In the book he recounts how he had just completed his Latin final when he meets a friend who announces excitedly that war has broken out and that the Israeli Air Force has already lost 23 planes: "Comments fly around, assured and doubtful. I tighten my right fist on the bottle of Pelican ink that is always with me in exams. Until this day I do not know why with my arm I drew a wide arc in the air and, aiming at the trunk of that palm tree, hurled the bottle of ink with all my strength so that in that midnight-blue collision it burst into fragments of glass that settled on the lawn."

Forty years later, I ask him if he knows why he did it and what he was feeling — excitement, anticipation, uncertainty, fear? Did he ever imagine that what unfolded could have done so?

A little late on the Six Day war anniversary. Read more of the interview at electronic Intifada, and Mourid Barghouti’s book, I Saw Ramallah.