Assignment
Read the instruction
Write an 800-1000 word response. Refer specifically to the reading; use quotes. Focus is your choice. Some questions to consider, if you need help:
• Young Turki is a contradictory, confused and confusing character. How do you respond to this?
• What did it mean for Turki to be a refugee on a practical level? How did being a refugee affect the tangible circumstances of his life?
Instruction
Introduction to the reading:
The reading is selected from The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile, a memoir by Fawaz Turki, who was born in 1940 in Haifa, then part of British Mandate Palestine, now Israel. The book was written in 1972. He left as a child in the exodus of 1948 known as the nakba (disaster) by Palestinians. He grew up in Beirut, and studied at universities in England and Australia. In the 1970s he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The last I knew, he was living in Washington, D.C. He has written numerous articles and two other books, Soul in Exile: Lives of a Palestinian Revolutionary and Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian-American (about his return visit to Palestine after the beginning of the implementation of the Oslo agreement.)
The preface and chapter describe his perspective on what has happened to him, and his life during the 1950s in the Palestinian refugee camps that ring Beirut, the wealthy, cosmopolitan, Westernized capital of Lebanon.
Come to class prepared to discuss the reading, which you will have written about already.
A few informational notes:
• ben sharmouta (on p. 47 and elsewhere) means son of a whore.
• UNRWA (p. 58), to refresh your memory, is the United Nation Relief and Works Agency, which was founded to deal with the Palestinian refugees, meaning that they have provided aid, initially in the form of shelter (tents), food rations, and eventually, education for younger children.
• The jellabiya (p. 68) is a long robe worn by many men in the Middle East;
• the hatta or kuffiyeh (spelled various ways) is the head covering many men wear, kept in place with the ighal, which is a kind of cord to keep it in place.
Questions (some from your forum essay). Be prepared to discuss these:
• What did it mean for Turki to be a refugee on a practical level? Apart from the obvious---not being in his home country and unable to return---how did being a refugee affect the tangible circumstances of his life?
• Later in the book he says: "...try as you will, try as often as you might, to escape your reality, your identity, your Self, yet it follows you every hour, every day of your life---that incessant logic showing you how, with your history deflected from its preordained course, there is no rest for you until you have regained that intangible and exquisite tool which men and women use to identify themselves as spiritual beings and of which you have been robbed. Only then will you begin to become concerned with the down-to-earth issues that characterize the existence of other people."How does this issue of identity manifest itself in his life in the camp?
• The young Turki is a contradictory, confused and confusing character. Identify where these are revealed in the chapter.
• What kind of relations between Palestinians and Israelis and/or Jews, are depicted here?
• How does he feel about Americans, Nasser, other Arabs? What informs his attitudes?
• Why did Palestinian refugees refuse to settle in neighboring Arab countries, according to Turki?
• Based on your reading of this memoir, how should we evaluate accounts such as this as sources for history?