ISBN: 9780857428967
Hardcover: 154 pages
Publisher: Seagull Books, 2022
Language: English
Palestinian writer Hussein Barghouthi was in his late forties when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. He had feared it was HIV, so when the cancer diagnosis was confirmed, he left the hospital feeling a bitter joy because his wife and son would be spared. The bittersweetness of this reaction characterizes the alternating moods of narration and reflection that distinguish this meditative memoir, Among the Almond Trees.
Barghouthi’s way of dealing with finality is to return to memories of childhood in the village of his birth in central Palestine, where the house in which he grew up is surrounded by almond and fig orchards. He takes many healing walks in the moonlit shadows of the trees, where he observes curious foxes, dancing gazelles, a badger with an unearthly cry, a weasel, and a wild boar with its young—a return not only to the house but to nature itself. The author decides to build a house where he would live with his wife and son, in whom he sees a renewal of life. The realization of his impending death also urges him to vocalize this experience, and he relates the progress of the disease at infrequent intervals. And, ultimately, he details the imaginative possibility of a return to life—to the earth, where he would be buried among the almond trees.
Translated with an introduction by Ibrahim Muhawi.
Hussein Barghouthi (1954–2002) was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, playwright and philosopher, born in the village of Kobar in the Ramallah. He obtained an MA and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Washington–Seattle. He returned to Palestine to become a professor of philosophy and cultural studies at Birzeit University, and went on to work in Al-Quds University as a professor of literature critique and theatre. Barghouthi died in 2002 in Ramallah after a long struggle with cancer. His best-known work The Blue Light was published in English translation in 2022 from Seagull Books.
