Hussein Barghouti

Hussein Jamil Barghouthi, also spelled Barghouti, (May 5, 1954 – May 1, 2002, ) was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, playwright and philosopher, born in the Palestinian village of Kobar in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. Barghouthi lived his childhood between Kobar, where his mother lived, and Beirut, where his father worked. An outcast since childhood, seen and treated by his society as different and distant for being unique, he found his friends to be the rocks and trees of his village, and the words of his language. He was misunderstood by his surroundings, and was too different from his society by the time he reached his last year in highschool, when he read out loud one of his poems for the first time in a poetry contest. The contest was held by Jordanian education ministry, during the Jordanian custody of the West Bank, and Barghouthi was deprived of 1st place because the ministry of education thought he had stolen a poem from some famous author. "Ignorance is not an excuse" replied Barghouthi, in front of the live audience. Barghouthi got his high school diploma from Amir Hassan School in Birzeit.

He went on to continue his studies in Budapest, Hungary, studying Political Science and State Finance there for 5 years. After returning to Palestine, he studied at Birzeit University and obtained his BA English literature from in 1983, and taught there for one year before leaving to obtain both his M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1992) 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 for three years in Al-Quds University as a professor of Literature Critique and Theater in 1997, during which he was a founding member of the Palestinian “House of Poetry” and Publishing Manager in a couple of literature magazines.

Barghouthi died on May 1, 2002, in Ramallah Hospital, after a long struggle with cancer.

Works The various and diverse works of Hussein Barghouthi include novels, poetry, autobiography, critique, folklore, song lyrics, theater and cinema script, and many intellectual research and studies scattered in newspapers, books and magazines. Only two of his works were translated, both into French by Marianne Weiss, which are “The Blue Light” and “I’ll be among the almonds”. The book was translated to French in the title of "Lumière bleue", by Marianne Weiss in 2004. An English translation by Fady Joudah was publishded by Seagull Books in 2023.

"The Third Bank of The Jordan River" He wrote his book “The third bank of the Jordan River”, published first in 1984, on his journey in Europe, describing his mental state at the time, that was edging both reality and insanity and not settling in either. Making the Jordan River an analogy, he uses it to explain that while there are two banks to the river of life, homeland and exile, there are some people destined to live in the virtual third bank; The bank of spiritualism, thought, passion, pain, love, magnitude, madness and poetry. A book that takes you on a trip, and might bring you to tears, and make you fall in love with it.

"Among the Almond Trees" Written in his last years in the same time as “The blue light”, his autobiography, Among the Almond Trees, documents his final years of struggling with cancer, in which he reflects on his origins, beginnings and end, and paints an image of his beautiful village that was, and still is, subject to colonialism. The book was meant to give the magical place of “Deir al Juwani”, an area of wilderness and mountains in the village of Kobar, eternal life, and so it did. The reader can live in the place that was slowly being deformed by colonialism and civilization. “Tell her, no matter what happens… If you visit me, I’ll be among the almonds”, and so it was; Barghouthi was buried between the almond trees in the garden of his mother's house.

"The Rosette Stone" “The Rosette Stone”, published in 2002, is a postmodern script that cannot be framed into one style or genre of literature. The title of the book is an analogy to the Rosetta stone that was discovered in Egypt, which was the key to deciphering the hieroglyphic language of ancient Egypt and uncover the truth of its three thousand year history. His best and most difficult work, in his own belief, where every other work he wrote was aimed to remove the barriers between him and his reader, allowing the reader to understand his script, vision and total personality.

“The Demise of The 7th Wall: Psychological Struggle In Literature” Considered a cornerstone in cognition and psychology, in the form of an extended essay, the book serves as a therapist to the reader. It analyzes the history of psychological conflict. The book explains how every individual creates his own "main reason" of existing, and how the time and place in which a person is born influences the creation of this reason. He introduces is it saying "The main reason is no more than a complicated reflection of the dominant social relations in a certain phase of time". The book focuses on the history of psychological struggle, rather than on the history of the figures and characters it discusses. "There is no absolute main reason for every time and place, and so the main reason develops and changes as history develops and changes", he explains. "Each individual can change, and choose with freedom that is proportional to his time, his own main reason. This depends on the opportunities given by the historical period in which he lives",

"The Emptiness That Saw The Details" A postmortem accumulation of five writings of various subjects: The beginning of existence, a philosophical analysis of the First Intifada, the magnitude of experience, the paradox caused in Palestine by capitalism and an analysis of the concepts of time and place; A book that brings together many cultures, visions and times.

"The emptiness that saw the details" A script that includes 29 quotes from books, poetry, songs and writings of divergent figures such as Mahmoud Darwish, Al-Mutanabbi, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Hardy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Maxim Gorky, and lyrics from songs such as Hotel California. Written in 1st person narrative, the script ends with a poem by Barghouthi himself. The script was first published in Ugarit magazine in 1996, of which Barghouthi was chief editor. The magazine was named after the ancient city of Ugarit.

"On the extinct place" This piece, written first in Kobar, focuses on “the extinct place” which is any place that loses its history and ‘depth’. Barghouthi starts with an analysis of the architectural inconsistency of Ramallah city. The transformation of architecture from normal houses and rural life in the 1960s in Palestine, to new and bigger buildings, towers and villas that all “seem to say that the world is split only into ‘what is me, and what is not me’”. This development caused what is called “the phenomenon of the extinct place”, which is the same place in which a person feels belonging, after urbanization or change. The diverse architecture caused the city to have a ‘split personality’, one being its surface and the other its depth.

Barghouthi explores the Palestinian subconscious, and how this domination of “the extinct place” imprinted somewhat of a ‘fall’ in the Palestinian mind, in which there is an original sin; the Nakba. And the ‘return’ to that lost depth of the place, similar to the ascension to heaven, is the ray of hope that battles the extinct place; this concept, says Barghouthi, defines the national and humanitarian Palestinian self.

The city of Ramallah, he explains, is a constant battle between the historical and the extinct place, due to the external entry of colonialism and the internal entry of capitalism and private ownership, “a plot similar to a plot of a realistic novel of a temporal and spatial progression” with a tangible script. Perceiving ‘place’ in time as a ‘past place’ that goes through the present and into the future created a dominance of memory and past over Palestine, which, in turn, annihilated the feeling of belonging to ‘the extinct place’ (Ramallah) and a feeling of exile from a ‘past place’.

He believed that the reader should be an active thinker and searcher, rather than just a receiver of knowledge. His philosophy is based on that each individual should re-build his “pyramid of thought”,

It was, however, the narrative works that brought more interest to his previous, shunned works. The publishing of his postmortem narratives, including his masterpiece "The Blue Light", revived interest in his poetry which his narratives aimed to help decipher. Barghouthi's personal focus was his poetry, which he considered most important, and aimed to help the reader better understand it through writing narratives.

His popularity in the Arab world grew after the release of his postmortem narratives, mostly in his homeland Palestine, which increased interest and support for publishing older works of his, like "The Vision" and "Liquid Mirrors", both which are poetry books; his narratives are considered a simpler form of his poetry.

Barghouthi's works, however, have not been globalized because not many have yet been translated. Only two of his books, "The Blue Light" and "I'll be among the almonds", were translated, both only into French. He never had the chance to popularize or translate the works himself, since he had little time to even write them, having struggled with cancer while writing them, and died before they were published. His main focus, in addition, was life itself and not popularity or fame, and so he lived the majority of his life with his works unknown, before the final years when his narratives gained great attention.