Foreword In his biography, Edward Said wrote of the the son. I share this harsh existen.al condi.on of his mother when his family experience with her: the mother who was arrived in the United States at the end of the born in Nasiriyah and lived in Jerusalem, 1940s. Succinctly and bluntly, he stated, "She refused to live for two consecu.ve years in became a stateless person aNer the fall of the US to obtain ci.zenship, rejected the Pales.ne." This sentence felt unremarkable residency requirement in the 40s and when I first read Said twenty years ago, yet I rejected it again of in the 80s. She chose to couldn’t ignore it as I was browsing it now. live in Lebanon despite the tragedies of civil The descrip.on felt as if it could be on the war and the immeasurably harsh reality it front page of a newspaper. created for everyone there. Her home was, and never could be, replaceable. Said's I was reading the same edi.on from my local descrip.on of his early life illustrates this library - which I thought lost - aNer I leN sense of loss and aliena.on, "it was my Bahrain in 2011. At the .me, I hadn’t even constant feeling that I was out of place." underlined the sentence, as I usually do. Details I once found insignificant have Place is existence, for we do not fall into become impossible to ignore. They confirm existence from the womb of our mothers to me that the experience of revoking except in a place, which we call land, home, ci.zenship is nothing so prosaic as a “poli.cal country, or soil. Is there a person who can experience”, it is an existen.al one. The remove the memory of their mother from poli.cal descrip.on cannot comprehend it their childhood? It is as ingrained within us as even if it includes it. the first gasp we take. Existen.al ques.ons It is an existen.al experience, meaning that fall upon us with unavoidable anxiety when you cannot perceive it simply by talking, only that sense of place is removed, be it by by living it. That truth, which has come with migra.on, being stripped of a na.onality or age and experience, now makes me more deporta.on. Immutable ques.ons arise: Who interested in the story of the mother than are you? Where do you belong? How will 5 | Arbitrary Revoca.on of Na.onality in Bahrain - a Tool of Oppression