My Life as an Alien

MY LIFE AS AN ALIEN, by Seraj Assi . Leyburn: Tartarus Press, 2023, 214pp. ISBN: 978-1912586516.

Reviewed by: Mushtaq Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander, Srinagar, Kashmir 

This is a story about displacement, feeling different, and wanting to be somewhere else. The ‘alien’ here is not a being from another planet but a man who was born in an environment that does no longer feel like his own. The main character in Seraj Assi’s book is a Palestinian man whose home has been destroyed, whose homeland has been occupied, and whose identity has been changed upon being forced to leave. Being an alien is not his choice; it’s just the way things are when his very existence is questioned.

For Assi, it’s not just about where one comes from or one’s nationality; it’s about who one is. The narrator of the story calls himself ‘alien’ because he has lost everything that makes him feel like he belongs: his home, his land, his love, and his sense of belonging. For him, Palestine isn’t just a place on a map; it’s also a memory, a smell, a sound, and a story. What is left, when all that is taken away, is a man who is lost between worlds.