Palestinian Walks

Palestinian Walks
Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Total Pages : 225
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781416570097
ISBN-13 : 1416570098
Rating : 4/5 (098 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Palestinian Walks by : Raja Shehadeh

Download or read book Palestinian Walks written by Raja Shehadeh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-03 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.


Palestinian Walks Related Books

Palestinian Walks
Language: en
Pages: 225
Authors: Raja Shehadeh
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-06-03 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

GET EBOOK

“A rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine.” —Jimmy Carter From one of Palestine’s leading writers, a lyrical, elegiac
Palestinian Walks
Language: en
Pages: 240
Authors: Raja Shehadeh
Categories: Travel
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-07-09 - Publisher: Profile Books

GET EBOOK

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 unpubli
Going Home
Language: en
Pages: 225
Authors: Raja Shehadeh
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-03-10 - Publisher: The New Press

GET EBOOK

Winner, Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing In a dazzling mix of reportage, analysis, and memoir, the leading Palestinian writer of our time reflects on aging,
A Rift in Time
Language: en
Pages: 259
Authors: Raja Shehadeh
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011 - Publisher: OR Books

GET EBOOK

"First published by Profile Books, London, 2010"--Title page verso.
Walking Palestine
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Stefan Szepesi
Categories: Hiking
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK

With the images of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict so dominant in our minds, walking for leisure is the one activity probably least associated with the West B