I Was Born There, I Was Born Here by Mourid Barghouti, translated by Humphrey Davies - review
PaperbacksReviewBy Ian Pindar"I want to deal with my unimportant feelings that the world will never hear," writes the exiled Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti in this moving companion piece to his memoir I Saw Ramallah. Gathered here are tales of personal sadness, but also of humour and love. One of the high points is the writer taking his son to see a room in a house in his home village of Deir Ghassanah and being able to say: "I was born here." Barghouti has to wait a long time for this moment because, as he observes, one of the chief weapons of the Israeli occupation is making people wait: at borders and checkpoints, or for electricity and water to come back on, and, ultimately, for the "waking nightmare" of the occupation to end. There is a disquiet at the heart of this book, not just because of the humiliation of living under occupation ("I ask myself how many times do I have to feel powerless to protect the ones I love"), but through a wider concern that nobody is prepared to "grasp the truth of Israel's dilemma": the Palestinians are not going away. "Do they suppose they can kill us all?"
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