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Scroll.in
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Voices from exile: ‘Do you know the Palestinian map? See, it is in my veins'
In May, I visited Jordan to meet family friends and see the elaborate rock-cut tombs of Petra. Soon after Israel's war on Gaza began in 2023, Jordan's capital of Amman had grown desolate, with tourism only sputtering back to life nearly two years later. Over the month I spent in Jordan, I received an education on West Asia. Jordan is geographically close to many of the countries I had only read about in the news: Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. I skirted around these countries for weeks, as I visited different parts of Jordan to look at historical sites. I saw Jerusalem's skyscrapers and parts of Palestine from across the Dead Sea, parts of Israel from across the Jordan Valley and from northern Jordan there was a glimpse of the Golan Heights. Over several decades, waves of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes to take refuge in neighbouring countries. Many fled to the East Bank of the Jordan River to Jordan, making their homes and lives there. Today, roughly 60%-70% of the Jordanian population is of Palestinian origin. They live hyphenated lives. Some hold Palestinian ID cards but Jordanian passports. They take comfort in childhood songs, food and nostalgia. Even though life seemed calm in Jordan, for many I met, their 'idea of home' was under attack just across the King Hussein Bridge. Amman is barely a few hours away by road from Palestine. At a concert in Amman, I saw young Jordanians grow solemn as the Egyptian rock band Cairokee played Telk Qadeya (This Is an Issue), which drew an unflattering picture of the Israel-Palestine conflict calling out the double standards of the Western world. When the lead singer, Amir Eid, shouted 'Free Palestine' in the middle of the song, Jordanians raised their arms and cheered loudly. (Cairokee had its first big hit in 2011 with its soundtrack for the Arab Revolution, Sout-Al-Horeya [The Voice of Freedom]). Ever since the war started, I had joined my friends in showing outrage on Instagram over the Israeli occupation of Gaza. But the more time I spent in Jordan I realised I didn't actually know much about Palestine or what it meant to be Palestinian. I had only read about Palestine in books. From Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks, I learned about the country's beautiful landscape. How every wadi, spring, hillock, escarpment, and cliff had a name, usually with a particular meaning. Some in Arabic, others Canaanite or Aramaic, evidence of how ancient the land was and how it had been continuously inhabited for centuries. Shehadeh wrote: '...The very thing that renders the landscape 'biblical,' its traditional inhabitation and cultivation in terraces, olive orchards, stone buildings and the presence of livestock, is produced by the Palestinians, whom the Jewish settlers came to replace. And yet the very people who cultivate the 'green olive orchards' and render the landscape biblical are themselves excluded from the panorama. The Palestinians are there to produce the scenery and then disappear.' I interviewed four people of Palestinian origin in Amman: a hip-hop artist, an NGO worker, a former interpreter and a disability rights activist. They had unique perspectives on work and life with shared ideas of identity and home. In the weeks since these conversations, Israel has escalated attacks on Gaza and has launched an air attack on Iran causing more death and destruction. It's a conflict that is now clearly visible over Jordan's skies. Alaeddin Rahmeh, 35 Born: Jabal Al-Hussein Refugee Camp, Amman Identity: Palestinian-Jordanian 'My parents were exiled from Palestine during the Nakba [the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948]. They went from Jaffa to Ariha with their families, and in 1967, they came to Jordan to the Al-Hussein Refugee Camp, one of the first refugee camps to be established in Amman. 'I was born and raised there. Initially, there were tents, and the refugee camp slowly developed using bricks and metal to cover the roofs.' Rahmeh's childhood was in the 'bubble' of a refugee camp. He grew up in a small house with two rooms with his parents and three siblings and went to school with other Palestinian refugee children. 'My grandfather used to be a farmer in Palestine. He grew lemons, citrus, oranges, and had a flower garden. Every time I talked to my grandfather about Palestine, he would cry. He said he had thought the family would leave home for one or two weeks and then eventually return, but we never went back. The Israeli occupation made it harder to return.' He has heard his grandfather recite poetry and sing songs about the beauty of Palestine. 'When I was a kid, I used to feel a lot against Israel. Mostly anger. But now, I feel hopeless. I feel like war machines are the winners. If you have military power you can do whatever you want.' When Rahmeh was in his early 20s, he saw hip-hop artists on television. It was the time of the Second Intifada, a major uprising of Palestinians against Israel in the early 2000s. Watching men spin on their heads as a break from relentless bad news on television, spurred in him a fascination with hip-hop culture. 'There is a break dancing crew in Gaza called Camps Breakerz. They are official therapists and they use break dance as a way to heal children in Gaza. They became very popular and there are many videos of kids dancing on the rubble.' Three times a week, Rahmeh runs a graffiti tour around Amman guiding tourists through stairways and narrow streets to point at wonderful street art and talk about the city's hip-hop culture. He explains how street art went from vandalism to art. One of the murals is of a young boy in Gaza dressed in press gear painted by an Italian artist called Levone. 'The Jordanian community started doing events to collect donations, to paint murals about Palestine, anything we can do, songs, poetry, even dance. We are trying to show solidarity and touch the people in Gaza.' For Rahmeh, home is a song and a vein. 'There is a song about Palestine that my grandfather used to sing: 'We have a home that lives within us, but we don't live in it.' Our home is in our blood but it is too far away to reach. So, Palestine is my home, it is my blood.' Rahmeh points to the veins on his left arm that are vaguely shaped like the Palestinian map. 'Do you know the Palestinian map? See, it is in my veins.' Laila*, 30 Born: Mato Grosso, Brazil Identity: Palestinian-Brazilian. Palestinian first, Brazilian second, living in Jordan. 'My family is from a village in Ramallah. When I was a kid, we used to go to Palestine every year to spend the summer vacation there. At the time we didn't understand a lot about the conflict but we saw how life was there. When we had to get from one city to another or one village to another, there were many checkpoints. Things have gotten a lot worse today.' From the ages of 10-16, Laila visited her grandmother's house every summer to meet family and hangout with her cousins. 'Over the years, the interrogation has gotten so much worse. Their [Israeli soldiers'] approach is very demeaning. They try to humiliate you, confuse you. It's a nerve-wracking experience filled with anxiety because you don't know what they are going to do and say. 'And the last time I visited, I was so scared I'd be denied entry and I was so grateful I was allowed in. To think the decision is in the hands of someone who despises your entire existence and would rather see you dead!' In the 1950s, Laila's grandfather had emigrated to South America, lured by the prospect of a better job. This is why today she doesn't have an Palestinian ID card but has to apply for a visa on her Brazilian passport. 'At the time, they were advertising a lot about South America, it was part of the things they did to get people out of Palestine. They said it had opportunities, a good place to live, and since the family didn't have money they thought it was a good idea.' Her father, also a Palestinian, had first emigrated to Colombia and then to Brazil where he met her mother. 'There were lots of communities, associations, and things like that centred around Palestine in Brazil. Today, in Ramallah, you will hear Portuguese on the streets.' Since the time the conflict began, Laila has heard from her family in the West Bank that things have gotten worse. There are a lot more road blocks and checkpoints. A trip that used to take 20 minutes, now takes two hours. 'People find it very difficult to get to work, to get to school, to move around. Suddenly they close the entries to towns, so people are stuck. They can't go in or out and they are just imprisoned. 'One of my cousins had to move to Ramallah, since the time he spent on the road was unrealistic. Now he has had to rent a room there. Otherwise, he was going late to classes, and it was affecting his studies.' In Amman, Laila works in an NGO in education policy. 'When the war started, me and everyone I know felt like what we were doing was pointless if it didn't centre around Palestine.' Her friend who was a veterinarian in Europe had lamented about wasting vials of morphine, leftovers after administering it to injured animals. 'She said when she had to throw away the excess, she thought of mothers giving birth in Gaza who didn't have access to basic medical supplies.' 'When I see people are dying in Gaza, I think that could have been my family. Gaza is made of refugees from different parts of Palestine, if we just happened to be from a different part, we could have been living in Gaza. We could have been that family that was entirely killed. I often think the person who is going through this looks just like me. They are starving and they have lost their entire family! How are we letting all this happen?' Laila's idea of home is her grandmother's house on a hill. It is two hours away from where she lives in Amman if there were no checkpoints. 'Home is being with my cousins, breakfast made by my grandma. She usually gets organic eggs and homemade ghee. Sometimes she puts zucchini, zaatar (a spice native to the Levant), olives, and tomatoes on the table. The olive oil is from our land, the ghee is homemade, cheese is homemade, the vegetables are from her garden. It all just tastes so much better. 'Even if today I had a chance to live in Palestine, I would live there despite everything. But now every time I go, I say goodbye to the house and goodbye to my grandma just in case I can never come back.' Khalil Anwar Hammad, 67 Born: Nablus, Palestine Identity: Palestinian-Jordanian 'My father and his family were in Yaffa. My grandfather was one of the rich people there. He owned a big orange garden and exported oranges all over the world. In 1948, when Israelis started the war, they moved to the West Bank, a city called Nablus. My mother was living there and me and my siblings were born there.' During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Six-Day War, Hammad's father, who was working in Saudi Arabia at the time, was unable to return to Palestine. He sent word for his family to leave Palestine. Khalil remembers the letter: 'Come as you are, don't bring anything, just the clothes on your back.' The family eventually came to settle in Jordan. 'My father and grandfather carried the key to their house in Yaffa. It was the old key, the long ones. Maybe it was the same key that opened all the doors since they were the same model,' Hammad said, smiling. 'Maybe we are happy here in Jordan but still as people say 'East or West, Home is Best.' But nobody can deny how Jordan has helped us. We are really one family.' Hammad expressed gratitude to the country that gave him everything. 'When I talk about Jordan and Palestine, we are one people, one tradition. Jordan is the only Arab country which gave the Palestinians all the rights as original Jordanians. We have ID cars, driving licences, and we can buy property and earn a living. Some of us have even become Members of Parliaments and ministers. Doctors, engineers, technicians, all graduated from these refugee camps.' Years before joining the logistics team of an international aid agency in Jordan, Hammad worked as an interpreter and translator. He got the chance to accompany a Japanese TV crew to Iraq and interview Sadaam Hussain. 'To follow the news in Jordan is like our daily meal. It's like three meals a day. We are interested to know what is going on and hoping that things become better for us and everybody.' At 67, his memories of Palestine may have faded but his loyalties are strong. 'I miss a lot of things, it was true that I was a kid when we left but I still have memories. My sister and I remember a man who would visit our home with his donkey carrying dairy products like yoghurt and milk. My maternal grandmother would prepare the milk, and leave the creamy layer with some sugar in a small bowl for me. I used to go every day to her home like a thief to eat it.' Hammad remembers the fresh fruit – the apricots, apples, figs and pears. He also remembers the rows and rows of olive trees that have been there since Roman times. 'There is a question to be asked as to why Palestine was given to the Jews. It is because it is a beautiful country. It has the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, nature, forests, water springs and ruins.' He remembers the big mountain behind his home and the birdsong just before sunset. When the war started, Hammad admitted feeling hopeless about the future of Palestine. 'But we were surprised by the young generation. We didn't expect that they had all these feelings towards Palestine. Across the country and the world, they took to the streets in solidarity 'We are proud to say we are from Palestine. The pride translates from one generation to the next. Since 1948 till now, the idea of Palestine lives on. We never forget that Palestine is our country and one day we will go back to our country. If not my generation then the next one, if not them, then their children.' Sabreen, 45 Born: Bethlehem, West Bank Identity: Palestinian from Bethlehem 'I am from Za'atara, a small village south of Bethlehem. Most of the people are Bedouin so my tribe is originally from this area. It's a unique location, close to the Dead Sea, and there is a big mountain called Herodium. Most of the people living there are my family. I have my uncles, grandparents, and cousins all living in the same square. You get the feeling that you are all living in the same house.' Sabreen has lived in Amman for over 20 years but she still speaks Arabic like a Bedouin would from her village. She moved to Jordan after she got married and has three children. Currently, she heads the country operations for an international development mission. When she trained as an occupational therapist in Bethlehem University it was the time of the Second Intifada in Palestine. 'We were allowed to celebrate our college graduation for only 30 minutes. I remember they attacked the University. If I have to tell you the reason, I won't be able to define it.' As part of coursework, Sabreen and her classmates had to travel to different cities. She remembers travelling to Ramallah and Jeruselam through multiple checkpoints where she was often threatened to be killed if she even moved. 'I worked in a camp in Jenin which was attacked for several months by the Israeli army. I went there forty days after the Israeli army had exited the area but I could still smell the stench of death.' Her job was to support people who were injured and advise mothers with children with disabilities. In those years, Sabreen spent 12 hours traveling between Bethlehem and Jenin which would otherwise take two hours. 'I would leave my home very early to go through several checkpoints, we would just be waiting in checkpoints for no reason. It was very stressful.' She recalled a friend who had a hearing impairment who was killed at a Bethlehem checkpoint since the soldier was unable to recognise that he was hard of hearing. He was shot several times in the chest and the legs. Last year when Sabreen visited Bethlehem, her family was stopped at a checkpoint on their way back to Jordan. 'A female soldier opened the car and started shouting at my 12-year-old son asking him to show ID. She was speaking in Hebrew, which we couldn't understand. She was very aggressive and held a big weapon.' It was the taxi driver who intervened to explain that the child was still too young to have a Palestinian ID. 'I was freaking out that she would pull him out of the car, she was really aggressive and kept putting her hand on the weapon. All this for nothing, we were just passing the border to go to Jordan. You can't guess when a person may feel you are a threat to them and shoot.' Five weeks before the war began in 2023, Sabreen was working in Gaza on disability inclusion in services. 'After the war began, I received messages from people in Gaza asking why all the humanitarian organisations were leaving, and if they (Gazans) were all going to be left behind to die? I was so frustrated and angry.' In our conversation, Sabreen spoke often about the Palestinian resilience. 'I know that Palestinian people are resilient even if everything is miserable around them. If you enter Gaza, you will see that people have nothing but they somehow create life from nothing. If this war stops in Gaza, you will find people rebuilding their homes within days.' In this conflict, even food and clothing was political. 'Gazans have been kept isolated from everything. Israelis prevent people from wearing white for weddings. They are not allowed to have certain vegetables, and zaatar is banned. It's just a way to put people under pressure and make them feel they are worth nothing. And that they deserve nothing.' For Sabreen, home is where her family is – in Bethlehem. 'I was born there, I lived and studied there. My land is there. It's a place where I feel safe. Even with this war and this situation, I will keep going back.' (At the time of writing this piece, Sabreen was unable to return to Jordan after a trip to Bethlehem for Eid celebrations. The border was closed after Israel's attack on Iran.) Even her children feel a fondness for Palestine even if they were born in Jordan. 'I tell them never to feel afraid or hide that they are Palestinians. I tell them: Don't be afraid to say you are Palestinian and don't pretend you are only Jordanian. If you don't trust yourself, then don't ask people to respect and trust you.'
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘A moral crisis': how the Sydney writers' festival grappled with the Israel-Gaza war
The Israel-Gaza conflict loomed over the Sydney writers' festival long before it opened its doors at Carriageworks last week. In February, the chair of the festival board, Kathy Shand, resigned over her concerns about some of the programming related to Gaza and Israel. Robert Watkins, who replaced Shand as chair, promised the festival would present 'a plurality of voices [and] a diversity of thought' including 'both Jewish and Palestinian writers and thought leaders'. Guardian Australia attended a number of events related to the conflict to see how the writers' festival covered the ongoing death and destruction, antisemitism, Islamophobia and the feelings of different communities being rejected and sidelined. Raja Shehadeh – described by the Guardian as Palestine's greatest prose writer – was one of a few writers joining the festival by video link from the region, Zooming in from his home in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Shehadeh, a human rights lawyer turned writer, has written a number of acclaimed books, including the Orwell prize-winning Palestinian Walks. He was at the festival speaking about his book What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? – a question he answers succinctly in his panel. 'The very existence of Palestine is what Israel fears.' Describing his daily life, Shehadeh told the audience how Israeli settlers had attacked a nearby Palestinian village, firebombing houses and cars 'with the help of the Israeli army'. IDF checkpoints made the hill walking he loves difficult but, he said, 'this is nothing compared to what's happening in Gaza'. 'We hear the planes, the jet fighters … they streak through the sky on the way to Gaza to kill more people,' he told Australian writer Abbas El-Zein, who moderated the session. 'And so we cannot complain.' Ittay Flescher, an Australian Jewish writer, joined the festival via video link from Jerusalem, where he moved with his family from Melbourne in 2018. The audience was warned before the session began that earlier in the evening Flescher had had to evacuate his home because of incoming rockets from Yemen. Flescher, who is the education director at Kids4Peace Jerusalem, an interfaith movement for Israelis and Palestinians, said a key element in working towards peace was combating the dehumanisation of the other side that has occurred in the region. 'I don't think Hamas could have carried out October 7 without extensive dehumanisation of Jews and Israelis … And what Israel has done in Gaza, not just killing Hamas, but killing so so many innocent men, women and children that were not connected to Hamas … and now the limiting of food into Gaza and the starvation, that can't happen without extensive dehumanisation.' Peter Beinart, an Jewish-American political commentator, echoed the need for humanisation of the other, and listening to voices across the divides of the conflict in his sold-out event on Sunday. 'Palestinians lack permission to narrate,' he said, echoing the literary great Edward Said. 'There is this process in which, as a Jew, from the moment you can remember you've been talking about Palestinians, but you're never listening to Palestinians or actually meeting with Palestinians. And I think this is a recipe for both ignorance and dehumanisation,' Beinart told Debbie Whitmont. Beinart said he wrote his recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, to try to offer 'a voice that my mind comes from … from love and from Jewish solidarity, to say to the people in my life that I love that I think something has gone horribly, horribly wrong'. 'When I look at what's happening in Gaza, a place where most of the buildings and the schools and the universities and the mosques and the churches and the bakeries and the agriculture have been destroyed, and people have been displaced from their homes … every person I know from Gaza has lost count of the number of people who've been killed,' he said. 'It seems to me this is the most profound chillul hashem, desecration of God's name, that I have witnessed in my entire life, and it will constitute not just a moral crisis for the Jewish people but for those of us who take Judaism seriously.' At a packed – and occasionally tense – session on Friday morning, the British Jewish barrister and author Philippe Sands and Michael Gawenda, the former editor of the Age, spoke about antisemitism and xenophobia. Gawenda argued that many Jewish Australians working in the arts had been refused work because of their political stance on Israel. 'They feel like they are being rejected on the basis that they are Jews, Jews of a particular kind. And I think that there's evidence that this is widespread in Australia ... It's widespread in the arts, I'm absolutely convinced of that.' Gawenda's comments prompted a heated question from an audience member about the experience of Arab-Australians who had missed out on opportunities due to their pro-Palestinian stance, naming Khaled Sabsabi and Antoinette Lattouf as examples. Sabsabi had been selected as Australia's representative at the 2026 Venice Biennale but was dumped by Creative Australia over past works that involved imagery of Hassan Nasrallah, the now-dead Hezbollah leader, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Of Sabsabi, Gawenda said: 'With his cancellation, there was a huge uproar ... Letters were signed, petitions were signed calling it out, including by Jews who would have been opposed to his views. There were no letters or petitions supporting these young Jewish artists, none. They got no support at all. Lattouf got heaps of support, as she should have. I think it was a mistake what the ABC did.' Sands, who is a king's counsel, spoke about the risks of a sense of competition between marginalised groups, and of antisemitism being weaponised by politicians for their own political ends. 'The concern about creating the league tables of horror is that it leads to an instrumentalisation of what's going on. And what I really worry about right now is that what's going on is instrumentalising antisemitism for other purposes,' he said. Tension among the audience was heightened when the first question from the crowd came from a woman asking about the 'Zionist lobby', which she said had put 'its tentacles into everything' – an antisemitic trope that attracted gasps and furious comments from other members of the audience. The question was shut down by the moderator. For many in Australia with family and cultural ties to the region, art has become a place to express their rage and grief. The Lebanese Australian writer Sara Haddad, the Lebanese Palestinian poet Hasib Hourani and the Palestinian Australian playwright Samah Sabawi discussed with moderator Micaela Sahhar their texts of home and identity against the backdrop of the Israeli bombardment and blockade of Gaza. All three works were published after 7 October 2023. Sabawi started writing Cactus Pear for My Beloved, which tells the story of her family's expulsion from Gaza and settling in Queensland over 100 years, in 2016. It was intended as a celebration of her father and her home. By the time she got to writing the author's note, in December 2023, 'a lot of Gaza was fast turning into rubble'. 'My family was on the run, my grandfather's home destroyed. Much of our neighbourhood was gone. And then my father, watching the news, fell and broke his ribs,' Sabawi said. After her father died in 2024, the book 'became an obituary for both'. Haddad began writing The Sunbird, a novel following a Palestinian woman's memory as a child in the Nakba and then adulthood in Australia, in response to Israel's bombardment of Gaza. She started her novel in December 2023, after seeing the words written by Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila on a whiteboard in his hospital in Gaza: 'Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.' Haddad finished the book in January and self-published. 'Watching this for many years … I knew that Israel had what it wanted and what it needed, and it wasn't going to stop. They were not going to stop. And so I knew that I had to do everything I possibly could to speak as loudly as I could. 'I wrote the book very quickly. I had a deadline. I knew it was urgent.'
Middle East Eye
13-05-2025
- Middle East Eye
Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials
Ancient buildings are the keepers of secrets: the ghosts and stories of the people who have gone before rest within their walls. Despite attempts to conceal the past, remnants stubbornly remain, as anyone who has renovated can attest - faded posters, peeling wallpaper, chipped paint - such immutable objects can bear witness to a forgotten time. In this meditative travelogue, Raja Shehadeh and his wife Penny Johnson, both in their eighth decade, contemplate the hidden history and geography of historic Palestine, now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This is a place where even 'archaeology is politicised'. The couple's quest is to reveal the lost, neglected and intentionally erased stories that criss-cross and sustain the land. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters In languid prose their journey illustrates how a rich, cultural heritage has been lost, and how these forgotten monuments and memorials reveal much about a common past and a possible future. The book, the seed of which germinated from a lockdown walk on a deserted road near the wall separating the occupied West Bank from Israel, and a chance discovery of a forgotten memorial stone for three Egyptian soldiers who perished in the 1967 war, is divided into five distinct sections that illustrate its historical breadth. The authors cover Palestine's past and its troubled present; Ottoman times; traces of the Nakba; intimations of mortality (where they visit the graves of friends, including the poet Mahmoud Darwish); and Ramallah ruins and the future of our pasts. Under our anointed tour guides, time slows and information is imbibed. Mindful to the burden of detail, the couple gently unpeel layers to reveal the fascinating narratives that underpin the places they visit. 'Bearing the weight of many pasts' This is not without hindrance; the authors are forced to negotiate checkpoints, road barriers and detours to reach these destinations, whose very geography has been splintered on purpose. They travel to Nablus, a city that 'bears the weight of many pasts', from Ramallah along the congested Highway 60. Their memories of the old road with its 'near pristine hills and agricultural landscapes' become an ever distant echo, as Israeli bulldozers gouge into the hills near the town of Hawara on the approach to Nablus, as they construct a four-lane bypass connecting Israeli settlements in the west to those of the east. In Nablus, they come across a triptych, strangely evocative of the lustrous 'religious three-panelled paintings that graced altars in Byzantine or Renaissance churches', except this memorial is rendered on stark white stone brick with a black fence protecting it. Namesake: Reflections on Nusaiba, a warrior woman of early Islam Read More » On the wall are the faded posters of young men organised as a trinity, martyrs who perished during the first and second Palestinian intifadas, condemned to be young forever. The couple relate the history of the Old City, how it was the eye of the storm during the Second Intifada in April 2002, and how both Palestinian civilians and fighters perished during a 10-day curfew, with homes and historic buildings, including an Ottoman era palace, sustaining collateral damage. Sometimes there are no signs of what has gone before. Shehadeh and Johnson travel to Kfar Kanna, a town near Nazareth, which according to Christians is famed as the place where Jesus turned water into wine, in search of a memorial to the Nakba. In an unremarkable circular plaza stocked with plastic chairs, they find a sole monument - a rectangular pillar topped with an urn filled with drooping plants. Squint at the wall behind it and the dead are listed through the decades, from the 1930s to the 2000s. The monument was unveiled in September 2000, a few days before the Second Intifada. As the traffic roars around them, the couple feel the weight of silence. Reclaiming narratives Voids in memory are often filled by art. In the museum of Ein Harod, an Israeli kibbutz, a major retrospective profiles Palestinian artist Asim Abu Shakra's vivid paintings of potted cacti. The artist, who tragically died of cancer in 1990 at the age of 28, repeatedly painted these hardy plants in bright colours in order to reclaim the narrative surrounding them. For Israelis, the cactus has been adopted as a national symbol, but the plant is also replete with meaning for Palestinians - its thorns offering protection; its fruit sustenance. (Profile Books) The artist was drawn to it because of its 'amazing ability to flower out of death'. As our authors note, his work offered 'beauty in response to the Nakba and its consequences'. Erasure is a constant theme. The couple visit Charles Clore Park, a seaside resort built on the ruins of Manshiya, a coastal city that Palestinians once named 'the bride of the sea'. The story behind the park's creation - it was named after the UK billionaire that funded its construction - and the obliteration of a city with 12,000 inhabitants, has sobering parallels with Trump's ideas of turning Gaza into the 'Riviera of the Middle East'. The authors observe that this is an ongoing historical tragedy; they are unable to access the Gaza Strip and note that the eradication and erasure of its cultural heritage will ultimately lead to the dispossession and displacement of its people, who will no longer be able to prove their connection to the land. Towards the end of the book, Johnson sees a ruby red anemone blossoming amongst the rubble and ruins that dot the Ramallah hills. There is always hope. The past can never be completely erased, clues remain for those willing to look closely. This precious jewel of a book is a call to preserve the past in order to secure the future. Its hauntingly evocative prose stays with you long after its final pages have been turned. Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials (2025) by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson in published by Profile Books
The Guardian
13-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials review
Raja Shehadeh – lawyer, activist and Palestine's greatest prose writer – has long been a voice of sanity and measure in the fraught, tendentious world of Arab-Israeli politics. His first non-academic book, When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, chronicled the 2002 siege of his hometown, Ramallah, while Palestinian Walks, which won the Orwell prize, traced how Israel's de facto occupation of the West Bank had fundamentally altered both its geography and its history. Last year, Shehadeh published What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?, his first book since the attacks of 7 October. It was a work in two parts: the first, a characteristically measured analysis of how history led us to this point; the second, a bitterly furious record of the devastation wrought upon Gaza. The overwhelming impression was of a man who, after decades of engagement, had finally, tragically, succumbed to despair. So it is an unexpected relief to find in Forgotten something different: a Shehadeh who is engaged, forensic, alert to history's weight but unwilling to let it crush him. Perhaps this is due to the presence of his co-author, his wife, the academic Penny Johnson. The prose remains lawyerly, precise to the point of fastidiousness, but the collaboration lends it a quiet strength. The first-person plural voice used throughout the book is intimate yet resolute, while the occasional references to 'Raja' and 'Penny' in the third person suggest a certain distance – a recognition that they, too, are subjects in this vast historical tragedy, just as much as its narrators. The project of Forgotten echoes Palestinian Walks, but this time there is a clear objective to Shehadeh and Johnson's wanderings. They are searching for evidence of Palestinian history in the West Bank – traces both ancient and recent of the thriving culture that has endured here for millennia, and the memorials that bear witness to the suffering of those who call this place home. Again and again, I thought of WG Sebald as I read Forgotten. The resemblance lies not only in the mournful elegance of the prose but also in its method: a meditative excavation of history embedded in the landscape. Readers of The Rings of Saturn, in which Sebald wanders the East Anglian coast uncovering the buried violence of empire, will recognise the impulse. But here, in occupied Palestine, the violence is neither buried nor historical. It is immediate, ongoing. 'How many human lives and how many futures would have been preserved … had the Israeli government … prevented further settlements?', the authors ask. 'Thousands have died since, and so here we were, on our way to see how Palestinians memorialise their dead in Nablus.' At the heart of Shehadeh's work – and the conflict itself – is the idea of biopolitics, as explored by thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. Forgotten, like Palestinian Walks, examines the way geography and history are manipulated, controlled and erased. To move through Palestine is to navigate a web of restrictions – permits, checkpoints, detours – designed not only to obstruct but to exhaust. It is a book about memory and memorials, but also about the sheer difficulty of reaching them. 'Checkpoints, closures and a regime of exclusions have deprived new generations from gaining an impression of the country as a geographical unit,' write Shehadeh and Johnson. And that, of course, is precisely the point. The writers seek out the ruins of Kafr Bir'im, a Palestinian village in Galilee destroyed by the Israeli army in 1953, and the tomb of Mahmoud Darwish, Shehadeh's friend and Palestine's great poet. They visit Ottoman khans – way stations for desert caravans – and search for the remnants of ancient Gibeon and Qasr al-Yahud on the River Jordan, the site of Christ's baptism. They find a monument to a squadron of Turkish aeronauts and the only public memorial to the Nakba, the 1948 expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians. Everywhere, history is distorted or obliterated, rewritten by Israeli power. And yet, for all this, Forgotten is a book of resistance – not just political, but existential. Shehadeh and Johnson, now in their 70s, offer a vision of Palestinian heritage that refuses to be erased, tracing a lineage that stretches back millennia and persists today despite the relentless attempts to efface it. History, like the land itself, cannot be so easily obliterated. Even after bulldozers and bombs, flowers bloom, trees reclaim razed earth, red anemones push through rock. Shehadeh and Johnson remain awed by the hills, by vultures and eagles wheeling above them, by the annual clouds of almond blossom. All this layered past, Forgotten insists, holds within it the promise of a future just as rich, just as enduring. In previous reviews, I wrote that Shehadeh's books are like beacons held up against the darkness of Israeli oppression. Forgotten is perhaps the brightest light of all. Forgotten by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson is published by Profile (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
