Mourid Barghouti: The Blessings of Exile

Notes

1. For a discussion of Palestinian and Arab poetry from the 1950s through the 1980s, see Salma Khadra Jayyusi, “Introduction,” in Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed., Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 54–59.

2. Edward Said, “Introduction,” in Mourid Barghouti, I Saw Ramallah , trans. Ahdaf Soueif (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 9 and 11. Originally published in Arabic as Ra'aytu Ramallah.

3. Guy Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” in Guy Mannes-Abbott, ed., Midnight and Other Poems , trans. Radwa Ashour (Todmorden: Arc Publications, 2008), 11. Originally published in Arabic as Muntasaf al-Layl (Beirut: Riad El Rayyes Books, 2005). All quotations are from the bilingual edition and will be indicated in the text.

4. For the controversy regarding the number of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes in 1948, see Rashid Khalidi, “The Palestinians and 1948: The Underlying Causes of Failure,” in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 2nd ed.), 13. Khalidi explains the dispute over the exact number of the Palestinian refugees, which has been difficult to ascertain. He says that Benny Morris, in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1, speaks of “some 600,000-760,000” refugees. Khalidi suggests that the former figure is too low, while the latter is closer to UN estimates at the time, n. 5, p. 32.

5. Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 173–186.

6. Anna Bernard, Rhetoric of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 81. Web. Accessed May 2, 2015. <http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=469301>.

7. Norbert Bugeja, Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East: Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqi Writing (New York: Routledge, 2012), 37–210.

8. Karim Mattar, “Mourid Barghout's Multiple Displacements: Exile and the National Checkpoint in Palestinian Literature,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50:1 (2014), 103–115. Web. Accessed April 8, 2015. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2013.850253>.

9. Quoted in Said, Reflections on Exile. It is worth quoting the excerpt from the twelfth-century monk, Hugo of St. Victor: “It is, therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about invisible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his,” 185.

10. Mourid Barghouti, “Servants of War, and Their Language,” Autodafe: The Journal of the International Parliament of Writers 3:4 (2003), 47.

11. Barghouti, “Servants of War,” 39–47.

12. Mark Mazower, “A Green Land,” New Statesman , 5 April 2004. Web. Accessed March 30, 2015. <http://www.newstatesman.com/node/147667>.

13. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures , trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 2.

14. Walid Khalidi, “A Palestinian Perspective on the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Journal of Palestine Studies 14:4 (Summer 1985), 35–48. Web. Accessed March 19, 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2537120>.

15. Edward W. Said, “Where Negotiations Have Led,” in Edward W. Said, ed., The End of the Peace Process (New York: Pantheon, 2000), 14–19.

16. Quoted in Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” 19.

17. Ibid., 19.

18. Edward W. Said, “Israel at Fifty: Palestine Has Not Disappeared,” Le Monde Diplomatique English Edition , May 1998. Web. Accessed April 25, 2015. <http://mondediplo.com/1998/05/01said>.

19. Barghouti, “Servants of War,” 41.

20. Ibid., 41.

21. Quoted in Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” 15.

22. See “Servants of War” where Barghouti quotes Nietzsche for saying “When you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you,” 39.

23. Quoted in Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” 21.

24. Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” 21.

25. Quoted as an epigraph in Andreas Huyssen, The Twilight of Memory: Making Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York: Routledge, 1995). Web. Accessed May 1, 2015. <http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Memories-Marking-Culture%20Amnesia/dp/041590935X/ref=pd_sim_b_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=11T5ZFNY0PY>.

26. Jonathan Derbshire, “The Books Interview: Mourid Barghouti,” New Statesman , December 12, 2011. Web. Accessed May 3, 2015. <http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/12/interview-palestinian>.

27. Huyssen, The Twilight of Memory .

28. For an overview of the emergence of memory studies since the 1980s, see Kerwin Lee Kline, “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,” Representations 69, Special Issue for Remembering (Winter 2000), 127–150. Web. Accessed April 19, 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2902903>.

29. Huyssen, The Twilight of Memory , 2.

30. For a discussion of Palestinian historiography, see Salam Mir, “The Art and Politics of Emile Habiby,” Arab Studies Quarterly 37:2 (2015), 142–160.

31. Christopher Harker, “Spacing Palestine through the Home,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (New Series), 34:3 (July 2009), 320–332.

32. “House Demolition as Punishment,” updated 19 November 2014. Web. Accessed May 3, 2015. <http://www.btselem.org/punitive_demolitions/statistics>.

33. Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” 14.

34. Quoted in Mannes-Abbott, “Introduction,” 10.

35. The quotation from Shakespeare's Macbeth reads as follows: Tomorrow and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time,/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death./Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing. (Midnight 138-140)

36. Barghouti, “Servants of War,” 44.

37. See Jayyusi, “Introduction,” 48–80.

38. Quoted in Jayyusi, “Introduction,” 53.

39. Barghouti, “Servants of War,” 46.