If the People Will to Live: Tunisia’s Eternal Verse

“If the people will to live, destiny must surely respond.”

A Poet Who Spoke Beyond His Time

In the 1930s, a young Tunisian poet, Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, wrote a poem called The Will to Live. He was only in his twenties, ill with a heart condition, and would not live long. But in those short years, he gave the Arab world a verse that outlived him.

The words were not written for an anthem or a protest. They were written as poetry, born of a land under colonial weight, where survival required more than endurance. His poem carried both lament and defiance, and in it, a single line rose above the rest.

From Poem to Anthem

Decades later, Tunisia chose to weave Al-Shabbi’s verse into its national anthem, Ḥumāt al-Ḥimá. The anthem was built from several voices, but this line became its soul.

By the time it was sung in public squares, classrooms, and stadiums, the line had become more than poetry. It was memory, instruction, and vow, repeated by generations who saw themselves in its words.

The Echo Across the World

Few verses of Arabic poetry have traveled as widely. This one did.

• It was chanted in the streets during the uprisings of 2011.

• It appeared on banners and in speeches far beyond Tunisia.

• It has been quoted in international newspapers, classrooms, and even protest walls.

What began as a young poet’s conviction became a line the world associated with Tunisia itself: a people who speak of dignity, survival, and will in the same breath.

What the Line Holds

To read the verse closely is to see why it lasted:

• “The people” — not the individual, but the collective body.

• “Will to live” — not survival in its bare sense, but life with weight and dignity.

• “Destiny must respond” — a reversal of passivity; a demand that fate itself must bend to human will.

In a world often resigned to inevitability, this verse declared the opposite: that human agency has power over destiny.

Tunisia’s Gift

Every nation has words it is known for. France has “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” The United States has “We the people.” Tunisia, too, has its line, not from generals or politicians, but from a poet.

That is its strength: Tunisia’s most enduring contribution to the world is a verse. One that binds literature, music, politics, and everyday speech into a single, unforgettable rhythm.

Nearly a century after it was written, the words still hold. They are sung in the anthem, cited in movements, remembered in silence.

And each time they return, they remind us:

“If the people will to live, destiny must surely respond.”