Raja Shehadeh

In a dazzling mix of reportage, analysis, and memoir, the leading Palestinian writer of our time reflects on aging, failure, the occupation, and the changing face of Ramallah. In Going Home, Raja Shehadeh, the Orwell Prize - winning author of Palestinian Walks, takes us on a series of journeys around his hometown of Ramallah. Set in a single day - the day that happens to be the fiftieth anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank - the book is a powerful and moving record and chronicle of the changing face of his city.

Raja Shehadeh reflects on ageing, failure, the occupation, and the changing face of Ramallah.

As a young boy, Raja Shehadeh was entranced by a forbidden Israeli postage stamp in his uncle's album, intrigued by tales of a green land beyond the border. He couldn't have known then what Israel would come to mean to him, or to foresee the future occupation of his home in Palestine. Later, as a young lawyer, he worked to halt land seizures and towards peace and justice in the region. During this time, he made close friends with several young Jewish Israelis, including fellow thinker and searcher Henry. But as life became increasingly unbearable under in the Palestinian territories, it was impossible to escape politics or the past, and even the strongest friendships and hopes were put to the test. Brave, intelligent and deeply controversial, in this book award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the devastating effect of occupation on even the most intimate aspects of life. Looking back over decades of political turmoil, he traces the impact on the fragile bonds of friendship across the Israel-Palestine border, and asks whether those considered bitter enemies can come together to forge a common future.

" Shehadeh's] books are maps, painstakingly pieced together, of regions lost to senseless division, to bad choices, and to lies."-The Nation "Remarkable and hopeful . . . a deeply honest and intense memoir."-Gal Beckerman, The New York Times Book Review A moving account of one man's border crossings-both literal and figurative-by the award-winning author of Palestinian Walks, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Six Day War In what has become a classic of Middle Eastern literature, Raja Shehadeh, in Palestinian Walks, wrote of his treks through the hills surrounding Ramallah over a period of three decades under Israel's occupation. In Where the Line Is Drawn, Shehadeh explores how occupation has affected him personally, chronicling the various crossings that he undertook into Israel over a period of forty years to visit friends and family, to enjoy the sea, to argue before the Israeli courts, and to negotiate failed peace agreements. Those forty years also saw him develop a close friendship with Henry, a Canadian Jew who immigrated to Israel at around the same time Shehadeh returned to Palestine from studying in London. While offering an unforgettably poignant exploration of Palestinian-Israeli relationships, Where the Line Is Drawn also provides an anatomy of friendship and an exploration of whether, in the bleakest of circumstances, it is possible for bonds to transcend political divisions.

Tre år før Raja Shehadeh blev født i Ramallah i 1951, var hans familie blevet fordrevet fra Jaffa. Hele hans barndom blev stærkt præget af familiens sorg over alt det, den havde mistet, symboliseret i de funklende lys på den anden side af bakkerne i vest. Raja var vidne til flere anholdelser af hans far, Aziz. Faren var advokat og politiker og var i slutningen af 1960’erne den første palæstinenser, der arbejdede for en to-statsløsning i Palæstina. Han forudsagde, at hvis der ikke blev sluttet fred, ville hjemlandet blive taget fra palæstinenserne, bid for bid. Bitter og desillusioneret over, at hverken palæstinensere eller israelere ville lytte til hans profetiske vision, trak han sig ud af politik. Han blev myrdet i 1985." Som fremmede" er en gribende skildring af dagliglivet på Vestbredden. Men mest af alt er det beretningen om det vanskelige forhold mellem en politisk aktiv far og en idealistisk søn, yderligere kompliceret af den ydmygelse det er at skulle vokse op og finde sin identitet i et land, der er besat. Raja Shehadeh er palæstinensisk advokat og forfatter, bosat i Ramallah. Han er grundlægger af organisationen Al-Haq, der arbejder for at forsvare menneskerettighederne i de besatte palæstinensiske områder. Al-Haq dokumenterer brud på palæstinensernes individuelle og kollektive rettigheder. Han har udgivet flere bøger om international ret, menneskerettigheder og om livet i Palæstina, bl.a. "When the Bulbul Stopped Singing" (2003) og "Palestinian Walks" (2007). Sidstnævnte har han modtaget den britiske Orwell-prisen for.

It is often the smallest details of daily life that tell us the most. And so it is under occupation in Palestine. What most of us take for granted has to be carefully thought about and planned for: When will the post be allowed to get through? Will there be enough water for the bath tonight? How shall I get rid of the rubbish collecting outside? How much time should I allow for the journey to visit my cousin, going through checkpoints? And big questions too: Is working with left-wing Israelis collaborating or not? What affect will the Arab Spring have on the future of Palestine? What can anyone do to bring about change? Are any of life's pleasures untouched by politics?

Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to become involved in politics or law but inevitably did so and became an important activist himself. In 1985 his father was stabbed to death. The Israeli police failed to investigate the murder properly and Shehadeh, by then a lawyer, set about solving the crime that destroyed his family. In Strangers in the House, Shehadeh recounts his troubled and complex relationship with his father and his experience of exile - of being a stranger in his own land. It is a remarkable memoir that combines the personal and political to devastating effect.

"A rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine." --Jimmy Carter From one of Palestine's leading writers, a lyrical, elegiac account of one man's wanderings through the landscape he loves--once pristine, now forever changed by settlements and walls--updated with a new afterword by the author. "I often come to walk in these hills," I said to the man who was doing all the talking and seemed to be the commander. "In fact I was once here with my wife, it was 1999, and some of your soldiers shot at us." "It was over on that side," the soldier pointed out. "I was there," he said, smiling. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was traveling through a vanishing landscape. In recent years, his hikes have become less than bucolic and sometimes downright dangerous. That is because his home is Ramallah, on the Palestinian West Bank, and the landscape he traverses is now the site of a tense standoff between his fellow Palestinians and settlers newly arrived from Israel. In this original and evocative book, we accompany Raja on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006. The earlier forays are peaceful affairs, allowing our guide to meditate at length on the character of his native land, a terrain of olive trees on terraced hillsides, luxuriant valleys carved by sacred springs, carpets of wild iris and hyacinth and ancient monasteries built more than a thousand years ago. Shehadeh's love for this magical place saturates his renderings of its history and topography. But latterly, as seemingly endless concrete is poured to build settlements and their surrounding walls, he finds the old trails are now impassable and the countryside he once traversed freely has become contested ground. He is harassed by Israeli border patrols, watches in terror as a young hiking companion picks up an unexploded missile and even, on one occasion when accompanied by his wife, comes under prolonged gunfire. Amid the many and varied tragedies of the Middle East, the loss of a simple pleasure such as the ability to roam the countryside at will may seem a minor matter. But in Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh's elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.

Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of a walk. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was travelling through a vanishing landscape. These hills would have seemed familiar to Christ, until the day concrete was poured over the flora and irreversible changes were brought about by those who claim a superior love of the land. Six walks span a period of twenty-six years, in the hills around Ramallah, in the Jerusalem wilderness and through the ravines by the Dead Sea. Each walk takes place at a different stage of Palestinian history since 1982, the first in the empty pristine hills and the last amongst the settlements and the wall. The reader senses the changing political atmosphere as well as the physical transformation of the landscape. By recording how the land felt and looked before these calamities, Raja Shehadeh attempts to preserve, at least in words, the Palestinian natural treasures that many Palestinians will never know.