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In Search
of Fatima - A Palestinian Story
by Ghada Karmi
Very few
diaspora Palestinians have written memoirs
as intimate as Ghada Karmi’s frank
account of her life: her childhood in Palestine,
the flight to Britain after the catastrophe
of 1948, and coming of age in the coffee-bars
of Golders Green, the middle-class Jewish
quarter in North London. A gentle humour
describes the bizarre and sometimes tense
realities that mask her life in ‘Little
Tel Aviv’ and, later, her struggle,
like that of many other women in the late
fifties, to get a university grant to study
medicine.
The intimacy
of the book is set against the continuing
crisis in the Middle East. In her case it
is not an account of physical hardships
and abuse. Her immediate family was lucky.
But as she grew older, memories of the lost
homeland began to haunt her. Her anger grows
at the self-deception of most Israelis,
who justify the appalling actions of their
governments by pretending that what is taking
place isn’t actually happening.
In Search
of Fatima reminds us that the only crime
the Palestinians committed was to be born
in Palestine. Its author, a committed physician,
is desperate for the wounds to heal, but
grim-visaged History refuses to oblige.
About the
Author
Ghada Karmi
was born in Jerusalem and trained as a doctor
of medicine at Bristol University. She established
the first British-Palestinian medical charity
in 1972 and was an Associate Fellow at the
Royal Institute for International Affairs.
Her previous books include The Ethnic
Health Factfile and Jerusalem Today:
What Future for the Peace Process? and,
as co-editor with E. Cotran, The Palestinian
Exodus, 1948–1998.
Reviews
"Ghada
Karmi's stunning memoir is remarkable. Extraordinarily
well-written, it is the amazingly honest
story of a Palestinian woman of exceptional
self-awareness. Hers is a story of exile
and displacement ... rich in detail and
human experience. Karmi is excellent on
the quality of family and even communal
life in Mandatory Palestine ... she also
has a wonderfully subtle way of showing
how in thousands of different ways the political
and the personal intermesh, and this she
does with a skill and insight that could
be a novelist's envy."
— Edward Said
“A
very timely book in the current political
situation… This should serve to remind
people just what the big fuss in the Middle
East is all about.”
— Times Literary Supplement
“In
Search of Fatima brings to life more effectively
than anything I have read the fears, ambivalence
and confusions experienced by Palestinians.”
— Women’s Review of Books
“Keenly
observed, fierce, honest and yet light of
touch.”
— Economist
“Ghada
Karmi writes simply and poignantly. Here
is a story of … exile and dispossession.”
— Jewish Chronicle
"This
is an important memoir, beautifully written
by an intelligent, sensitive woman, that
fills a void in studies of Zionism."
— Financial
Times
Related Links
Ghada
Karmi's latest article "The World Looks
on Ineffectually - Vanishing the Palestinians"
at Counterpunch
A
report about Ghada Karmi; The Strength of
Palestinian Narrative in the Face of Violence
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