Palestinian Walks

by Raja Shehadeh

  'Are you Muslim?' they asked me.

  I lied. I thought this way I could make more assertive rulings on what was allowed and what wasn't.

  'Then she should go and you stay here with us until she brings her identification card to show us.'

  'What are you asking?' I said, exasperated. 'She doesn't know the way.'

  For the next twenty minutes I became a hostage to these club-wielding youngsters who would not allow me to continue on my way in the hills I had walked in for all my adult years. Louisa's words came back: 'You Palestinians are always waiting.' Now I was waiting for youngsters less than half my age to permit me to leave, Palestinian youth playing the same game as our oppressors. We might have shared the same view of the Israeli occupier, but my world had little in common with theirs. They seemed to define themselves more in terms of Islam than as Palestinian nationalists. Throughout their short lives they had always known danger and uncertainty. They had experienced no other life. The outside world was hostile. It had betrayed them and they had to guard their own. Arab generosity had so often been abused by the scheming colonizers – first the English, now the Israelis. It was therefore right to take hostages. They wanted to take Louisa but didn't seem to know how to go about it. They were in training, stretching their muscles as adolescents are wont to do. Whenever they wanted to stress a point, they raised the club they held under their arm menacingly.

  'We have duties,' the taller one continued to insist. 'We must report everyone we see here.'

  I wanted this to end without nastiness or tragedy but knew it could go either way.

  'Why don't you call your superiors and give them my name?' I asked. 'They will know who you are dealing with,' I said with confidence.

  'But we didn't see your identity card,' they replied, meaning the one issued by Israel.

  'You saw that I was a lawyer,' I said, and then realized that they were probably illiterate and couldn't read my Israeli identity card number or my name on the lawyer's card. At this point I changed tactics. I employed the authority of age and spoke like an elder in as paternal terms as I could manage.

  'Let us remain friends,' I said. 'We must leave now. But before we leave I must let you know that it is important for Palestinians to walk in these hills and learn about them and experience their beauty. And by doing what you are doing you are discouraging others from coming here.'

  'Beauty,' the taller one blurted out, looking offended. 'You're asking that we be concerned about beauty when so many are dying every day?'

  'It is still important,' I muttered.

  'Which way did you say you were going?'

  I pointed to our path.

  'It is full of wild boars.'

  'We'll take our chances,' I said, and we began walking away.

  'Wait. Stop,' they called. 'Before you go we must take your picture.'

  And indeed they had mobile phones which they used to photograph us.

  'Now you can go. But don't look back.'

  We walked up the hill as fast as we could, Louisa's soft trainers not the best on our stony hills, but we both wanted to get away from these masked youngsters. After some distance we stopped and looked back, and heard them shouting after us to go on. We continued to pass all the beautiful spots on this path, including one of the qasrs that has survived and which I wanted Louisa to visit.

  When we were finally a good distance away we stopped and sat on the tumbled-down stones of a destroyed qasr. Now that I had time to think about the encounter I wondered whether these might not have been shepherd boys from the Bedouin camp near the A'yn Qenya spring who after a day with the goats were bored and wanted to play a game with us at our expense. And yet why would they wear these heavy kufiehs in this hot weather? The way they had wrapped them around their faces and the way they had wielded their clubs was more than I would expect of shepherd boys out by the side of the hill in a camp without electricity or television. And how would they know about Balfour and Afghanistan and have mobile phones that could take photographs? Still, who knows?

  As I stood in the ruins of one of my favourite places in the valley, this valley near where I was born and have always lived, I felt the hills were not mine any more. I am no longer free to come and walk. They have become a dangerous place where I do not feel safe. This experience marked the end of a lovely epoch.

  I cannot say I was not shaken by the encounter. I was. At every point I feared that it might turn ugly. They were two strong young men with clubs and I am small and not much of a wrestler. Typically I did not have a mobile phone with me, and neither did Louisa. Had they decided to be rough with us they could have got away with what they wanted and no one would have heard our screams or come to our rescue. Usually I am especially rattled when faced with masked people, but I realized that as long as I could see the eyes I was able to communicate and read what the other person was thinking, and reach out to him. As long as this was possible I could remain calm and rational, or at least keep my fears in check.

  But when I turned to Louisa I saw that she was in tears. Naturally as a newcomer to this volatile part of the world and not understanding what we were talking about, she was very scared. 'I would not have minded being mugged,' she told me. 'But had they beat you up and raped me, I would have died.'

  Before we left the hills I turned around. The sun was setting. The side of the hill we were on was shaded. Across the valley the limestone rocks reflected the muted light. I bid this valley farewell. I would not be coming back here for a long time. Perhaps not before this damned conflict with Israel with all its nasty consequences ends, if this should happen in my lifetime.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The list of those who deserve recognition and thanks for the production of this book is long.

  First my walking companions over the years: My wife Penny Johnson, my friends Bishara Dabit, Jonathan Kuttab, Henry Abramovitch, Jim and Debbie Fine, Saleh Abdul Jawwad, Rema Hamami, Alex Pollock, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Coleridge, Rami Shehadeh, Mustafa Barghouti, Rami Abdulhadi, Iman Masri, Susan Rockwell, Emma Playfair and my niece and nephew Tala and Aziz. I thank all of them for being excellent walking companions.

  Andrew Franklin, the Director of Profile Books, my publisher, friend and walking companion, for his guidance, encouragement and editorial assistance. Colin Robinson, Senior Editor at Scribner, for his perceptive editorial assistance.

  Kate Jones, the Director of ICM, my agent, for her editorial assistance, encouragement and support and her assistant at ICM Laura Sampson for her editorial support.

  Penny Daniel, Nicola Taplin and Nassime Chida of Profile Books for their much appreciated contribution to the production process of this book.

  Kamal Abdul Fattah, the Palestinian geographer, for the wonderfully educational geographic trips throughout historic Palestine which he led in the 1980s before Israel imposed a complete ban on such trips and his help in identifying the names of the various locations mentioned in this book. Alex Baramki for his careful reading of various drafts, editorial suggestions and encouragement. Maya Yared for her careful reading and encouragement. David McDowall for his editorial assistance and helpful suggestions. Mark Handsley for his excellent copy editing of the manuscript. John Tordai, another walking companion, who contributed the evocative pictures that accompany the text.

  And finally Penny, my partner throughout many of the difficult tribulations that I write about in this book, who has patiently endured my often insufferable moods during periods of distant reflection as I thought about the writing and then the mental turmoil that accompanies putting it all down on paper. Her sharp inquisitive and intellectually rigorous mind challenged me whenever I became uncritical, judgmental or slumped into intellectual indolence. Her editorial advice and assistance for the different drafts of this book were invaluable.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Palestinian man walking in the Jerusalem wilderness south of Wadi Qelt (2002)

  2. Young man leaving a house in the Palestinian village of Ya
nun, southeast of Nablus overlooking the Jordan Valley (2006)

  3. The Palestinian village of Nahhalin, southwest of Bethlehem, sits in the foreground, with the Jewish settlement of Beitar in the background. The Wall separates them (2007)

  4. Wadi Daraj near the start of the walking path going down into the ravine (2007)

  5. The Monastery of St George of Koziba in Wadi Qelt (2007)

  6. Bethlehem with the Wall surrounding it (2007)

  7. A Palestinian man walking by the Wall which separates the Palestinian village of Abu Dis from East Jersualem (2005)