In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story

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"The war that ended with the establishment of the State of Israel compelled Ghada Karmi's family to leave Jerusalem when she was a child - to live, ironically enough, in Golders Green, a well-known Jewish area of London. Her attempts at assimilation into English society were gradually thwarted by both internal and external influences: her mother's efforts at replicating Palestinian social customs in a London household, which she found increasingly frustrating, and political events in the world she had left - the Suez crisis and the 1967
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More About This Book

Overview

"The war that ended with the establishment of the State of Israel compelled Ghada Karmi's family to leave Jerusalem when she was a child - to live, ironically enough, in Golders Green, a well-known Jewish area of London. Her attempts at assimilation into English society were gradually thwarted by both internal and external influences: her mother's efforts at replicating Palestinian social customs in a London household, which she found increasingly frustrating, and political events in the world she had left - the Suez crisis and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in particular - which prompted a growing sense of Arab identity and a reexamination of her sense of belonging in Britain. In the 1970s, this disillusionment was channelled into political activism; she established Palestine Action in London and became a regular visitor to the Middle East, meeting Yasser Arafat and PLO officials, but still, as a Westernised Arab woman, she never quite fitted in. Returning to Jerusalem in the 1990s to find the house where she was born, the author must face an unpalatable truth about herself." In Search of Fatima is an intimate and powerful narrative, in which the Israel-Palestine conflict is presented, unusually, from the point of view of a Palestinian woman. A reflection of the author's personal experiences of displacement, loss and nostalgia, it speaks also for the millions of people all over the world whose lives are forever suspended between the old and the new.
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Editorial Reviews

Edward Said
Her memoir is the story of a fascinating woman...humanly rich and interesting.
Publishers Weekly
Karmi, a doctor and founding member of the British political group Palestine Action, relates her quest for cultural identity after her "fragile... and misfit Arab family" leaves Jerusalem for England during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Ironically, they resettle in a Jewish neighborhood in London; Karmi, aged nine, quickly begins to assimilate-becoming an avid reader of English literature and befriending Jewish neighbors-despite her mother's insistence on traditional Palestinian culinary customs, dating mores and family codes. Over the next two decades, events in the Middle East make their non-Arab neighbors increasingly hostile and her Jewish friends' pro-Israel fervor grows; after the Palestinian terrorist hijackings of the 1970s, some acquaintances refuse to speak to her. Karmi becomes an impassioned pro-Palestinian activist, and in 1977 she begins practicing medicine in a Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon-and finds that her Western upbringing and habits make her even less welcome there than she was in England. Karmi writes engagingly, weaving Palestinian political and social history through her personal recollections and giving the age-old migr dilemmas a timely twist. Though her account is inevitably one-sided regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the book's straightforward tone may appeal to politically minded readers looking for insight into the Palestinian exile experience. 20 b&w photos, 3 maps. (Oct. 24) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
KLIATT
Despite the prominence of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the news today, the story of the roots of the discord is not well understood. Carefully, with detail that helps the reader understand the feelings and culture, Karmi leads her readers through her family's experience as Palestinians living in Jerusalem in 1948. She was a young child with an older sister and slightly older brother when increasing violence sent her family fleeing from their comfortable home, their dog, and beloved servant Fatima. They went to Damascus, where relatives already lived. Her father was an academic and linguist whose talents enabled him to earn a relatively good, if still modest, living for his extended family. Soon, the BBC in London offered him a job. Karmi grew up there, becoming ever more English while her parents and sister continued to think of themselves as Arabs with a veneer of English culture in public. It didn't help that they blamed British policy for the upheaval that pushed Palestinian people from their homes into refugee camps and exile, creating in their geographical space what they believed was the non-legitimate state of Israel. They saw themselves as rendered helpless, humiliated, and displaced by international intervention and military power. Karmi tells of her home, which her mother (who never learned English) maintained as a center for Arabic persons of all kinds living or visiting in England. Her father, who always saw life in England as an interlude after which they would return to the Middle East and live a fully Arabic Muslim life, was interested almost entirely in her academic achievement, seeing England as a tool rather than anything of which the family waspart. He pushed her into a medical education that was never in tune with her natural inclinations. Her sister remained more Arabic and became a chemist; her brother experimented with questionable behaviors, taking on negative characteristics of a culture he never quite understood. Karmi recounts her unfortunate marriage to an English fellow doctor and her involvement for a time in a Palestinian activist group. She ends by telling of her sense of not belonging anywhere and continuing to believe that Israel has no right to exist in the physical space taken from people who should possess that land. Readers who wish to understand better the point of view of the actual Palestinians who were displaced will appreciate Karmi's personal and frank autobiography. Americans who read this may also want to read Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism by Thomas L. Friedman, an American journalist. In some of his essays, he treats the enduring view among Palestinians that Israel does not have the right to exist and what he believes will happen because of it. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Verso, 451p. illus., Ages 15 to adult.
—Edna Boardman
Independent
Karmi's great achievement is to humanise the Palestinian predicament. Violent uprooting and exile have permanent psychological effects, which, as the Jewish people discovered, are not necessarily assuaged by the passage of time. We need counter-narratives like this, because we have recently learnt that it is not only parochial but also dangerous to ignore the pain and rights of others.
Financial Times
This is an important memoir, beautifully written by an intelligent, sensitive woman that fills a void in studies of Zionism. It should help those of us who do not understand why growing numbers of Muslims and not a few Christians have lost faith with Western pretensions of fairness.
Economist
Keenly observed, fierce, honest and yet light of touch, Ms Karmi's memoir of dislocation illlustrates just how inseparable, for many people, the personal and the political still can be.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781859846940
  • Publisher: Verso
  • Publication date: 12/17/2002
  • Pages: 456
  • Product dimensions: 6.50 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 1.40 (d)

Meet 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.

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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 6, 2003

    A magnificent novel!

    I have read many books throughout my life and this is by far one of the best ones. I had never taken much interest in Palestine and what the Jewish did to it, I now know their story and recommend that everyone reads this outstanding novel! *****

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 11, 2003

    A compelling story

    This is a biographical account of displacement and alienation. It vividly depicts one of the tragedies of the 20th century through the eyes of one of it's survivors.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 9, 2002

    An Arab-English Hybrid

    Ghada Karmi¿s book tells the dramatic story of her search for personal and political identity. Her family was forced out of their comfortable West Jerusalem home by Jewish attacks meant to rid the area of Palestinians beginning in January 1948. Finally the infamous Deir Yassin massacre of April 9, 1948 made them realize months and weeks after most of their neighbors that their personal safety was at risk. Since the author was a girl of 9 at the time she was young enough to be strongly influenced by English culture when their family finally landed in London about a year later. Much of Ms. Karmi¿s book is devoted to the story of her bumpy and courageous journey to discover whether she is English, Arab or ¿some kind of hybrid.¿ As devoutly as she wished to become English, events intrude on her in both personal and political ways. She loses out in a school speaking contest not on the merits but because the judges refuse to reward a prize to the ¿little dark girl,¿ instead of to an English girl. The 1956 Suez War highlights for the teenage Karmi English discrimination and hatred toward Arabs and makes her an outcast at school. Another key turning point was the smashing Israeli victory in the 1967 war which plays a role in breaking up her marriage to an Englishman. The war once again makes her an outcast and forces her to recognize that she can no longer escape her Arab identity. Among the treasures of this book are the glimpses we get along the way of buried historical events of special concern to Palestinians. For example we learn that it was the Iraqi contingent in the war of 1948 which saved Tulkarm, a town on the West Bank, from attacking Jewish forces; and she quotes an Israeli soldier who wonders why the Iraqis didn¿t proceed along the road to Tel Aviv which might have turned the tide of the war. We learn that the Israeli Knesset is built on the Palestinian town of Lifta and that the Holocaust museum also is built on confiscated Palestinian land. Finally, surveying the wreckage that is the patrimony of Palestinians today, the author has the courage to raise the question of whether the Palestinian people will remain adrift as mere ¿flotsam and jetsam¿the detritus of history¿doomed to be fragmented and dispersed.¿ Readers will have to decide such questions for themselves and Karmi¿s book provides them with a unique and marvelously told Palestinian story on which to base their judgment

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