Barghuthi, Husayn Jamil

Hussein Jamil Barghouthi, also spelled Barghouti, (May 5, 1954 – May 1, 2002, Arabic: حسين جميل برغوثي) 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.