Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape

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.

Author: Raja Shehadeh
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 06/03/2008
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.43lbs
Size: 7.95h x 5.33w x 0.64d
ISBN: 9781416569664


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/03/2008 pg. 35
Booklist 04/01/2008 pg. 22
Library Journal 05/15/2008 pg. 122
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2008 pg. 478
New Yorker (The) 06/09/2008 pg. 85
LJ Best Books of Year 12/15/2008 pg. 65
LJ Best Books of Year 12/01/2008 pg. 65

About the Author
Shehadeh, Raja: - Raja Shehadeh is the author of the highly praised Strangers in the House and When the Birds Stopped Singing. A Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah, he is a founder of the pioneering human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists.