How do you mourn a homeland you have never visited, or a father you never truly knew?

In I Can Imagine It for Us, Mai Serhan delivers a definitive Palestinian memoir that bridges the distance between Cairo, China, and a lost homeland. The narrative begins when twenty-four-year-old Mai receives a call from her estranged, ailing father, summoning her to China to witness a business empire she knows nothing about. Hoping for connection, she agrees to go, only to find a country as unknowable as the man himself.

There, amidst the silence between them, the ghosts of the Nakba rise to haunt their present. With grief comes violence, and a tragic death brings a harrowing new meaning to the word "erasure." The story navigates the splintered existence of exile, moving from the personal search for a parent to the collective trauma of displacement.

Praised as a cinematic and courageous work comparable to the writings of Edward Said and Hisham Matar, this memoir is made rich by its layers of fragmentation. It weaves bitter tragedy with understated grace, capturing the struggle to find identity and resolution in a fractured world.