Product Overview
An extraordinary memoir of exile and the impossibility of finding home, from the author of In Search of Fatima
The journey filled me with bitterness and grief. I remember looking down on a nighttime Tel Aviv from the windows of a place taking me back to London and thinking hopelessly, flotsam and jetsam, thats what weve become, scattered and divided. Theres no room for us or our memories here. And it wont be reversed.
Having grown up in Britain following her familys exile from Palestine, doctor, author and academic Ghada Karmi leaves her adoptive home in a quest to return to her homeland. She starts work with the Palestinian Authority and gets a firsthand understanding of its bizarre bureaucracy under Israels occupation.
In her quest, she takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the heart of one of the worlds most intractable conflict zones and one of the major issues of our time. Visiting places she has not seen since childhood, her unique insights reveal a militarised and barely recognisable homeland, and her home in Jerusalem, like much of the West Bank, occupied by strangers. Her encounters with politicians, fellow Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers cause her to question what role exiles like her have in the future of their country and whether return is truly possible.
