ONE of the most prolific of Palestinian authors writing in English, Raja Shehadah has written numerous books on the subject of Palestine, and, in the making of Forgotten, he and his wife, Penny Johnson, had searched for the diminishing remains of Palestine.
Just as, a few years ago, in Going Home, he wrote of his home city of Ramallah, here they have been walking in more remote places from the coast to Jericho, sometimes revealing the Palestinian determination to remember the Nakba, the continuing catastrophe of the destruction of the people, places, and memories that are Palestine, and sometimes showing how Palestinians themselves have become responsible for the destruction of their own architectural heritage.
The authors have a profound and subtle understanding of the layers of history. While always willing to point out the obvious ongoing theft of Palestinian land, they point out the failures of those in power in the West Bank, too.
Shehadeh and Johnson remind us of the astonishing heritage of this sliver of land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. The huge well at Al-Jib; Ottoman khans reminding us of how many people would travel through here; a hidden tomb from the earliest days of Islam; the railway up the coast to Beirut; the catastrophic shrinking of the Dead Sea; and everywhere walls and roads built to prevent the flourishing of the Palestinians.
The Nakba, the continuing destruction of the Palestinians, is everywhere, because soon the physical remnants will be gone, and even these days it is hard to find what the occupation is obliterating.
Raja Shehadeh’s political and historical analysis is sharp and unsentimental. And, on page after page, we find encounters with ordinary local people, because the intrepid couple are always searching for what is no longer on the map, and often hardly remembered, and only persistent enquiries lead them to their goals. But we also meet more notable people: poets such as Taha Muhammad Ali and Mahmoud Darwish, whose words are a more lasting memory of a destroyed world, and a depth of understanding that Israeli demands for tolerance become “denial of the experiences of the other”.
It is a really beautiful book to read for all the grief, and a fine introduction to understanding how the vanquished still live and flourish.
The Revd Stephen Griffith is a retired Anglican priest. He specialises in Syria and the Syriac community in Turabdin.
Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s hidden places and lost memorials
Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson
Profile £14.99
(978-1-80522-241-5)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49