Voices from a nation under siege

In his introductory programme note, he explained that he had had a premonition that this "ode to life" might be his final work.

On a great white surgical set, the poet, surrounded by the paraphernalia of modern medicine, lies on his deathbed.

In a series of dream sequences, he confronts death with words - his poetry physically realised in his young self.

The super titles, incorporated into the set rather than irritatingly on side screens, trace the dying man's battle. No true poetry translates into a foreign language, so we are left with a pattern of nature images and beautifully expressed philosophical statements - "no nation is lesser than its verse" and "we inherited nothing but our names."

Without any overt political import, Jidariyya, for all its intense personal response to life, conveys a sharp sense of a nation that has been deprived of everything except its language.

Whereas death can change "the mud and matter of man," his words are inviolable.

This is essentially a dramatised poem, but director Amir Nizar Zuabi has complemented the poetry with moving visual images. The marvellous train of a woman's dress which draws across the stage is a landscape of desert Palestine with the sheaves of corn collected in a slow ballet. Borrowing from Ibsen's Peer Gynt, the poet urged by his alter ego, his poetry, drives on in a wild imagined last dash for life.

Jidarriyya is about so much - personal and national identity, the pain of dispossession, love of a land and its culture - but, above all, unlike so much theatre at the Edinburgh Festival, it abounds with a quiet optimism.

This vibrant voice both from the grave and from a living beleaguered nation holds hope for us all.

GORDON PARSONS