Out of Reach
Soon in English translation, Palestinian writer Nasser Abu Srour’s passionate memoir delivers beautifully crafted observations about the nature of freedom.
By Marcia Lynx Qualey
Nasser Abu Srour is one of thousands of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories currently held in Israeli prisons. According to his publisher, Dar Al Adab, many of these prisoners manage to smuggle out manuscripts. Few are as strikingly contemplative as Abu Srour’s The Tale of a Wall, coming out this spring in English, translated by Luke Leafgren.
In the first part of his memoir, Abu Srour describes growing up in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem. He beautifully observes how he felt, as a camp-dweller, when he saw the more middle-class residents of Bethlehem: “They wore new clothes so often that, seeing them from afar, I imagined that a holiday had paid a visit to their homes and decided never to leave.”
Abu Srour was part of the “Generation of Stones” who came of age during the 1987-1993 Intifada. He was just 23 when he was arrested, accused of killing an Israeli intelligence officer. “That winter [of 1993] began with my arrest. A life sentence came in its middle. Its end has not yet begun.”
Time does not stop when Abu Srour is in prison, nor is he cut off from world events. He writes of the hope he felt when Barack Obama was elected US president in 2008. In October 2011, after prisoners received news of an exchange, he describes the pain of those whose names were not called.
But the most heartrending sections are about the love story that takes place in Part II, between Abu Srour and a woman who visits him in prison. The book, although “born of iron and concrete,” is a meditation on the nature of freedom. What is left to Abu Srour, when he has no freedom of movement? The result is an exploration of the possibilities—and limits—of the human imagination.
