Ghassan Kanafani's letters to Ghada al-Samman

Book: Ghassan Kanafani's Letters to Ghada al-Samman by Ghassan Kanafani... "A woman exists only once in a man's life, and a man only once in a woman's life; anything else is merely an attempt at compensation." We discover another facet of Ghassan's life... We knew him as a fighter, we knew him as a patriot, and now we come to know him as a human being and a lover. Traditional love letters are nothing more than romantic letters. But Ghassan Kanafani's letters to Ghada al-Samman are "human" letters, blending deep friendship with the language of the age and the pains of time. Friendship intertwines with issues. This is why Ghassan's letters are a document of "rational love," if you will. When Ghada al-Samman publishes Ghassan's letters to her, complete with images of them, she wants to tell us that Ghassan, the stubborn fighter, carried within him the heart of a poet, whose image many sought to distort, just as they distorted the images of other fighters for the cause. But Ghassan was a different kind of person. Both personal and public love flowed through his veins.