Let us first agree that the place in Palestine – and not specifically the Palestinian place – for refugees abroad was not built from the outside. Rather, we inherited it from those who left it, and then made changes ourselves; we built on it and continue to build. For example, as Palestinians in European exile, we have a unique place, a parallel Palestine.

For my part, as a Palestinian refugee in Europe, I was often absorbed in this process of construction when I was invited by the Palestinian Museum to give a lecture entitled “Building a Place from the Outside”. By this time, I had  already laid a foundation stone in the form of my novel, Two Tickets to Saffuriya, then a second, entitled Scenario, and still a third stone, Ain al-Dik,  constituting a third layer for a third generation, living above my father’s house in the camp. He, my father – the second generation refugee – had built his house above that of my grandfather, the original refugee.

What’s different here is that I’m building my Palestinian space with words, with literature, and not with stones and cement, after a second Nakba struck us Palestinians in Syria; a catastrophe that turned material and stone, once again, into spiritual matter, that turned stones into words and fixed our European place, both symbolic and physical. It’s a place which I continue to build with literary, sometimes critical words – intangible materials, memory and imagination. This place – and I don’t specify when its construction will be completed, for places in literature are never finished; those imagined are never stable, and those desired disintegrate as soon as they seem to be almost fully realised  – will be, or more precisely, Palestine will be a space of words, thanks to my work. For the homeland – without slogans, just the reality of exile – can exist through literature.

I say this not to avoid a confrontation with a physical place that does actually exist, with its latitude and longitude, nor to evade a question that has become tiresome through repetition: “Do you really think that today’s Palestine, were you to visit, would be as you imagine?” Whoever asks this question often does so by denouncing my desires, my dreams, and my Palestine, displaying his superiority as a true connoisseur of the physical Palestine of which I know only the shadow, or parallel existence. I say this only because there is only one Palestine I know, inherited and built on what I inherited, never destroying that legacy. Fortunately, my grandfather’s tales of Tarshiha, which he knew so well, preserved my heritage from the often artificial adolescent impulses of destruction. I only know one, the one I inherited and on which I have based my desire to build my dream space.

The spirit of my grandfather, Abu Mahmoud, floats through the first novel and accompanies his grandson, Youssef, as he prepares to return to Saffuriya on a French passport. He is torn by anxiety that the country will seem foreign to him, or that he himself will be a stranger there, as he walks its streets, feeling neither like its inhabitants nor at home. The spirit of my grandfather is also present in the second novel, in the questions of his grandson, Karim, who wonders about the reasons for his departure and exile to Haifa. Karim’s questions are a mixture of reproach, pain, a hint of forgiveness, and worry about the idea of returning: he doesn’t know whether he wants to return to Haifa, the city in Palestine, or to Haifa, the camp in Syria. The first Haifa, still an impossibility, was followed by the one that is even more inaccessible. In the third novel, Samir questions everything he has built and known: can he be content with Palestine in his home, his neighbourhood and his city, Paris? In evoking my grandfather, I questioned myself, writing my story in the diaspora to avoid rewriting his in the camp.

The Palestinian place is where my grandfather, Abu Mahmoud, was, and I carried his memories and stories with his name, touched by the emotion  he showed every time he spoke of Tarshiha in his last years, understanding that there would be no return from exile. This place was established by his voice, and my representations of it were built on that voice. I don’t pretend to know my village street by street, house by house, as its inhabitants might, but I do know its voice, just as they know its smell. I’m not saying that I know the physical place, but rather the immaterial place based on the voice, because the memories transmitted by this voice have been enriched and enveloped by the imagination.
Thus, I don’t see the Palestine I know – and I continue to discover it as long as memories, dreams and desires exist – as being outside space. There is no more reliable Palestine than the one my grandfather described, and I have built stories from his. This is the place, this is Palestine, or rather, this is my Palestine: after Palestine was simply “Palestine” in the first novel, and became “the camp” in the second, it became a familiar space in the third. It was initially the place of origin in the first novel, the village, then the temporary place in the second, the camp, before turning into a “non-place” in the third, where all places became possible.

Palestine is now made up of fragments of the stories of Abu Mahmoud, who left his family in Tarshiha and left after being pursued by the Zionists, he and his fellow peasants fighting with rudimentary rifles. He left knowing that he was a wanted man, and that he would not return as long as Israel existed.  He took no key with him, nor imagined a return anytime soon; he boarded the train to the last station, to the farthest camp, in Aleppo.

I say this to answer the question I couldn’t hold back, which resonates in me insistently: Why did you leave the country? Here I am in an absurd oscillation between question and answer:

– Why did you leave the country?
– I was being pursued.
– But why did you leave the country?
– I was going to be executed.
– But why did you leave the country?
– If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here.

I’m here, outside the country, rebuilding it with my grandfather, from the very beginning, from the Nakba, from the first exodus from the village, the original exit from the original place, construction after construction, to the second exodus, that of my father, leaving the camp, passing from the dirty mud pool to the nauseating oil one, and finally my own triple exodus from the place of origin, to the European sea, whose blue is even more disturbing than the two dark pools.

The Palestinian place is constructed in my mind through these three spaces: the camp, the city and the continent; it is not a simple image of Palestine documented by the words of a local saying, “I know Palestine better than anyone.” I may or may not know this Palestine, the physical place, but I do know my own Palestine, this symbolic place I’ve constructed with stories, memories, dreams and desires – and this is the Palestine I inhabit.

The day I return to Palestine, the one I don’t know, or the day I visit it, I will be indulgent and not ask it to lighten the weight of history or align itself with the Palestine I do know. I know that’s impossible: each has its own world, and every time I enter one, I leave the other.

For now, I only know the other, the  Palestine I have built. This other place is mine, and I  will always remain this other in the face of the Palestine you know.

The text originally appeared in Arabic in the autumn issue (140) of Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya.