Customer Reviews

In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story

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This is an excellent and thoughtful book that takes the reader through the events that led to the destruction of Palestine and forced hundreds of thousands of people, like Fatima and her family from their homes. For many Palestinians, reading this book relives memories of a tragedy that so many of us have suffered and so little of the American public knows. I highly recommend it as an introduction to Palestine and the origin of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel.

The second half of the book which deals with the protagonist's search for identity in England is also very characteristic of what the Palestinian families who were forced to emigrate to different countries all over the world have to face: complete assimilation versus living in the injury done to us by the creation of the Israeli state.

There is no need for "the other viewpoint" in this book. This is the personal story of a Palestinian in the Palestine-Israeli conflict. Ms. Karmi does not need to justify the Israeli's feelings, although I think she actually tried.

G. Karmi's book presents a side of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that is seldom seen. Through the eyes of this little girl (8-9 years of age) we see the tragedy that has been inflicted on the stateless Palestinian people through no fault of their own. Ghada writes of her family's terrifying escape from Jerusalem under Israeli gunfire--leaving their home and possessions behind.

50 years later, Ghada does return to what is now Israel--and to
her city of Jerusalem. Briefly, she is able to visit her childhood home, now occupied by Jewish immigrants. She and her family were never compensated in any way for their
loss of home, possessions and country.

The author presents many insights about the culture in Jerusalem before the Israeli takeover. She describes the open, social interactions between Jews, Christians and Muslims at that earlier time. She and her family are Muslim.

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.

This book is probably one of the best to reflect the true impact of what happened in Palestine in the 1940s and what it has meant for millions of Palestinians to grow up in exile. People tend to focus on the everyday violence, the blood shed and the lives that are lost, and while this is a true tragedy, we have to remember that the real tragedy is the loss of a whole people's citizenship, homes, past and future of generations who have been forced to abandon their land, and homes and with them their culture, and their sense of identity. The real tragedy is to know you have a home and that someone else is living in it.

I just finished Ghada Karmi's captivating autobiography. She is honest, poignant, funny and reflective. She takes you back to pivotal moments in history, while at the same time drawing you into her and her family's personal struggles. Many readers who have also grown up with traditional parents, whether they be Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, will be able to relate!

But more importantly, she offers an insightful view of a much misunderstood dilemma. For anyone who has wondered, "Why don't the Palestinians just stop fighting?", you owe it to yourself to read this book!

I admit to fact checking Karmi because I assumed since she was Palestinian, that some of the information she gave could have been exaggerated. She mentions the massacre at Deir Yassin, the bombing of the King David Hotel, and the booby trapping of the dead body of a British soldier. I was shocked to learn that armed Jewish groups did indeed carry out these and other acts of violence before 1948. What we are usually taught is that Israel always respects human rights, but the Arabs do not. Karmi gives another point of view.

Yet she does not paint all Jewish people with the same brush. She differentiates between her Jewish friends she holds dear, the Jewish faith she respects, and the state of Israel which has robbed her of her homeland.

This book is well worth your time!

This is a wonderful book that shows the humnan tragedy of becoming a refugee. In this case, the book talks about a refugee of the 1948 war for Palestine. While the book explains how the creation of the state of Israel have shattered the lives of three quarter million palestnians, it tells the story of one of them. The story of personal conflicts that face any palestnian refugee now, then and in the future:
- Can I return to Palestine and where is it now?
- How can I stay palestnian and at the same time contribute to my current non-palestnian community?
- Do I have the capacity to forgive israelies for what they did to my family and country?

While Ghada's responses to these questions were positive, and she insisted to find an answer to these questions, it is the role of each palestnian to find his/her own answers. Also, it is the role of non-palestnians to understand the palestnian refugee before addressing their plight. Therefore I highly recommend this book.

are you interested in knowing the truth? read this book.. it tells you a lot in an easy narrate.. Ghada Karmi did well, we needed such a book. Thank you Ghada.

It is a wonderful integration of history, psychology, and culture all backed strongly by Karmi's extroadinary literary abilitis.

In Search of Fatima is a beautifully written story, a true story, written by a woman with a real gift for writing. The whole experience of the Palestinian Catastrophe, know as the Nakba, comes alive in this book on a very personal level. The fear of the Palestinians as the events unfold during the years leading up to 1948 are so vividly expressed that you feel that you are there too, sharing the feelings of foreboding and horror.
The second section of the book describes the difficulties in settling in a new country, with totally different customs, language, weather, everything. Her mother, incapable of adapting to a new life, makes a truly pitiable figure.

Although this is the story of one person,the experience of the 1948 Nakba was shared by three quarters of a million others, yet we rarely hear about the terrible suffering inflicted on so many. This book fills a huge void.

This is truly an outstanding work. The search and confusion of identity is made even more difficult when one is a Palestinian refugee. Add to this the issue of gender and Ghada Karmi assertion of herself and her rights and you get a fascinating indeed thrilling mix. The first third of the book deals with the exodus from Jerusalem ..it is very moving and sad to see the events rushing to make little Ghada and her family refugees. In the next part we see Ghada the British emerging and finally with all the contradiction between home, school (with mostly Jewish friends) and the society at large especially with backdrop of the 1956 Suez war. The third and final part is the return and the contradictions of identities and the battle to assert herself as a single woman working for the cause. Ghada's move from the completely apolitical to the activist as part of her search of identity is very well nuanced and gives us a great insight into the meaning of being a Palestinian refugee.

Ghada Karmi is a gifted writer. This work is fascinating enough even if it was given as bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation, but this is hardly the case. Karmi has a facility with prose and is able to get into great detail to transform the readers into her life; this was very much the case in the fist part of the book, the exodus from Jerusalem. You can almost picture Ghada abandoned dog as their car sped away from the house never to return.

This is a thrilling work on par with Leila Ahmad Border Passage. Leila Ahmad an Egyptian American was not a refugee but here Tri-cultural experience in Egypt, England and America and her search of identity and issues of gender are very interesting and highly developed. Another highly recommended work of a Palestinian American is Nadia Captive of Hope, deals with exodus and gender issues and less so of identity.