Friday Faves vol.1, no.2
A Few Words from the Palestinians
My dear friend’s son lived and worked in Lebanon for a time, and like his mom before him attended Amherst College. For me there’s always been something mythical about Amherst. That it was, when I applied to schools in 1977, the most difficult college to get into, may or may not be true (and even if it was, do such things matter?) Still, the idea that some of the smartest minds of a generation gathered on its campus imbued it with a rarified quality that underlines the regard I have for my friend’s intellect, and by the same measure, that of her son.
That this young man, who turns thirty next month, would choose Arabic as a field of study and that he would live and work in a part of the world so fraught with sectarianism strikes me as both bold and precious (precious in its original meaning rather than the cynical way it is used currently)— as if he is tasting a meal that I shall never be served, a meal for which I long.
On a recent visit, something made me ask this friend for book recommendations from Arab authors based in the region. I may have even asked her if she knew of any Palestinian writers. One of the book titles she shared was Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh, published by Simon & Schuster in 2007, a small, seemingly inconsequential work which is anything but. That the book is listed as travel literature startled me, but in a way it is travel literature (as much as any book allowing readers to explore an unknown land and its people is.) For me, Palestinian Walks provided a keen insight into what the nation of Palestine lost after 1948.
I ended up reading the second book, Mornings in Jenin, a novel by Susan Abulhawa published by Bloomsbury in 2010 next, and I was glad to have had Palestinian Walks in my imagination as I experienced the story of four generations of a Palestinian family displaced by the events of 1948.
Both books whetted my appetite for the literature of this people and gave me a different perspective on what has happened in this part of the world.
What about you? Does the literature of Palestine hold any appeal to you? Are you looking for insight into the Palestinian/Israeli conflict? What have you read? What do you want to read?
That was interesting. I have to admit I have not read anything - but it would be a good insight into the conflicts and the people of the region. Thanks for the recommendation. It seems this is a useful pairing of books.