Marwan Barghouti’s dreams are the most beautiful
“Dreams hold a special place for Marwan Barghouti.”
Bassem Khandaqji, an award-winning Palestinian writer and former prisoner in Israeli rape and torture dungeons, has written a moving piece on the towering Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti, who remains the most popular Palestinian politician despite having been imprisoned for more than 24 years, has been routinely tortured in Israeli dungeons, and his family has repeatedly sounded the alarm over his deteriorating condition, saying they fear for his life.
Khandaqji, who was released during the prisoner exchanges last year, spent time with Barghouti during his imprisonment. He had previously written an article titled Marwan Barghouti and the World Cup, describing Barghouti’s childlike enthusiasm for football and his favourite teams. That article first appeared in Ultra Palestine.
Khandaqji’s latest titled Marwan Barghouti’s dreams are the most beautiful was also published in the same Arabic outlet on July 1.
Here is a translated version in full:
Marwan Barghouti’s dreams are the most beautiful
By Bassem Khandaqji
In recent times, the fascist Zionist Prison Service has intensified the conditions of isolation imposed on the prisoner Marwan Barghouti. This is something the repressive Zionist security apparatus has long been accustomed to doing, at least since the dawn of October 7, 2023, when, in the context of the comprehensive, colonial genocide against the Palestinian people, it deprived Palestinian and Arab prisoners in its prisons of all the conditions and necessities that guarantee their remaining alive and retaining their humanity.
Yet there remains an outlet for Marwan the human being, the leader, and the university lecturer, an outlet for him and for his fellow prisoners, his brothers in captivity. It lies in mastering the art of dreaming and perfecting the practice of imagination, with all the hope, vitality, determination to endure, and steadfastness they possess in the face of the ever newly devised Zionist policies of killing.
Dreams hold a special place for Marwan Barghouti. They are the most realistic, and to some they are the most utopian. But without dreams, who would we be? And who are we without an untamed imagination that leads us and hurls us to the lofty height of truth? The truth of the Palestinian prisoner who neither bends nor surrenders in the face of attempts to isolate him, silence him, and exclude him from engaging with the course of life and striving towards emancipation and freedom.
Barghouti dreams of freedom, progress, and equality. He dreams of a free people. He dreams of seasons of joy and olive harvests, and of a festival flourishing with colours where children fly their kites without any sense of fear from other aircraft, metal ones laden with death and annihilation. Yes, Abu al-Qassam also dreams that the inhumane conditions of his isolation become conditions for life, communication, and engagement against Zionist fascism and racism.
The life of a freedom fighter is not measured by the years he willingly gives in sacrifice and struggle for the liberation of his people. Rather, it is measured by his dreams and aspirations. Marwan’s lifetime is an eternal dream without limits. His dream is Palestine, and Palestine is the dream he has seen and no other. Thus the prison cell falls away from the heights of brutal Zionist repression against the prisoners and becomes the broadest and most beautiful horizon. The direct and tangible practices carried out against Marwan and his companions in solitary confinement cells and throughout the prisons no longer have, nor do they acquire, the efficacy to dismantle humanity or to internalise isolation and brokenness within the inner world of the prisoner Barghouti, a world that is free and filled with hope and determination.
When I was with him in the darkest moments of the prison cell, I could see that luminous glimmer emanating and flying from his eyes like sparks, burning away the misery of the cell in order to grant us warmth and light, that light which guides us there, here, to the homeland.
The homeland carries multiple meanings and values in Marwan’s dreams. And when I speak of Marwan’s national dreams, I mean, among other things, his expansive vision of this proud and good land, a vision that is spacious enough for all of us, free of factionalism, self-interest, and interests that see the homeland as nothing more than estates inherited in pursuit of concealed aims wrapped in political programmes that fail to meet even the minimum demanded by the sacrifices of the Palestinian people. It is a vision that points to a national project in which we all participate, a project capable of defining the parameters of a moral reference point in all its political, cultural, social, and economic expressions, one that in turn ensures the clarity and steadiness of a compass pointing us towards only one destination, where the greatest dream is fulfilled, the homeland, its land, its trees, its stones, and its people.
They intensify the brutality inflicted upon him and the conditions aimed at stripping away and dismantling his humanity. Yet Marwan, through his dreams, is capable of defeating them and thwarting their vile purpose, a purpose that reveals the extent of their fear of him and of his legitimate human intentions, while at the same time demonstrating their failure to invent a system for searching for dreams and confiscating them. Such a system cannot exist in the paths and orbits of those who pursue their aspirations and dreams of freedom and cling to their humanity. This is borne out by the history of the struggle for human survival; it is borne out in the Nazi extermination camps, and in the catastrophe of comprehensive colonial extermination committed by the Zionist colonial apartheid regime against the Palestinian people.
Marwan Barghouti has dreams, and all dreams are Marwan Barghouti. When the prisoner sheds the burden of his body and its pain, and repels the dreadful impulses and policies of killing, he takes refuge in an unseen realm that the jailer cannot perceive because of the depth of his inhuman moral blindness, and never will perceive except in his worst nightmares. For the beast does not dream; the beast sees only nightmares. The human being, by contrast, sees only dreams. And in the struggle between the two, it is the dream alone that prevails. That dream is Marwan Barghouti, whose fulfilment is near. Indeed, it has already begun to be fulfilled, together with all the prisoner-dreams liberated from the nightmares of Zionist fascism.
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May Marwan's dreams continue to multiply and to get more real as if he were present in their scenes and scenery.
May they encourage and stregthen him until that day when he exits the caves they imprison him and he sees the light of day in his country.
Thank you for this💐
God bless this brave and courageous soul.