Hussein Barghouthi

Hussein Jamil Barghouthi, also spelled Barghouti, was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, playwright and philosopher, born in the village of Kobar in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate. Barghouthi lived his childhood between Kobar, where his mother lived, and Beirut, where his father worked. An outcast since childhood, seen and treated by his society as different and distant for being unique, he found his friends to be the rocks and trees of his village, and the words of his language. He was misunderstood by his surroundings, and was too different from his society by the time he reached his last year in highschool, when he read out loud one of his poems for the first time in a poetry contest. The contest was held by Jordanian education ministry, during the Jordanian custody of the West Bank, and Barghouthi was deprived of 1st place because the ministry of education thought he had stolen a poem from some famous author. "Ignorance is not an excuse" replied Barghouthi, in front of the live audience. Barghouthi got his high school diploma from Amir Hassan School in Birzeit.