Like any deer in Beirut, you were killed (4) To insanity, monstrousness and hideousness In this poem titled “Balqis” he expresses his grief and anger at the entire Arab world and puts them to blame for her death. It is said that he was also never able to get over her death. Balqis just happened to be the wife of the great Nizar Qabban she was an Iraqi teacher whom he had met at a poetry recital in Baghdad, and after that day he was never able to live in Beirut again. On 15th December 1981, there was a bomb attack in Beirut (during the civil war) on the Iraqi embassy and a woman by the name of Balqis Al-rawi was killed that day. There is something lost in translation, translations can be meserizing at times, though at other times they can become somewhat like lame pick up lines, “if you asked me when I was born, I would say it was the day you declared your love for me” sweet, but the elegance and beauty of this was somewhat lost in translation. While translating from Arabic to English, I do feel that the poems are more understood, playful and romantic in their original language. Thereafter, he expressed resentment of male chauvinism and often wrote from a woman’s viewpoint and advocated social freedoms for women. His love for women and their rights is evident, the suicide of his sister, who was unwilling to marry a man she did not love, had a profound effect on Qabbani.
Many Syrian and Lebanese vocalists helped popularizse his work by singing it. Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, a famous poet and publisher.