Mourid Barghouti Quotes & Sayings

In my despair I remember
that there is life after death;
there is life after death
and I have no problem.
But I ask:
Oh my God,
is there life before death? — Mourid Barghouti

It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from "Secondly." Yes, this is what Rabin did. He simply neglected to speak of what happened first. Start your story with "Secondly," and the world will be turned upside-down. Start your story with "Secondly," and the arrows of the Red Indians are the original criminals and the guns of the white men are entirely the victims. It is enough to start with "Secondly," for the anger of the black man against the white to be barbarous. Start with "Secondly," and Gandhi becomes responsible for the tragedies of the British. — Mourid Barghouti

Behind me the world, ahead of me my world. — Mourid Barghouti

If you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with 'secondly'. — Mourid Barghouti

The fish,
Even in the fisherman's net,
Still carries,
The smell of the sea. — Mourid Barghouti

He had the most beautiful smile despite his gold teeth, because his smile was formed essentially in his eyes. — Mourid Barghouti

I tried to put the displacement between parenthesis, to put a last period in a long sentence of the sadness of history, personal and public history. But I see nothing except commas. I want to sew the times together. I want to attach one moment to another, to attach childhood to age, to attach the present to the absent and all the presents to all absences, to attach exiles to the homeland and to attach what I have imagined to what I see now. — Mourid Barghouti

You look out of the car window on your right and are surprised to find that the narrow, worn strip that carries you has turned into a wide, smooth elegant road. The asphalt shines, and soon it separates out, rising to a hill with classy building, and you realize it leads to a settlement. — Mourid Barghouti