Raja Shehadeh: “I don’t belong in Ramallah. I belong across the horizon in Jaffa.”
The author of Palestinian Walks on his feelings about the city in which he has lived all his life
Raja Shehadeh is best known for his book Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, which won The Orwell Prize. Often described as a travel book, Palestinian Walks is more a sketch of a country that changes into another during the course of the book.
In the short film of an interview I did with Raja Shehadeh, we talked about the importance of place in his writing, and how much the particular place in which he writes affects the place he writes about — the two are often not the same.
Shehadeh has lived in Ramallah all his life, but he said he often felt like a stranger in his own country. During our interview, he discussed the background to Strangers in the House, written 12 years ago. Unfortunately, this part wasn’t included in the final film, but I've included the quotes here. Although the book hasn't had the fame of his other writings, I know it's a favourite of those who enjoy Shehadeh’s work.
"I'm fortunate in that I've always lived in Ramallah, all my life. So I've experienced all the changes that have happened around me. I come from a family that is originally from Ramallah but left in the late 19th century, and lived in Jaffa.
My parents established themselves in Jaffa. My father was a lawyer and was successful and had properties and a good life in Jaffa. And after three years of marriage, they had to leave it all, they were forced out, and came to Ramallah, where they had a summer house.
And this is what I write about in Strangers in the House. Growing up in Ramallah and feeling I don't belong here, I belong across the horizon in Jaffa, on the coast. And Ramallah overlooks the coast. So at night you can see the lights of what we thought was Jaffa, but it turned out to be Tel Aviv, actually.
So I grew up, especially with my grandmother, who was from Haifa, who yearned all the time. And everything good came from Jaffa, from Haifa, and nothing was good in Ramallah. So I always thought of that place as the best place, as the real place, and I describe that in Strangers in the House.
And of course this has its problems. I have this feeling of being part of the place but having a distance from the place, which I think is very important for the writer."
