Mourid Barghouti (1944–2021)

“It is always the same problem: the problem of stitching two times together. It cannot be done. Time is not a length of calico. Time is a mist that never stops moving.”

This is a moving, devastating and lyrical book about Palestinian dispossession. After thirty years of being barred entry and exiled from his hometown of Ramallah by the Israeli state, the writer Mourid Barghouti finally goes home and this book (as the title suggests) is a result of the experience. The importance of this show more book as a chronicle to a decades long, and still ongoing, occupation of Palestine by Israel, and all the suffering that has wrought, and continues—while Israel persists with its massacring, aided and abetted by world powers. It's an elegy to the losses suffered as a result: to the dead, to the Palestinian families scattered and separated all over the world by this violence, and to Palestinians living in the occupation. It's a beautiful and important book. show less

Phew! Here is a book that forces me as a Jew to experience what it feels like to be a Palestinian Arab. Not the Palestinian that throws rocks, but the poet who simply lives his life in a small village, only to have his home and life shattered by attending college in another country and then losing his right to return - not only to his home but to his homeland. He becomes an outcast in whatever country he visits or resides because he is a refugee.

This was a tough read for me, but it gave me show more a better understanding of how Palestinian Arabs turned into the people they have become today. I never think of Israelis as occupiers, yet to those who lost their homes in 1948 and fled to other countries with no right of return, that's what they are.

What was missing from this book, I think, were ideas for where we should go from here. I liked the poetic voice of this author and would like to hear more from him. I have no idea where he is living now, but I will be sure to follow his path.

There is one poem in this book that I particularly liked which begins "She wants to go to a planet away from the earth...". It talks about how a mother always wants her children to return. I can really identify with that. Arabs and Jews...they're alike in so many ways. The first step in resolving our differences is to listen to one another. Painful as this book was for me to read, I suggest that others also give this book a chance. show less

This is both a factual (if far from impartial) account of the recent history of Palestine, and an intensely personal account of exile. The former was interesting, but it was the latter that made the book for me, and succeeded in making me see the very human consequences of the political circumstances we're all familiar with. The pain of exile and displacement, the longing to return, are eloquently, beautifully expressed, and I found these parts incredibly moving. Instead of giving lengthy show more explanations, Barghouti shines his poet's light on small details, his minimal descriptions of which speak volumes of the pain and loneliness of exile. I found this particularly effective.
One fly in the ointment - I'm a big fan of Ahdaf Soueif's own work, but she's not quite so assured as a translator. There are some awkward turns of phrase which jarred with the otherwise flowing lyricism, and which made it hard for me to forget that I wasn't reading the original. show less

This is an absolutely beautiful book. Poetic, of course. And also, vulnerable and intimate. His self-awareness of the pain in returning to Palestine after 30 years of exile is profound and expressed in a very accessible way. This very personal story lends insight into a historical event that reverberates today.