"I started thinking that this has the makings of a very good city to live in, but there is no joy; pleasure is blunted by the incessant bad news that envelop us."

Walking from his home in Ramallah, Palestine, to his law office, Rajaa Shadeh reflects on the places he passes by on his way, the landmarks, the events that shaped his city's history and geography. his memories flood on his way to work, and it is the very nature of memory to be discursive, nostalgic, and romantic.

Shehadeh whose family was forced to move to Ramallah after Israeli forces invaded Jaffa and Jerusalem, his parents' hometowns, in 1948, tells the story of the city of his childhood, street by street, building by building, what remained and what was demolished, what has changed and what time skimmed over without a scratch. The story of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their resistance to the ever-increasing Israeli violations of their rights and culture isn't told here in a historical context, but rather a personal one that relates directly to the Shehadeh family, generation after generation. Just like Ramallah, the story interlaces what is personal with what is collective.

The author also reflects on his work as a lawyer and human rights activist in the courts of occupation, of how the profession has changed from his father's days, and ultimately how he himself is different and sometimes at odds with his own father, who was also a lawyer. There are also reflections on the struggles of people he came to know personally, as neighbors and/or clients, young people he did not have a chance to meet or save. One young man, in particular, stayed with me after finishing this book. His name was Nadeem Nowara, a 17 years old who was killed by an Israeli soldier who claimed he killed Nadeem because he was bored. I couldn't get past that. I couldn't get past the reality of being a marked target for a bored soldier. There are many other examples of shootings and incarcerations of young people and demolishing their parents' houses just because they showed signs of resisting the occupation of their land.

This book is a tour around a city that catalogs the resistance of its people to the grim reality of their circumstances in every street, building, garden, and alley. It wasn't meant to be a book on history or on the struggle itself but rather a reflection of it in the mirror of daily life through the eyes of one of its citizens.

This is my first own voice account about the Palestinian cause. I was expecting more history of the occupation, but the book apparently told more about the titular home (house and gardens) that I prefer. The Oslo accord - supposedly an important milestone - was mentioned ten times but lacked a background.

Still, a good if not rather melancholic narrative on how Ramallah (a city) has changed its face following the 50-year occupation period and that everything would remain bleak in the future.

This book is beautifully written as it explores what the title literally describes: a walk through 50 years of occupation. Shehadeh has a gift for writing, and that gift shines as he deftly balances his emotions surrounding his experiences and the consequences of everything that's happened in his life. For anyone interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Going Home is a very personal, beautiful look into how it has affected people throughout the years.

Raja Shehadeh takes us on a long walk through the streets of Ramallah on the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Every nook and cranny opens the treasures of his memories, revealing the stories of his youth, his family, his dreams, his reality of trying to build a life under the yoke of occupation. Shehadeh's prose is evocative, lyrical, and melancholy, and he brings the many characters of his daily life into sharp focus. He also accomplishes a nice balance in revealing his own history intertwined with the geopolitical and social history of the region.

All in all, it is a bittersweet journey but one well worth taking.

Thank you to Netgalley and The New Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

On the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation Raja Shehadeh revisits Ramallah, the town in which he grew up, and chronicles the changes that have taken place over those tumultuous years. He narrates stories from the past and from today and makes it clear how the past is still always present in the hearts and minds of the inhabitants. It’s an insightful and melancholic journey, as well as an elegy for all that has disappeared. Like any such memoir, this one left me feeling desperately sad about what has been lost and hopeless about the future of Palestine.

The author writes well and I like to understand the world from different perspectives so this is an important book considering the powder keg between the Palestinians and Israelis. Of course there will be a biased view when a memoir is written, but I wish he could have come across less bitter and harsh. It was a turn off for further reading. Taking a neutral stance or balancing the views from both sides then at the end exposing the strong bias would have been more engaging.

After reading Benjamin Disraeli’s book Tancred: The New Crusade this year, I was really happy when a newer book about Palestinian life crossed my desk: the memoir Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation, by Raja Shehadeh. In this volume, the author takes a long walk around the West Bank city of Ramallah on the 50th anniversary of the occupation. The book is not in any way a political screed, although it is critical of both Israeli and Palestinian actions. Instead, the memoir is almost an elegy for the changed landscape that surrounds him—the geographic landscape of land and buildings, but also the more emotional landscape of changing society and culture.

Shehadeh knows his city intimately: its architecture (from homes to businesses), its gardens and wildlife, its people, and its history. Throughout his narrative are echoes of that past, grounded (so to speak) in the landscape he walks through. As he writes, “The city I grew up in has remained with me.” He passes a police station bombed out years ago, and a house where a peace proposal was hammered out. Those ghosts set the tone for the author’s walk. As I read, I kept thinking of William Faulkner’s famous sentence, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” In Shehadeh’s text, the past invades the present with every step.

The tangible surroundings of Ramallah which the author traverses on his long walk are combined not only with memories of what was there before, but with a deep sense of loss. There is quite literally the loss of space, a countryside lost to settlements and to military zones. And with this loss of space comes the loss of homes, a central theme in this book. These losses are magnified by others: the loss of lives, the loss of human rights and dignity, and a loss of the sense of community that Shehadeh feels was essential to any real resistance to occupation.

As the author writes, “The city is no longer involved in a collective struggle against the occupation. Each of us is on our own. Part of this sense of individualism instead of collectivism comes with the Americanization he sees developing all around him. Instead of family-owned ice cream shops and barber shops and the like, he passes KFC and Pizza Hut. There are chain stores everywhere selling standardized culture and the idea of conspicuous consumption.

That sense of loss is not limited to the landscape around him. He struggles with his aging means, especially as he sees that breakdown of solidarity and community. He also sees resistance crumbling. Instead of true progressive political action, he sees too much petty resistance—things like a mosque playing the call to prayer loudly enough that it will annoy neighboring settlers. Or he sees actions that he feels are empty symbolism: the literal flag waving that he thinks does nothing.

Although flag waving implies nationalistic sentiment to me, Shehadeh is concerned that many Palestinians have turned away from a commitment to a Palestinian state. He argues that they have also turned away from a nationalist identity. He sees his neighbors--both young and old--turning instead to more fundamentalist religion, especially a politicized Islam. Shehadeh makes it clear that he thinks that move is simple desperation and that religious identity can never equal resistance.

But what makes this book feel personal and thoughtful is that the author’s response is often an emotional one. For example, seeing women in headscarves, he says, “makes me feel as though I no longer recognize where I am,” because it is a change from the Ramallah he loved in the past. He acknowledges that he is in no way opposed to the wearing of headscarves, but his sadness about the changes, especially as he realizes that he is coming closer to the end of his life, give this book its melancholy tone.

His goals as a younger man were different from what he sees now. “Our dream…was that we would help to create an egalitarian society where everyone would get the opportunity to shine,” regardless of religious belief or political position. Shehadeh wanted real reconciliation--within Palestine but also with Israelis. “We have failed to find a way of living together,” he writes, “and that’s the biggest tragedy. Now time is running out.”

One of the sections in this book that I find most interesting is the author’s analysis of shifts in the language used to describe death. As he writes, “No one can no call death by its name of it occurs in the course of struggle.” Instead, it must be labeled as martyrdom. He continues, “Death has been camouflaged and altered to become something else, something more palatable, not final but a noble elevated passage to heaven, in order to help those who lose loved ones endure their loss.” The author thinks that even those who use religious language in this way believe that in actuality, death is the final destination. Although I suspect many of those who use that linguistic construction would not agree with the author, the author writes these lines gently and sensitively.

Shehadeh’s travels through Ramallah leave him troubled by how much his world has changed, right as he feels his own time is slowly running out. Still, at the end of his walk, he arrives back at his home, full of art he’s carefully chosen and books he loves. His beloved wife is there, and the smells of traditional Palestinian cuisine waft from the kitchen. He takes his eat on their patio, under a lemon tree he has cultivated. Although he is fully aware of the precarious insecurity of his city, he knows that here in this place, he can still say, “I’m home.”