Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
The language for me is almost more important than the story which is a moving account of his homecoming. Mourid writes very much in the Arab tradition of poetry. And he depicts a situation that so many of us in exile or living under occupation feel.
Let’s move on to I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. This seems like an extended poem as well as the story of a journey.
Yes. The language for me is almost more important than the story which is a moving account of his homecoming. Mourid writes very much in the Arab tradition of poetry. And he depicts a situation that so many of us in exile or living under occupation feel. Occupation interferes in every aspect of life and death, he says; ‘it interferes with longing and anger and desire and walking in the street’. But life goes on. I am in Palestine at the moment for the literature festival and what I see among the young people is so humbling. Students from Gaza University are telling us about how they’re missing basic necessities but mostly they’re starving intellectually – desperate for books and knowledge. What they’re living under is so inhuman but they have such remarkable spirit.
This is the untold story – for all these years Palestinians have been going on with their lives, getting an education, getting jobs, getting married, and dealing with this occupation as best they can, going through checkpoint after checkpoint, roadblock after roadblock, one procedure after another, and yet they still live. That’s what is so often missing in the dominant mainstream narrative about Palestine and how Palestinians have been resisting passively for 62 years simply by going on, refusing to break or hate..
Read full interview
Susan Abulhawa was born to refugees of the Six-Day War of 1967 when her family’s land was seized. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Mornings in Jenin, the profits of which partly go to the children’s charity she founded, Playgrounds for Palestine.
