GHADA KARMI’S ‘IN SEARCH OF FATIMA’: A COMPELING MEMOIR OF UNKNOWN AND INSIGNIFICANT INDIVIDUALS.

…OR A SUBTLE REBUKE AT THE REAL AND KNOWN AND PERSISTENT EVIL-DOERS.

By Mansor Puteh

When the aggressors dared to claim to be the victims for not being allowed to inflict more pain and suffering on the true innocent and the defenseless.

Nuclear arms, American veto power in the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations itself which is there to promote the New Crusade, and most of all, World Muslim Disunity and the stupidity of the Muslim leaders, all help to prop up the ruthless Zionist regime, which is allowed to continue trampling on the ideals contained in the American Constitution, which could never exist a single day without these elements which they had long established.

Therefore, one has to read between the lines to fully grasp what this memoir ‘In search of Fatima’ really wants to say, as its author dissects the happenings and events in her life and making sense of it.

The things which all happened in the backdrop of some turbulent times, when many of us were indeed looking else, unbeknownst to the personal and national angst of the Arabs, may now feel like it is a work of fiction especially with the names many of the political figures who had long disappeared from the memory of many.

Yet, the dust has not yet settled on Palestine and the Arab World; what now in the Jasmine Revolution or the Arab Spring.  

The dust which had been created when the desert in the Middle East was stirred up by bombs released by the Zionist and their Catholic and Christian New Crusaders, is still hovering over the Palestinian and Arab lands.

In order that it does not sound petty or trivial, issues which are not as old as the Pyramids, but long in time yet still present as most of them are still unresolved must be resurrected in order that those who are not familiar with the history of the Zionist persecution of the Palestinians and the Crusades be retold again and again.

This is the direct consequence of the job Adolf Hitler had failed to complete, whose methods had been stolen from him and his Nazi by the Zionists leaders to be repeated onto the hapless Palestinians instead.

So who said Nazism is bad? It can now be described by the smarter persons in the world as the Pre-Zionism Era.

The Nazi leaders were the ones who had taught the Zionist leaders to behave, using similar techniques they had developed.

Yes, I picked all this from reading the book and finding them hidden in between the lines, words which sprang out of the events as they unfolded before my very eyes, which only those who are not blind to injustices could see.

If only Ghada was brave and more brutal, would she have written in bold letters her abhorrence, which only reviewers of her book could decipher for her.

I managed to get hold of this 451-page memoir by chance when a friend of mine had to wait at the Dubai Airport for ten hours, during which time she browsed the bookstores and found it. She bought it and then lent it to me.

She had the mind to choose this particular book for 59 dirham, over the many paperback novels on love triangles and other petty disputes which all have better and glaring cover designs that even many English-speaking Arabs couldn’t find irresistible to buy and read and relish, even when they cost more than 59 dirham per book and they did not have ten hours to spend in transit at the same airport. 

I was reluctant to read it at first fearing that I would encounter something so trivial and repetitive. But I have always been entranced by Palestinian issues, having visited the country in September, 1999.

That was supposed to be few months before the creation of the Palestinian state which was agreed upon in the agreement earlier.

Unfortunately, the Second Intifada broke up, which resulted in the impasse being dragged on and on, with more Palestinians dead and more of their land seized, all under the tutelage of the real masters of the Zionists, America and the United Nations.

I read the first chapters and immediately got a direct connection to the memoir, in the persons who were mentioned in it – Yasser Arafat, Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish and Khalil Sakakini.

That’s amazing, I thought.

Here I am a Malaysian and also a Muslim who could find affinity with the contents of the memoir right from the beginning of it.

I had bumped into Yasser Arafat when he was visiting Malaysia. He was being driven in a motorcade across the street near the National Stadium, and there were police over-riders, which caused me to turn to the right when I saw Yasser or Abu Ammar sitting in the limousine as it reaches the stadium where scores of thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims Malaysians and others were waiting for his arrival.

I bumped into Edward Said, who was then teaching English at Columbia University in New York City where I was studying during the Commencement of 13 May, 1981. The main function was done with and the crowd of students and their parents were all breaking up to pose for photos, when Edward walked into the campus carrying with him a camera.

I could recognize him, as I was familiar with his writings and books. But I did not approach him. I might have taken a shot of him with my own analogue camera from the distance.

As for Mahmoud, I had gone to the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in September, 1999 crossing into the country from Amman, Jordan where I was informed by the staff of the center that the desk in one of the room belonged to Mahmoud.

And the center was the house of Khalil himself which he had bequeathed to the city to be turned into a cultural center which bears his name.

And based on this, I found reading the memoir was a breeze, especially with the speed reading technique I had developed which allowed me to finish it in no time.

Unfortunately, of all the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been displaced, dislocated and maimed, physically and emotionally by Al-Nakbah of 15 May, 1948, surely, there cannot just be this one memoir.

Where are the others?

Many could not be written as those who had been dislodged from their homeland had perished in the process, and in the refugee camps, with so few of them who could not afford the luxury of having materials to write their thoughts and experiences on, as they try to survive the daily tribulations.

This one memoir on this matter that I had just completed reading may be representative to the many similar experiences the others like Ghada had experienced.

It is a story that has to be told and told again and again until there is the final resolution – until the New Saladin emerges, not in the form of Iranian  President Mahmoud Ahmednijad, or the late Osama bin Laden, but in some other form, one who can truly unite the World Muslim Ummah who can make sense of it all and grasp the issue to present it to the American public to make them realize their folly for being able to be led or misled by the noses by the Zionist leaders who are often invited by them to speak in the House of Congress where they tell more blatant lies.

Yet, they could still get a loud applause and standing ovation from its members, who should know better to realize who were speaking – the aggressors and not the victims. They are the persons who had caused America to trample on its own Constitution.

Ghada’s ‘In search of Fatima’ is far more superior to Anne Frank’s Diary, which was inspired by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi brutality, while Ghada’s memoir was inspired by the antics and behaviors of their successors, the Zionists.