The Experience of Exile in Palestinian Memoirs

How is the experience of exile dealt with in Palestinian memoirs? The experience of exile is dealt with differently depending on the memoir, but the overall picture received is one of feeling lost, unwelcomed, isolated and being unable to fully integrate into their new society. Memoirs often provide an insight into the lives of different types of people, Ghada Karmi’s ‘In search of Fatima’ memoir provides a detailed look at the life and experiences in exile from the Palestinian perspective. Karmi and her family were forced to leave their homeland in the late 1940s due to the creation of the State of Israel. After being forced out of their homes by the settling Jewish population, the family moved to England as refugees. Growing up in London in the 1950s, Karmi, in her memoir, provides a valuable insight into how she and her family dealt with the experience of exile. Karmi goes into great detail, describing the many experiences she came to face ranging from her education, making friends and learning another language to her experiences with racism as well as contemplating her nationality and religion. Karmi doesn’t only describe her experience with exile but also the experience of her whole family living in exile in London. In order to answer this question successfully, we need to examine Karmi’s memoirs in order to grasp an idea of what exiled life was like for Palestinians and how they dealt with their life away from their homeland. In February 1947, Britain refers the issue of finding a homeland for the persecuted European Jews to the United Nations where they proposed the partition of Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Palestinian Arabs, the Jews accept this idea but the Palestinians, understandably, reject it but in May 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. The Arab world saw this as a betrayal by the British and an invasion by the Jewish and was hostile to the newly declared state of Israel almost immediately resulting in the Arab

References: Primary Sources Karmi, G. (2002), In search of Fatima, Verso, London, Great Britain Matar, D. (2011), What it means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood, I.B. Tauris, London