah in 1923. The Court found that there was no reason to expel Tal from his position and that the charges against him did not warrant exile. Tal then became Inspector General in the Ministry of Education and later Chief of Protocol at the Emir’s Court. He remained Chief of Protocol for five months before being laid off in 1942 and jailed at Mahatta Prison for 70 days due to an altercation with then-Prime Minister Tawfik Abu Al-Huda.

Death

After his release from prison, Tal worked as a lawyer. His alcoholism worsened, and he began feeling overwhelmingly bitter and desperate. According to Al-Oudat, “Disease, desperation, and alcohol were all destroying him and shortening his life.” On 25 May 1949, a day before his 50th birthday, Al-Oudat wrote that “in the Amman Public Hospital, the hand of death was hard on Arar, and it stabbed his beating heart. Before he grasped his last breath, he said in an innocent Irbidi accent, ‘Ugh, if I can get better and say what is in my heart… Ugh ugh, if I can say an ugh that is satisfactory.'”