It is not a casual topic pertaining to politics and international law, either.

The death in Amman of Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, an intellectual whose work has been linked intrinsically to exile, brought back to the surface many existential questions: are Palestinians destined to be exiled forever Can there be a remedy for this perpetual torment Is justice a tangible, achievable goal Barghouti was born in 1944 in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah.

His journey in exile began in 1967, and ended, however temporarily, 30 years later.

His memoir I Saw Ramallah published in 1997 was an exiled mans attempt to make sense of his identity, one that was formulated within many different physical spaces, conflicts and airports.

While, in some way, the Palestinian in Barghouti remained intact, his was a unique identity that can only be fathomed by those who have experienced, to some degree, the pressing feelings of Ghurba estrangement and alienation or Shataat dislocation and diaspora.

In his memoir, translated into English in 2000 by acclaimed Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif, he wrote: I tried to put the displacement between parentheses, to put a last period in a long sentence of the sadness of history But I see nothing except commas.

I want to attach one moment to another, to attach childhood to age, to attach the present to the absent and all the presents to all absences, attach exiles to the homeland and to attach what I have imagined to what I see now.

Those familiar with the rich and complex Palestinian literature of exile can relate Barghoutis reference what one imagines versus what one sees to the writing of other intellectuals who have suffered the pain of exile as well.

Ghassan Kanafani and Majed Abu Sharar, along with numerous others, wrote about that same conflict.

Their death or, rather, assassination in exile brought their philosophical journeys to an abrupt end.

READ: Remembering Mahmoud Darwish In Mahmoud Darwishs seminal poem, Who Am I, Without Exile, the late Palestinian poet asked, knowing that there can never be a compelling answer, What will we do without exile It is as if Ghurba has been so integral to the collective character of a nation, that it is now a permanent tattoo on the heart and soul of Palestinians everywhere.

A stranger on the riverbank, like the river water binds me to your name.

Nothing brings me back from my faraway to my palm tree: not peace and not war.

The impossibility of becoming a whole again in the verses of Darwish and Barghouti were reverberations of Kanafanis own depiction of a Palestine that was as agonisingly near as it was far.

Is it these two chairs that remained in this room for twenty years The table Peacock feathers The picture of Jerusalem on the wall The copper-lock The oak tree The balcony What is a homeland Im only asking.

But there can be no answers, because when exile exceeds a certain rational point of waiting for some kind of justice that would facilitate ones return, it can no longer be articulated, relayed or even fully comprehended.

It is the metaphorical precipice between life and death; life as in the burning desire to be reunited with ones previous self; and death as in knowing that without a homeland one is a perpetual outcast, physically, politically, legally, intellectually and every other form.

While the crushing weight of exile is not unique to Palestinians, the Palestinian exile is itself unique.

Throughout the entire episode of Palestinian Ghurba, from the early days of the Nakba the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 till today, the world remains divided between inaction, obliviousness and refusal to even acknowledge the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people.

He wrote in his memoir: When we were Palestine, we were not afraid of the Jews.

But when they took our entire space and exiled us from it they put both us and themselves outside the law of equality.

In fact, hate rarely factors in the work of Mourid Barghouti or Darwish, Kanafani, Abu Sharar and many others, for that matter because the pain of exile, so powerful, so omnipresent, required one to re-evaluate the relationship to the homeland through emotional rapport that can only be sustained through positive energy, of love, of deep sadness, of longing.

Palestine is something worthy of a man bearing arms for, dying for, wrote Kanafani.

Ghassan Kanafani Translated Cake