I Was Born There, I Was Born HereIn 2000 Mourid Barghouti published I Saw Ramallah, the acclaimed memoir that told of returning in 1996 to his Palestinian home for the first time since exile following the Six-Day War in 1967. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here takes up the story in 1998 when Barghouti returned to the Occupied Territories to introduce his Cairo-born son, Tamim, to his Palestinian family. Ironically, a few years later Tamim had himself been arrested for taking part in a demonstration against the impending Iraq War. He was held in the very same Cairo prison from which his father had been expelled from Egypt to begin a second exile in Budapest when Tamim was only a few months old. Ranging freely back and forth in time between the 1990s and the present day, Barghouti weaves into his account of exile poignant evocations of Palestinian history and daily life - the pleasure of coffee arriving at just the right moment, the challenge of a car journey through the Occupied Territories, the meaning of home and the importance of being able to say, standing in a small village in Palestine, 'I was born here', rather than saying from exile, 'I was born there'. Full of life and humour in the face of a culture of death, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here is destined, like its predecessor, to become a classic. |
Contents
The Driver Mahmoud | 1 |
Father and Son | 31 |
The Yasmin Building | 53 |
Was Born There I Was Born Here | 79 |
The Identity Card | 107 |
The Ambulance | 115 |
Saramago | 137 |
The Alhambra | 159 |
Things One Would Never Think Of | 173 |
The Dawn Visitor | 195 |
An Ending Leading to the Beginning? | 211 |
Glossary | 215 |
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Common terms and phrases
Airport al-Barghouti al-Bireh al-Khalil ambulance Amman Arab Arafat asked Barghouti Bei Dao bridge Budapest café Cairo Cairo University camp checkpoint coffee corruption crossing decided Deir Ghassanah door dream Egyptian everything exile eyes face Fatah father feel flag front Hajj hand happened hijab hospital Husam identity card Israel Israeli Jenin Jerusalem jokes Jordanian José Saramago land later laugh leave living look Mahmoud Majid Marwan morning mosque mother Mounif Mourid Mourid Barghouti musakhan Nakba Namiq never Occupation pain Palestine Palestinian Palestinian Authority poem poet poetry political prison Qalandya Ra'd Radwa Ramallah road Saramago smile soldier someone standing started stop story Surda talking Tamim tanks tell things tinian told took trees turn village voice waiting walk wall woman write Yasser Arafat Ziryab