Journeying Back Home from Displacement and the (Im)Possibility of Return in Ghada Karmi’s Return: A Palestinian Memoir (2015)

Abstract

The forcibly exiled Ghada Karmi writes about her return to Palestine to retrieve a sense of belonging, overcome the unsettling sense of exile and rootlessness, and reconnect with her Arab roots. Her journey to a denuded Palestine is devoid of a sense of inclusion and belonging as the possibility of a real and outright return falls asunder. This article presents a paper that examines Karmi’s journey back home from England and her writing about it in Return: A Palestinian Memoir (2015). This article aims to scrutinize the act of homecoming and the journey back from/to displacement in Ghada Karmi’s memoir. Using the lenses of Brendan O’Donoghue’s understanding of the poetics of homecoming, along with other contemporary theorists on the conundrum of exile and return, this paper deconstructs how Karmi questions the (im)possibility of a real return in her narrative. Thus, the analysis in this article reveals how Karmi’s perception of a true return becomes decidedly fanciful as she becomes encumbered by the new, grim reality of her homeland.