"This is a line of poetry by the Arab poet al-Harith ibn Hilliza, composed more than 1400 years ago. This is the tradition to which Palestine and Palestinian literature belong. Life, never easy for the noble and the just, is not worth living without dignity, he tells us. The line has been ringing in my ears for the past ten months. How difficult and treacherous our paths are, always, within this country and its institutions. We who strive to study Arabic literature with integrity. We who refuse to distort ourselves into the roles assigned to us by the racist tokenizing system of American academia. We who are perpetual guests in our fields of expertise, native informants, colorful faces to revamp the image of the colonial enterprise. We, the ceaselessly other, the continuously suspect. ..."
The First Intifada in the Gaza Strip, 1987.
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