A Rift in Time

September 15, 2024
Tracing the journey of his great-great uncle through once-open multiethnic Ottoman borders, a Palestinian writer finds their shared activism in "resistance politics." Shehadeh's great-great uncle, Najib Nassar, was a Christian journalist from Haifa in the pre-World War I Ottoman Empire, where many ethnic groups lived together amicably and the borders were fluid. The rise of nationalism, especially Turkish nationalism and Zionism, the author writes, destabilized and fragmented the region. As the editor of the newspaperAl Karmil, Nassar advocated for Arab independence "within the Ottoman structure" and worried that "the collapse of the Ottoman Empire would open the gates for the colonization of the Levant." Nassar favored the Allies against the German/Austrian/Ottoman alliance in World War I and went underground in March 1915, often taken in by Bedouins and eluding arrest for three years. After the war ended, he argued that the British mandate in Palestine favored Jewish immigration. The author, a human rights activist, alternates flashbacks to his own threats of arrest, either by Israel or by the Palestinian Authority, with the retelling of his great-great uncle's story. Delineating his family's narrative of displacement, he notes that they have grown to "feel and act like fugitives in our own land." He crisscrosses the territory spreading out from the Rift Valley--where throughout history armies of Canaanites and Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, Muslims and Crusaders, Ottomans and Europeans have all battled--and describes the vast, troubling changes. A sorrowful, occasionally bitter disquisition on the loss of Palestinian agency.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 30, 2024
In this vivid family memoir first published in the U.K. in 2010, Palestinian human rights activist Shehadeh (We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I) retraces an early 20th-century journey taken by his great-great-uncle Najib Nassar. An outspoken critic of the Ottoman empire’s involvement in WWI, Nassar went into hiding for fear of retaliation from the government, traveling through the Levant. Following Nassar’s footsteps, Shehadeh describes how his own journey is hampered by restrictive borders that have since been created following the establishment of the state of Israel and its subsequent territorial expansion via war and settlement. He paints vibrant character portraits of those he meets along the way, drawing parallels with Nassar’s equivalent run-ins, and reflecting on how he, like Nassar, expects to be arrested by the powers that be due to his criticism of the state. Shehadeh’s narrative creates vibrant imagery out of simply told stories; he writes captivatingly about his and Nassar’s mutual interest in farming and water, and how it relates to their relationship with the land. Shehadeh makes keen, cutting observations regarding how that relationship is challenged by the checkpoints, zoning regulations, and roadblocks he encounters on his journey, which “conspire to make Palestinians feel that this land is no longer theirs.” It’s a transporting travelogue with a sharp political edge.