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I Saw Ramal/ah is about Barghouti's much-awaited journey to hishomeland after thirty years of exile. The book is rich with personalmemories of places, people, towns, events and times both in the past andpresent and is full of humor, laughter, joy, sadness, heartbreak, sacrificeand mourning. Throughout the book, there is a haunting feeling of loss andloneliness as a result of dispossession.The book starts at the bridge between Jordan and Palestine, the verybridge that Barghouti had innocently crossed thirty years ago in order toreach Cairo to continue his studies. When war broke out in 1967, he wasstill in Cairo and could not return. He remembers that day in 1967 veryvividly, since it was to mark the beginning of a new life for him, as all of asudden he was "struck by displacement." One wonders if he would haveremembered the details as intensely were it just another day in his normallife and not a day that would mark the beginning of life as an exile.Barghouti jumps from his present to the past and back, cleverly andsmoothly, revealing a little here and there, and beckoning the reader tohasten eagerly through the pages to discover the rest of the story. After a ...

Cytogenetic and molecular deletion analyses of azoospermic and oligozoospermic males have suggested the existence of AZoospermia Factor(s) (AZF) residing in deletion intervals 5 and 6 of the human Y-chromosome and coinciding with three functional regions associated with spermatogenic failure. Nonpolymorphic microdeletions in AZF are associated with a broad spectrum of testicular phenotypes. Unfortunately, Sequence Tagged Sites (STSs) employed in screening protocols range broadly in number and mapsite and may be polymorphic. To thoroughly analyze the AZF region(s) and any correlations that may be drawn between genotype and phenotype, we describe the design of nine multiplex PCR reactions derived from analysis of 136 loci. Each multiplex contains 4-8 STS primer pairs, amplifying a total of 48 Y-linked STSs. Each multiplex consists of one positive control: either SMCX or MIC2. We screened four populations of males with these STSs. Population I consisted of 278 patients diagnosed as having significant male factor infertility: either azoospermia, severe oligozoospermia associated with hypogonadism and spermatogenic arrest or normal sperm counts associated with abnormal sperm morphology. Population II consisted of 200 unselected infertile patients. Population III consisted of 36 patients who had previously been shown to have aneuploidy, cytological deletions or translocations involving the Y-chromosome or normal karyotypes associated with severe phenotype abnormalities. Population IV consisted of 920 fertile (control) males. The deletion rates in populations I, II and III were 20.5%, 7% and 58.3%, respectively. A total of 92 patients with deletions were detected. The deletion rate in population IV was 0.87% involving 8 fertile individuals and 4 STSs which were avoided in multiplex panel construction. The ability of the nine multiplexes to detect pathology associated microdeletions is equal to or greater than screening protocols used in other studies. Furthermore, the data suggest a fourth AZF region between AZFb and AZFc, which we have termed AZFd. Patients with microdeletions restricted to AZFd may present with mild oligozoospermia or even normal sperm counts associated with abnormal sperm morphology. Though a definitive genotype/phenotype correlation does not exist, large deletions spanning multiple AZF regions or microdeletions restricted to AZFa usually result in patients with Sertoli Cell Only (SCO) or severe oligozoospermia, whereas microdeletions restricted to AZFb or AZFc can result in patients with phenotypes which range from SCO to moderate oligozoospermia. The panel of nine multiplexed reactions, the Y-deletion Detection System (YDDS), provides a fast, efficient and accurate method of assessing the integrity of the Y-chromosome. To date, this study provides the most extensive screening of a proven fertile male population in tandem with 514 infertile males, derived from three different patient selection protocols.

Refugees in our Own Land narrates the author’s life between October andDecember 2000, when she was married and living in the West Bank’sDheisheh refugee camp. The book creates a new respect for the refugeesamong whom she lived and gives the reader a glimpse of the incredible difficultiesof their everyday lives.The book is divided into two parts. The first part chronicles Hamzeh’slife during October 4-December 4, 2000: her personal life and that of herfriends in Dheisheh, as well as current political events and how they affectthe life of the refugees in the camp. These almost daily entries were actuallye-mailed to a large number of people while she was still living inDheisheh. The second half of the book is a series of short unrelated storiesand articles, written between 1988 and March 2000, that highlight eventsthat brought her to Dheisheh and explain other events and people in her life.Their order is a bit odd. After the reader gets used to Hamzeh’s life in thecamp, she abruptly ends her entries by describing how she left the camp andthen, just when the reader wants to know what happened next, she startsrelating the events that transpired 2 years ago prior to her journey to theWest Bank. There is no mention of a husband there, and then all of a suddenshe goes from living in the United States to ending up in Dheisheh.How she got there, unfortunately, is never explained. The lack of detailsconcerning such important transitions is quite frustrating. Although shemay have considered them “too personal” to include, it resulted in frustrationon the reader’s part.One success, however, is her exposure of the humanity of people whoso often are dismissed by the world as “refugees.” She mentions their namesand describes their faces and personalities, thereby giving the reader an ...

Background Some infertile men with azoospermia or severe oligospermia have small deletions in regions of the Y chromosome. However, the frequency of such microdeletions among men with infertility in general is unknown. We sought to determine the prevalence of Y-chromosome microdeletions among infertile men and to correlate the clinical presentation of the men with specific deletions. Methods We studied 200 consecutive infertile men. Each man was evaluated comprehensively for known causes of infertility, and Y-chromosome microdeletions were studied with use of the polymerase chain reaction to amplify specific regions of the chromosome. The Y chromosomes of 200 normal men were also analyzed. Results Fourteen infertile men (7 percent) and four normal men (2 percent) had microdeletions of the Y chromosome. Nine of the infertile men had azoospermia or severe oligospermia (sperm concentration