"I like to think of my relationship to this land so immediate, and not intertwined through the veil of words written about it, often replete with distortions"
damn i feel you raja shahdeh!! i feel this way too!!
"In 1925, a Palestinian historian, Darweesh Mikdadi took his students at a Jerusalem government high school on a walking trip through the rocky landscapes of Palestine, all the way to the more lush plains and fertile villages of Syria and Lebanon with their streams, rivers and caves.
It has been impossible since 1948 to repeat this journey"
"A merchant from Ramallah finds it easier to travel to China to import cane garden chairs than to reach Gaza, a mere 40 minute drive away, where cane chairs, once a flourishing industry, now sit in dusty stacks"
"My days in Palestine are numbered"
"A man going on SARHA, wanders aimlessly, not restricted by time and place, going where his spirit takes him to nourish his soul and rejuvenate himself.
But not any excursion would qualify as a SARHA. Going on Sarha implies letting go. It is a drug free high, Palestinian style"
"This landscape, we are told, was formed by the tremendous pressures exerted by tectonic forces pushing towards the East. It is as though the land has been scooped in a mighty hand and scrunched"
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November 3rd, 2010. I think I"ll always remember the date, the way one always remembers monumental days. why? because today was a monumental day. more to come on that later.
i was in jerusalem today and i had 2 hours waiting for something to be taken care of. from jaffa gate i took a nice stroll down to Salah-Adin street to go to, in my opinion, one of East Jerusalem's best kept secrets : The Educational Bookshop.
The. Best. Bookshop. in. probably. the. WORLD.
It's got everything you need to know about Palestine, books that you will probably never find anywhere else,
in my opinion. and the people are so nice and the shop is small (because big things ALWAYS come in small packages) so nice that the people actually let my roommate use THEIR p.o. box so that she can get packages from the States. that might just be the definition of "really nice". when you know of ppl who live and work in occupied land with no address and you let these customers use your own personal business p.o.box for their personal mail from back home thousands of miles away = really nice.
After a lovely interaction and small talk with the shopkeeper, I picked up a book called "Palestine Walks" which trails the story of a man who walks the hills of Palestine and talks both about their beauty and their deletion and it intertwines personal sentiments with modern politics. When I read personally, i MUST have a pen, because i underline things that catch my attention. at this bookshop i couldnt do that , so i took some notes. and these were some excerpts that i wanted to share with you :)
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