Raja Shehadeh is a passionate hill walker. He enjoys nothing more
than heading out into the countryside that surrounds his home. But
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.
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