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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210223-imagining-palestine-barghouti-darwish-kanafani-and-the-language-of-exile/">https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210223-imagining-palestine-barghouti-darwish-kanafani-and-the-language-of-exile/</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Imagining Palestine: Barghouti, Darwish, Kanafani and the language of exile</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Dr Ramzy Baroud - February 23, 2021</div></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-post-content"><p>For
Palestinians, exile is not simply the physical act of being removed
from their homeland and their inability to return. It is not a casual
topic pertaining to politics and international law, either. Nor is it an
ethereal notion, a sentiment, a poetic verse. It is all of this
combined.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2021/2/17/headlines/beloved_palestinian_poet_mourid_barghouti_exiled_from_his_homeland_dies_at_76" target="_blank">death</a>
in Amman of Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, an intellectual whose
work has been linked intrinsically to exile, brought back to the surface
many existential questions: are Palestinians destined to be exiled
forever? Can there be a remedy for this perpetual torment? Is justice a
tangible, achievable goal?</p><p>Barghouti was <a href="https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/writers/mourid-barghouti#:~:text=Mourid%20Barghouti%20was%20born%20on,out%20in%20Beirut%20in%201997." target="_blank">born</a>
in 1944 in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah. His journey in exile began in
1967, and ended, however temporarily, 30 years later. His memoir <em>I Saw Ramallah</em>
— published in 1997 — was an exiled man's attempt to make sense of his
identity, one that was formulated within many different physical spaces,
conflicts and airports. While, in some way, the Palestinian in
Barghouti remained intact, his was a unique identity that can only be
fathomed by those who have experienced, to some degree, the pressing
feelings of <em>Ghurba</em> — estrangement and alienation — or <em>Shataat</em> — dislocation and diaspora.</p><p>In his memoir, <a href="https://www.ahdafsoueif.com/Books/i_saw_ramallah.htm" target="_blank">translated</a>
into English in 2000 by acclaimed Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif, he
wrote: "I tried to put the displacement between parentheses, to put a
last period in a long sentence of the sadness of history… But I see
nothing except commas. I want to sew the times together. I want to
attach one moment to another, to attach childhood to age, to attach the
present to the absent and all the presents to all absences, attach
exiles to the homeland and to attach what I have imagined to what I see
now."</p><p>Those familiar with the rich and complex Palestinian
literature of exile can relate Barghouti's reference — what one imagines
versus what one sees — to the writing of other intellectuals who have
suffered the pain of exile as well. <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190714-profile-ghassan-kanafani-1936-1972/">Ghassan Kanafani</a>
and Majed Abu Sharar, along with numerous others, wrote about that same
conflict. Their death — or, rather, assassination — in exile brought
their philosophical journeys to an abrupt end.</p><p><strong>READ: <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170411-remembering-mahmoud-darwish/">Remembering Mahmoud Darwish</a></strong></p><p>In Mahmoud Darwish's seminal <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52549/who-am-i-without-exile" target="_blank">poem</a>,
"Who Am I, Without Exile", the late Palestinian poet asked, knowing
that there can never be a compelling answer, "What will we do without
exile?"</p><p>It is as if <em>Ghurba</em> has been so integral to the
collective character of a nation, that it is now a permanent tattoo on
the heart and soul of Palestinians everywhere. "A stranger on the
riverbank, like the river… water binds me to your name. Nothing brings
me back from my faraway to my palm tree: not peace and not war. Nothing
makes me enter the gospels. Not a thing…," wrote Darwish.</p><p>The
impossibility of becoming a whole again in the verses of Darwish and
Barghouti were reverberations of Kanafani's own depiction of a Palestine
that was as agonisingly near as it was far.</p><p>"What is a homeland?" Kanafani <a href="https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/homeland" target="_blank">asks</a> in <em>Returning to Haifa</em>.
"Is it these two chairs that remained in this room for twenty years?
The table? Peacock feathers? The picture of Jerusalem on the wall? The
copper-lock? The oak tree? The balcony? What is a homeland? … I'm only
asking."</p><p>But there can be no answers, because when exile exceeds a
certain rational point of waiting for some kind of justice that would
facilitate one's return, it can no longer be articulated, relayed or
even fully comprehended. It is the metaphorical precipice between life
and death; "life" as in the burning desire to be reunited with one's
previous self; and "death" as in knowing that without a homeland one is a
perpetual outcast, physically, politically, legally, intellectually and
every other form.</p><p>"In my despair I remember; that there is life after death… But I ask: Oh my God, is there life before death?" <a href="https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/14329/auto/0/0/Mourid-Barghouti/I-Have-No-Problem/en/tile#:~:text=I%20have%20no%20problem.,-My%20hands%20are&text=and%20I%20have%20not%20been,their%20graves%20in%20some%20countries." target="_blank">wrote</a> Barghouti in his poem "I Have No Problem".</p><p>While
the crushing weight of exile is not unique to Palestinians, the
Palestinian exile is itself unique. Throughout the entire episode of
Palestinian <em>Ghurba</em>, from the early days of the <em>Nakba</em> —
the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 — till today, the
world remains divided between inaction, obliviousness and refusal to
even acknowledge the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people.</p><p><strong>READ: <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210215-renowned-palestinian-poet-mourid-barghouti-dies-aged-76/">Renowned Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti dies aged 76</a></strong></p><p>Despite
or, perhaps, because of his decades-long exile, Barghouti did not
engage in ineffectual discussions about the rightful owners of Palestine
"because we did not lose Palestine to a debate, we lost it to force."</p><p>He <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/i-saw-ramallah-9780747574705/" target="_blank">wrote</a>
in his memoir: "When we were Palestine, we were not afraid of the Jews.
We did not hate them, we did not make an enemy of them. Europe of the
Middle Ages hated them, but not us. Ferdinand and Isabella hated them,
but not us. Hitler hated them, but not us. But when they took our entire
space and exiled us from it they put both us and themselves outside the
law of equality."</p><p>In fact, "hate" rarely factors in the work of
Mourid Barghouti — or Darwish, Kanafani, Abu Sharar and many others, for
that matter — because the pain of exile, so powerful, so omnipresent,
required one to re-evaluate the relationship to the homeland through
emotional rapport that can only be sustained through positive energy, of
love, of deep sadness, of longing.</p><p>"Palestine is something worthy of a man bearing arms for, dying for," <a href="https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/homeland" target="_blank">wrote</a>
Kanafani. "For us, for you and me, it's only a search for something
buried beneath the dust of memories. And look what we found beneath that
dust. Yet more dust. We were mistaken when we thought the homeland was
only the past."</p><p>Millions of Palestinians continue to live in
exile, generation after generation, painstakingly negotiating their
individual and collective identities, neither able to return, nor
feeling truly whole. These millions <a href="https://www.afsc.org/resource/palestinian-refugees-and-right-return" target="_blank">deserve</a> to exercise their legitimate Right of Return, to have their voices heard and to be included.</p><p>But
even when Palestinians are able to end their physical exile, the
chances are that for generations they will remain attached to it. "I
don't know what I want. Exile is so strong within me, I may bring it to
the land," <a href="https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/jps/v42i1/f_0027220_22238.pdf" target="_blank">wrote</a> Darwish.</p><p>In Barghouti too, exile was "so strong". Despite the fact that he fought to end it, it became him. It became us.</p><p>The
views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
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