INHERITANCE OF SORROWS

Palestinian-American writer Sharif S. Elmusa says the occupation has brutalised Israel as well; the only way forward is accommodation

- MANDIRA NAYAR

In order to retain ownership over my distant sky,

I must not own even my very skin.

--Mahmoud Darwish

A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies

IT IS LATE evening in Boston. Far away in Gaza, it is yet another dark night, after another day of nonstop Israeli attacks. Palestinian-American poet Sharif S. Elmusa says what is happening in his homeland is the continuation of the long struggle that started with the British colonial regime taking over Palestine. For him, it is almost like watching a rerun of history.

"Britain helped settle [the Jewish people] in Palestine, and it suppressed all our hopes," says Elmusa. "We revolted in 1936, before India [became independent]. We were very small people, there was just about a million of us. The British sent 20,000 troops from Europe to crush them. They almost left because of our resistance. But we lost eventually, like everyone else. We are the last people who are not freed from colonialism."

But it is a battle that is far from over. And there are no winners.

In his essay "Portable Absence: My Camp Remembered", Elmusa writes that Britain sends expats to other lands, India immigrants, and Palestine exiles. It is in this exile that he continues to remember, and refuses erasure. "It is the dispossession of everything," he says. "Once you lose your country, apart from the material losses, the house, the land and everything, you also lose your historical memory. You are cut off." That is what Israel is doing to Palestine, he says. "Israel tries to redraw everything. It is the biggest archaeological site in the world. Everyone there is an amateur archaeologist, trying to redraw everything. And our history is being wiped out."