2022/08/19 by K.E. Mattar · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Middle East Politics and Society #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
paper · doi:10.1093/alh/ajac094
openalex publication_date 2022/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
… and you left nothing for us/Except for these rocks Mahmoud Darwish, “Identity Card” For Palestinians, exile is a privilege. As in Darwish’s famous 1964 poem, nothing of Palestine itself has been left for us except for rocks. The rocks that mark our unmarked graves.1 Those into which our homes are shattered.2 Those that fall from our broken towers.3 And those from which the walls that separate us from you and from ourselves are built.4 Now, these are being taken away too. I found all this out for myself back in 2012. That’s the year I became the first in my immediate family to return to Palestine since 1948. This is what I discovered remains of my grandfather’s house in Jaffa (): ... This was where my father was born on 2 February 1948, just a few months before the Nakba that drove his infant self, his four siblings (not much older), and his mother and father into exile in Beirut (not much better).5 It has been rough for all of them. But still a life compared to what remains.