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Sign up todayPalestinian Walks
Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
Narrator
Fajer Al-Kaisi
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Length
6 hours 15 minutes
Language
English
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.
Raja Shehadeh is a writer, lawyer, and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He is the author of several books, including Strangers in the House; Occupation Diaries; Language of War, Language of Peace; the 2008 Orwell Prize–winning Palestinian Walks; and Where the Line Is Drawn (The New Press). He has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and other publications.
Fajer Al-Kaisi is an actor for the stage and screen as well as an accomplished voice-over artist and narrator with over a hundred audiobook credits. Fajer is currently the voice of Shazzan on Jellystone (HBO Max) as well as cohost of the podcast BardQuest Empire. His TV appearances include Law & Order, Future Man, The Code, 30 Rock, Nurse Jackie, The Blacklist, The Onion News Network, Person of Interest, Delocated, Search Party, Madam Secretary, and Deadbeat. His film credits include "Karim" in I'll Come Running, "Ali Soufan" in The Report, and as "the interpreter" in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. His theatrical credits include: Tareq in the Guthrie's production of Nora, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Aeneas in Troilus and Cressida at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Grahm/2 in the world premiere of Informed Consent at Cleveland Playhouse, and Shahid the translator in the NYTW world premiere of Aftermath and the subsequent Arktype World tour. His additional regional credits include: The Humans, Disgraced, and The Invisible Hand. Fajer has been nominated for a Drama Leagues Award (Aftermath, Best Ensemble 2011) as well as a finalist for best male performance at the Audies (Fives and Twenty-Fives, 2015). He has also received several AudioFile Earphones Awards.
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Reviews
“Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks provides a rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine.”
“This is a book that is hard to put down because of the profound natural beauty that Shehadeh describes, and his manifest passion for his homeland.”
“A thoughtful meditation on Palestine, the land and the peoples who claim it.”
“This is a beautiful book, and a sad one. It describes the unique Palestinian landscape, one that looked like a scene from the Bible — and describes what has been done to it by aggressive Israeli settlement and American failure.”
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