By Amany Abdel-Moneim Last week brought real sorrow to readers of the renowned Iraqi poet , who died in Cairo, where she had been living for many years, on Wednesday 20 June, writes Amany Abdel-Moneim. The body was dispatched from Ain Al-Hayah Mosque on Thursday. Al-Malaika, best known as the pioneer of taf'ila (free) verse, was born in Baghdad on 23 August 1923 to a deeply cultured family with a sustained interest in poetry. The mother was poet, the father a language teacher; and they both helped Al-Malaika discover her love of literature at an early age. In 1944, she graduated from the College of Arts in Baghdad, where she also studied music, obtaining a second degree in 1948. Ten years later, she obtained a Master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin, USA and worked as a professor of literature at the universities of Baghdad, Al-Basra and Al-Kuwait. Two years after Saddam Hussein's Baath Party came to power, Al-Malaika left Iraq, living in Kuwait until the 1990 Gulf War, when she moved to Cairo. Al-Malaika published her first collection of poems, 'Ashiqatu Al-Lail (Night Lover), in 1947. Al-Malaika continued to write well into the 1970s. Al-Malaika, who lost her husband Abdel-Hadi Mahbouba several years ago, had suffered for years from several ailments, including Parkinson's disease. Earlier this month, a group of Iraqi intellectuals wrote to the Iraqi government, protesting what they referred to as the neglect of "Iraq's greatest surviving literary symbol".
