Early Life
Al-Qasim was born in 1939 in the city of az-Zarqa in northern Jordan while his father served in the Arab Legion of King Abdullah. He came from a Druze family from the town of Rameh in the Upper Galilee. He attended primary school there and then later graduated from secondary school in Nazareth. His family did not flee Rame during the Palestinian exodus (Nakba) of 1948. In his book About Principles and Art, he explains,
While I was still at primary school the Palestinian tragedy occurred. I regard that date as the date of my birth, because the first images I can remember are of the 1948 events. My thoughts and images spring from the number 48'.
Read more about this topic: Samih Al-Qasim
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Modern equalitarian societies ... whether democratic or authoritarian in their political forms, always base themselves on the claim that they are making life happier.... Happiness thus becomes the chief political issue—in a sense, the only political issue—and for that reason it can never be treated as an issue at all.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)