Hisham Sharabi. Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual. Translated by Issa J. Boullata. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2008.186 pages. Paper $15.00.

THE 1967 WAR TRIGGERED a frantic Arab-American rush to organize and to challenge the mendacious Zionist narrative. The community intellectuals formed the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) and pursued a program of scholarly analyses which challenged Zionist accounts. I served on the AAUG Board with Sharabi among others. He was quiet-spoken and verbally economic in his interaction with others but clearly politically committed and intellectually accomplished. He was a complex personality, confounding friends and enemies alike with his sphinx-like manner. His memoirs go far in revealing and clarifying his persona.

Originally written in Arabic and published in Beirut in 1978, Issa Boulatta's translation has made this important memoir by one of the most outstanding Palestinian-origin intellectuals accessible to English-language scholars. Sharabi (1927-2005) was in his late forties when he penned these reflections, providing the reader with insight into his intellectual evolution and rooting it in the turbulent history of Palestine and bordering countries.

Sharabi was born in Jaffa, did his undergraduate degree at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and then went on to the University of Chicago for his graduate work, leaving Palestine in December 1947. In hindsight, he expressed honest bafflement as to how he could have left Palestine while internal war was going on and the Zionist takeover of Palestine proceeding. His non-responsiveness to these events seemed strange to him in retrospect because he was politically committed as a member of the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) as were so many Arab intellectuals and literati. The Party focused on re-uniting the countries of Greater Syria and rectifying the tragedy of Palestine as a core issue. He spent his life searching for the political, social and structural changes required to reverse the injustice done to Palestine and to the Arabs. His life story is intertwined with that search.

Sharabi expounds on two important topics: 1) the authoritarian/repressive nature of Arab society and its impact on the individual; and 2) the goals of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and its founder/leader, Antun Sa'adeh. Regarding the first, he bluntly exposes the patriarchal character of Arab society and education which led eventually to his book on Neopatriarchy. Illustrating his point, he dwells on his educational experience at AUB. He noted that AUB Professors--with few exceptions--did not teach nor allow critical thinking based on sound methodology and research. They intimidated students into accepting everything they said. They neither did original research nor published learned studies. He felt the deficit of his AUB education when he went to the University of Chicago. Moreover, as a member of a privileged class, Sharabi confesses he was not conscious of the connection between poverty and privilege. Further illustrating his point, he noted the social mores of the time also forced young people to accept sexual repression and restrained gender interactions by noting some of his own experiences. As a result, he tended to be conservative socially and politically, not only accepting the authoritarianism of Arab society but also patterning his own behavior similarly until he experienced a progressive revelation. He moved from the right to the left embracing a Marxian framework of thought. But even then, he sometimes personally reverted to patriarchal habits.

His experience in the SSNP had a profound impact on him in his early years. His admiration for and almost total deference to Antun Sa'adeh, the SSNP founder and leader, remained with him even as his own political understandings were changing. What captured Sharabi's imagination was Sa'adeh's incisive analysis of the Palestine question and the total capitulation of the Arab leadership. On the other hand, Sa'adeh insisted on the necessity of individual submission and sacrifice in favor of the nation. The SSNP was an anomaly: it was defiant of the colonial remapping of the Middle East and Zionism, but it was also structured along fascist lines. Sharabi's participation in this movement reflected his earlier societal learned habits of obedience to authority and his need for identity and purpose. His close personal relationship with Sa'adeh and the Party offered both. When Sa'adeh was captured and executed by the Lebanese authorities, Sharabi escaped to the USA to complete his graduate studies and to join the faculty of Georgetown University. He also understood shortly thereafter that even if Sa'adeh had survived, he would have broken with the Party as his thinking moved to the left. He did contemplate in 1974 moving back to Beirut forever, but the 1975 civil war prevented this, and he remained at Georgetown. When he retired, he did move to Beirut where he died of cancer in 2005.

Throughout his life, Sharabi kept searching for a movement that would fulfill his hope of somehow exposing Western imperialism and Zionist colonialism and give content to his Palestinian/Arab identity. Even in the quest, however, the dualism of his past was evident. After 1967 he wanted to be a part of a progressive organization and did join the AAUG. Within a few years, he also helped to found the conservative and Arab Gulf-oriented National Association of Arab-Americans, something that angered his progressive Mends. In the end, neither was enough, and Sharabi founded his own institutional framework: the Jerusalem Fund and the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (now simply called the Palestine Center). He held forums at the Center and published particular studies; the forums were televised by C-Span; and his Jerusalem Fund helped Palestinian students. But after retirement, even his own creations did not sustain him. He felt compelled to go live in Beirut and practice his intellectual prowess there. He came to terms with not having fulfilled his greatest dreams, but he kept on trying nonetheless. A great scholar and man, his human and intellectual journey inspires all who are committed to justice. Read it.

Elaine Hagopian is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Simmons College, Boston. This article originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Arab Studies Quarterly.