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BOOK REVIEW
Each month, we conduct a review of a recent book that deals with
issues relating to Palestine and/or the Israel/Palestine conflict. Books
that are chosen for review can be academic or non-academic, historical
or fictional. Next month we will be reviewing Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced
by Rochelle Davis. If you would like to suggest a book for review, please contact the Palestine Center.
Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America
written by Jamal Kanj
Paperback: 192 pages, Garnet Publishing; 1st edition (15 October 2010)
Palestine Center Book Review No. 11 (1 December 2010)
By Yousef Munayyer
What does it mean to be a refugee? For many Palestinians, this is a
central part of their identity. Most Palestinians have experienced a
flight for refuge at some point in their lives and many have experienced
it again and again. Some refugees remained in Palestine, in camps in
the West Bank and Gaza -- though still removed from their homes -- while
others were able to make it across the river Jordan where they settled.
Some became internally displaced persons inside what became the state
of Israel, returning to their homes only to find them occupied by Jewish
immigrants or destroyed. The experience of dispossession is central to
Palestinian identity. This is the tragedy of facing total loss of
property and homeland overnight and of having to start life over with
very little in a foreign place.
Perhaps Palestinians living in Lebanon
have had the most difficult experience. Restricted to camp life in a
land where their mere existence constitutes a threat to a delicate
sectarian balance, Palestinian refugees
in Lebanon often reside in the most impoverished conditions when
compared to those in other refugee camps. There is also the unique
history of attacks on Palestinian refugee camps
in Lebanon which have been severe and bloody in nature, and have not
been rivaled in any other refugee camps in the Arab states. Tel Al
Zatar, Nabatia, Sabra and Shatila and most recently Nahr al-Bared,
are all refugee camps in Lebanon whose occupants have witnessed
destruction and dispossession again years after the depopulation of
Palestine in 1948.
While most Palestinians can identify with the general refugee
experience of dispossession, refugees in different camps and different
host countries face different tragedies, challenges and histories. So
what does it mean to be a Palestinian refugee from a camp in Lebanon like Nahr al-Bared, for example? Answers to this question can be found in the unique story told by Jamal Kanj in his recent and appropriately titled book Children of Catastrophe.
Kanj, an engineer by training, takes the reader through a detailed, personal account of life in a Palestinian refugee camp
in Lebanon. Often with meticulous (sometimes overly so) detail, the
author focuses on the elements of refugee life which are hard to fathom
for those unfamiliar with the density and poor conditions associated
with camp life. The images of eight people sleeping on the floor of a
small, crowded room, refugee children digging through scraps to sell for
additional income, fishing using explosives in shark-infested waters
and preteens sneaking into Syrian-based PLO training facilities only to
be turned away are some of the heart-wrenching scenes which will remain
in this reader’s mind for some time. There are no pictures in this book,
but Kanj illustrates verbosely to describe vivid memories from his
childhood.
The story evolves over time as Kanj takes us through his experiences and his eventual return to Palestine and occupied Jerusalem by way of San Diego, California and a near-death experience
which became a twist of fate. He closes with a somber discussion of the
destruction of his childhood home, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in
2007 by the Lebanese Army and the experience his family endured becoming
refugees from a refugee camp.
Kanj’s story is unique in that it is his personal experience, but it
is at the same time one that most Palestinians can understand through
their own experiences in a different camp, country or occupied village.
It is, as Kanj puts it, an experience of dispossession which unites an
“enduring nation in exile,” wherever they may be. For Palestinians and
non-Palestinians alike, Children of Catastrophe offers an important glimpse into the refugee life most people would have difficulty imagining.
Yousef Munayyer
is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This book review may be
used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.
The views in this review are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
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