The Book of Ramallah

The Book of Ramallah PDF Author: Maya Abu Al-Hayat
Publisher: Comma Press
ISBN: 1912697521
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
A coffee seller waits all day for one of his customers to ask him how he is, until eventually he just tells the city itself... A teenager is ordered off a bus at a checkpoint and told he must kiss a complete stranger if he wants the bus to be let through... A woman pilgrimages to the Cave of the Prophets, to pray for rain for her tiny patch of land, knowing it will take more than water to save it... Unlike most other Palestinian cities, Ramallah is a relatively new town, a de facto capital of the West Bank allowed to thrive after the Oslo Peace Accords, but just as quickly hemmed in and suffocated by the Occupation as the Accords have failed. Perched along the top of a mountainous ridge, it plays host to many contradictions: traditional Palestinian architecture jostling against aspirational developments and cultural initiatives, a thriving nightlife in one district, with much more conservative, religious attitudes in the next. Most striking however – as these stories show – is the quiet dignity, resilience and humour of its people; citizens who take their lives into their hands every time they travel from one place to the next, who continue to live through countless sieges, and yet still find the time, and resourcefulness, to create.

The Book of Ramallah

The Book of Ramallah PDF Author: Maya Abu Al-Hayat
Publisher: Comma Press
ISBN: 1912697521
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
A coffee seller waits all day for one of his customers to ask him how he is, until eventually he just tells the city itself... A teenager is ordered off a bus at a checkpoint and told he must kiss a complete stranger if he wants the bus to be let through... A woman pilgrimages to the Cave of the Prophets, to pray for rain for her tiny patch of land, knowing it will take more than water to save it... Unlike most other Palestinian cities, Ramallah is a relatively new town, a de facto capital of the West Bank allowed to thrive after the Oslo Peace Accords, but just as quickly hemmed in and suffocated by the Occupation as the Accords have failed. Perched along the top of a mountainous ridge, it plays host to many contradictions: traditional Palestinian architecture jostling against aspirational developments and cultural initiatives, a thriving nightlife in one district, with much more conservative, religious attitudes in the next. Most striking however – as these stories show – is the quiet dignity, resilience and humour of its people; citizens who take their lives into their hands every time they travel from one place to the next, who continue to live through countless sieges, and yet still find the time, and resourcefulness, to create.

I Saw Ramallah

I Saw Ramallah PDF Author: Mourid Barghouti
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307486141
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE A fierce and moving work and an unparalleled rendering of the human aspects of the Palestinian predicament. Barred from his homeland after 1967’s Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile—shuttling among the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories of the old Palestine as they come up against what he now encounters in this mere “idea of Palestine,” he discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of “the habitual place and status of a person.” A tour de force of memory and reflection, lamentation and resilience, I Saw Ramallah is a deeply humane book, essential to any balanced understanding of today’s Middle East.

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law PDF Author: Suad Amiry
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307427684
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Based on diaries and email correspondence that she kept from 1981-2004, here Suad Amiry evokes daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah. "A literary protest done with great wit, skill, and passion. Not only is it really funny but it shows the kind of courage, vision, and humanity needed to bring peace to the Middle East." —Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues Capturing the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of her experiences, Amiry writes with elegance and humor about the enormous difficulty of moving from one place to another, the torture of falling in love with someone from another town, the absurdity of her dog receiving a Jerusalem identity card when thousands of Palestinians could not, and the trials of having her ninety-two-year-old mother-in-law living in her house during a forty-two-day curfew. With a wickedly sharp ear for dialogue and a keen eye for detail, Amiry gives us an original, ironic, and firsthand glimpse into the absurdity—and agony—of life in the Occupied Territories.

Easter in Ramallah

Easter in Ramallah PDF Author: Wafa Shami
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780960014736
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
A story that reflects the tradition of celebrating Easter holiday that was carried on for years and takes the reader to a fun festive place that is filled with a colorful atmosphere, drums playing, love and laughter from the eye of a child.

A Pictorial History of Ramallah

A Pictorial History of Ramallah PDF Author: Naseeb Shaheen
Publisher: Arab Institute for Research and Pub.
ISBN:
Category : Rām Allāh
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description


A Little Piece of Ground

A Little Piece of Ground PDF Author: Elizabeth Laird
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608465837
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
A Little Piece Of Ground will help young readers understand more about one of the worst conflicts afflicting our world today. Written by Elizabeth Laird, one of Great Britain’s best-known young adult authors, A Little Piece Of Ground explores the human cost of the occupation of Palestinian lands through the eyes of a young boy. Twelve-year-old Karim Aboudi and his family are trapped in their Ramallah home by a strict curfew. In response to a Palestinian suicide bombing, the Israeli military subjects the West Bank town to a virtual siege. Meanwhile, Karim, trapped at home with his teenage brother and fearful parents, longs to play football with his friends. When the curfew ends, he and his friend discover an unused patch of ground that’s the perfect site for a football pitch. Nearby, an old car hidden intact under bulldozed building makes a brilliant den. But in this city there’s constant danger, even for schoolboys. And when Israeli soldiers find Karim outside during the next curfew, it seems impossible that he will survive. This powerful book fills a substantial gap in existing young adult literature on the Middle East. With 23,000 copies already sold in the United Kingdom and Canada, this book is sure to find a wide audience among young adult readers in the United States.

When the Birds Stopped Singing

When the Birds Stopped Singing PDF Author: Raja Shehadeh
Publisher: Steerforth
ISBN: 158642212X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
The Israeli army invaded Ramallah in March 2002. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh's road; Israeli soldiers patrolled from the roof toops. Four soldiers took over his brother's apartment and then used him as a human shield as they went through the building, while his wife tried to keep her composure for the sake of their frightened childred, ages four and six. This is an account of what it is like to be under seige: the terror, the frustrations, the humiliations, and the rage. How do you pass your time when you are imprisoned in your own home? What do you do when you cannot cross the neighborhood to help your sick mother? Shehadeh's recent memoir, Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine, was the first book by a Palestinian writer to chronicle a life of displacement on the West Bank from 1967 to the present. It received international acclaim and was a finalist for the 2002 Lionel Gelber Prize. When the Birds Stopped Singing is a book of the moment, a chronicle of life today as lived by ordinary Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza in the grip of the most stringent Israeli security measures in years. And yet it is also an enduring document, at once literary and of great political import, that should serve as a cautionary tale for today's and future generations.

Reporting from Ramallah

Reporting from Ramallah PDF Author: Amira Hass
Publisher: Semiotext(e)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Israeli journalist Amira Hass chronicles the experiences she had while living in Ramallah.

Palestinian Walks

Palestinian Walks PDF Author: Raja Shehadeh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416570098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
“A rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine.” —Jimmy Carter From one of Palestine’s leading writers, a lyrical, elegiac account of one man’s wanderings through the landscape he loves—once pristine, now forever changed by settlements and walls—updated with a new afterword by the author. “I often come to walk in these hills,” I said to the man who was doing all the talking and seemed to be the commander. “In fact I was once here with my wife, it was 1999, and some of your soldiers shot at us.” “It was over on that side,” the soldier pointed out. “I was there,” he said, smiling. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was traveling through a vanishing landscape. 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.

Homes of the Heart

Homes of the Heart PDF Author: Farouq Wadi
Publisher: Interlink Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Returning to his home town of Ramallah after long exile, the author is shocked to find the changes wrought, above all, by the Israeli occupation. An account—informative, lyrical and humorous by turn—of his own early life in the town is interwoven with vivid descriptions of the place then and now, against a background of the town’s long and varied history. A poignant evocation of time passing is joined to a sense of the brutal disruption brought about by the ongoing political situation.