Remembering Barry Lopez in Palestine

by Tania Nasir

In May 2016, I met Barry Lopez face to face for the first time. I say “face to face” because I had really met him years ago on the pages of one of his earliest works, Winter Count. I had never heard of him before, and a whole new world opened up for me. Arctic Dreams came next. I also read interviews and critical reviews, listened to videos, and saw photos. The more I learned the more I felt that I should find a way of introducing Barry to Palestine and for Palestine to meet him too. Barry’s own concerns, his passionate quest to do right by his native land and his people resonated with everything I also felt about my own country. Palestine and Barry’s world were one; their yearnings echoed their pains were shared, and the injustices they suffered came from the same deep well of tragic experiences brought about not only by the other but by the people of the land itself…experiences of usurpation, appropriation, subjugation, occupation and colonization, abandonment, maltreatment, not only of people but of the landscape too.

Finally, on March 14th, 2015, I emailed him sharing my long held thoughts and sentiments, ending, “it will be wonderful and a privilege  to have you visit our country.” His response was quick and positive, “It will be a pleasure to visit with you and others in Palestine.” I was thrilled.

I immediately wrote to my friends Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Hamilton, organizers of the yearly Palestine Festival of Literature. It would be the perfect venue to host Barry. They enthusiastically agreed; inviting him to the upcoming festival to take place in May 2016.

While I was trying to make the best possible arrangements, for Barry’s trip, I was also looking for something special that would make his visit memorable, relevant, both to himself and to Palestine.

I was aware that most likely very few people in Palestine knew about him or his work. I felt a bit embarrassed about this. He was revered all over the world by thousands as a brilliant author, visionary, humanist, and environmentalist but alas not in our part of the world. I wondered how best to befittingly introduce Barry to a Palestinian audience.

The answer came with a daring thought: to have an Arabic language edition of one of his books, it would be the first and would make the perfect introduction. I shared my thoughts with Barry and he was equally excited. The next step was deciding which one of his books would be more meaningful to an Arab reader. After searching and probing, spending days trying to make the right choice, I wrote to Barry in frustration, what would he recommend. He wrote back suggesting that I look at a small book that is often overlooked, The Rediscovery of North America, and assuring me that I would find in it what I was looking for.

But how? I thought to myself, what does North America have to do with Palestine? After reading it, I knew he was right.

The book was written primarily addressing the historic discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus 500 years earlier and exposed the atrocities incurred on the indigenous owners of the land and the landscape itself in the pursuit of wealth and domination. The book is also a moving perceptive examination of contemporary North America. Different timeline, different protagonists but the victim is the same: the land itself. In it, Lopez argues for the moral and ethical need of a redemptive stance, sending a powerful appeal to his North American compatriots: “When we arrived in the New World we came to talk, not to listen. Now that we have begun to listen to the land, to take into account in our planning the biological and chemical responses of a particular landscape…. We’re anxious to know what the land has to say to us, how it responds to our use of it…. how (questions) and proposals might be answered by some local wisdom, an insight into how to conduct our life here so that it might be richer. And so that what is left of what we have subjugated might determine its own life.”

I felt the innuendos of these words echo and resonate from North America all the way to Palestine, they carried a hope, a possibility that might help us in rediscovering our own Palestine.

Thousands of miles away, Barry Lopez had put into words what we are yearning for in our own struggle. We too needed a moral and ethical stance for redeeming our land, not only from a centuries old history of conquest and war, but from an ongoing present existential day to day experience with the more than five decades of Israeli occupation and colonization that have played havoc with our lives and our land.

I wrote to Barry, agreeing with his perceptive suggestion. In a later email, he provided further insight to his choice of a book that had been published 26 years earlier: “its relevance to issues of political and physical geography in Palestine, which are both current there and the subject of heated debate, is its metaphor, and that metaphor does not require updating to be either illuminating or relevant.”

His words blessed the initiative and I prayed that the Arabic edition would honor and be faithful to the original. It was a huge moral responsibility and a challenge.

Time was of the essence. Barry’s visit was only months away and I had a responsible task ahead, of finding the proper “equipe” to do justice to this gem of a book and have it ready to welcome him upon arrival.

Miraculously, and in no time, everything fell into place. It was heartwarming to feel the enthusiasm and excitement of everyone I approached for the marathon ahead.  The collaboration was wonderful. Not only was there the challenge of producing a book worthy of the original, but there was also an embedded personal pride in being part of a project so deeply connected to our community. To make the book more inviting to the Arab reader, we decided to add a subtitle — “What the Land Says” — which appears in bold letters on the cover, thus highlighting Lopez’s important message to his new readership.

The book came off the press on the day Barry arrived in Palestine on May 20th. I offered it to him as we hugged, just an hour before the Palestine Festival of Literature was due to open. It was a moment of celebration, an unforgettable moment, to finally meet Barry, and in Palestine.

On the final day of the festival, I welcomed Barry to our home, along with the festival members of writers and artists that had spent a whole week touring Palestine and witnessing and sharing in our day to day experience. It had become a tradition that festival participants would round up their tour with a meal in our garden. As always it was heartwarming, but more special this year as I introduced Barry to my family. They had heard me talk of him and his visit for ages, and they were delighted to make his acquaintance and chat a bit, a new friend of the family, a new friend of Palestine.

Soon after Barry returned to the United States, I learned that the Tamer institute for Community Education, which works primarily with children and young adults, had chosen the Arabic translation as their book for their yearly reading campaign and book study program in all their many branches in the West Bank and Gaza. What fulfilling news. The book and Barry’s vision have now truly become part and parcel of our world, here in Palestine.

I was invited to one of Tamer’s campaign events, which was held in Birzeit. More than twenty young people gathered in a field, under a tree. They had read the book and prepared their own testimonies, inspired and empowered by Barry’s message. They had listened and heard the voice of their own land. They had listened to ancient lore and to stories and myths of ancestors. The land had spoken to them and they responded. As they stood there, movingly sharing their experience, a luminous glow permeated their words, an undeclared vow and a commitment to take care of the land they loved and belonged to, promising to heal it and guard it, to free it from pain and restore its wholesomeness, its dignity, whatever it takes, however long and arduous the road to liberation and peace. They were resilient.

As they spoke and I listened,  I was strangely aware of a fleeting image of Barry, the wise man, the sage, the teacher, content and smiling, surrounded by his new Palestinian disciples.

I shared all this with Barry. He wrote back, and in his usual humble way commented, “I am pleased to learn that “our” book made a good impression there.”

He called it “our“ book. It was one of the most precious gifts that I have ever received. 

It is now close to three weeks since Barry left us. As I mourn his loss I am also comforted by knowing that he had been here, in this family room with its cross vaults and arched windows overlooking our humble hills and terraced olive orchards. The almonds are in bloom, the red anemones are dotting the fields and Spring is around the bend. I close my eyes and I am transported to that day when he was here, sitting on the couch nearby, surrounded by colorful throw pillows, embroidered with traditional motifs and casually signing a pile of his books that I had read and had accumulated along the years.

The festival bus is about to leave and he is being urged to rush along, but he quietly looks up and smiles, as if to say, it is OK, these books have been waiting a long time….and he continues with his task, the pen carrying his name where it belonged, on the familiar pages.

Thank you, Barry, for signing.

Tania Tamari Nasir
Birzeit- Palestine
January 2021