Does the Land Remember Me?
A Memoir of Palestine

Foreword by Persis M. Karim

Cloth $19.95    |    978-0-8156-0862-2    |    2007

A vivid and beautifully crafted chronicle of an exile’s return to Palestine.

Reviews
"Journalist Aziz Shihab’s memoir of returning home to Palestine after four decades in the States crystalizes into a vivid narrative of an exile’s return. His 1993 journey held various concerns—visiting his dying mother, deciding about a plot of land he owned, and gauging Palestinian hope after the Oslo Accords. Critical of the Israeli occupation and self-critical about his own exile, Shihab explores complex questions of identity and the right to speak as an exile. . . . In this rich narrative we encounter Palestinians whose viewpoints have been ignored. Shihab listens with a sharp ear for revealing dialogue and sets vivid scenes with a keen eye. . . . This truthful memoir will engender deep understanding—in wise and humane terms—about wounds that remain unhealed beneath the looming shadow of a wall."
—World Literature Today

"Aziz Shihab’s Does the Land Remember Me? is a cry from the heart and an unusual view into the soul of the exile. Shihab is both angry and tender. The wounds of his Jerusalem youth are still indelible despite decades of success in America. Does the Land Remember Me? is however not a polemic but a book that surprises a reader with the contradictions of its portraits. Here are Arab relatives who are slackers and Israeli foes who turn out to be stauch friends. Shihab’s portrait of Palestine is both nuanced and wise."
—Marie Brenner

"We are moved by Shihab’s honesty, truths rarely told in American literature or news, because this water, this story, is fresh."
—Gregory Orfalea, author of Arab Americans: A Novel

Aziz Shihab’s memoir of returning home to Palestine for a month after four decades in the United States crystallizes into a vivid narrative of an exile’s return.

His trip in 1993 was initiated by a letter from his brother, saying that their mother was dying. The visit held two other considerations making a decision about a plot of land that he owned and gauging his sense of hope after the signing of the Oslo Accords.

The memoir echoes these concerns and the right of one to speak honestly about a difficult place in a time of violent change. Critical of the pain of Israeli occupation and self-critical concerning his long exile, Shihab, who turns 80 next month, also writes of a related struggle to understand the complexity of identity.

Shihab, the father of San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye, mentions "three experiences of feeling suspended by a thin thread a thousand feet above the ground as if I did not belong to the world and the world did not belong to me." The first hanging thread had been his family’s eviction from their home in 1949—literally "with only the clothes on our backs"—at gun point, by Jewish emmigrants from Brooklyn, claiming the modest house as a gift from God.

The second was leaving for America in 1950, since "he could not imagine future suicide bombers who, in their hopelessness, would sacrifice others and themselves." The third, powerfully dramatized in the memoir, tells of being rudely strip-searched and interrogated by Israeli soldiers at the Jordan River checkpoint. This central scene escalates due to a scrap of paper in Shihab’s pocket, upon which he had inscribed the name of Yassar Arafat, whom he knew on a first-name basis and intended to interview.

The interrogation ends abruptly in an ironic twist, when the Israeli Capt. Rafi mercifully releases the journalist upon learning that Shihab was there to be with his dying mother. They agree to continue conversing under more civil circumstances, which creates a personal dialogue.

After a few days, they meet at a restaurant. The captain (out of uniform and on his first trip into occupied territory) accompanies the journalist to his mother’s home in Sinjil village. Introduced as Rafik from Iraq—his actual name and homeland—the captain receives a warm welcome and comes under the spell of the family’s generosity.

Later that week, the journalist meets the captain, accompanied by his father and sister, at a cafe. Capt. Rafi, in full uniform, introduces Shihab as his American friend. They invite him to their Tel Aviv home, and the Jewish family treats him with equal courtesy.

These conversations evoke a genuine dialogue, for all listen respectfully and strive for understanding. Along the narrative path of the present, Shihab has flashbacks that provide a deeper context. He encounters Palestinians who have been trampled on daily and whose viewpoints have been ignored. He listens with a sharp ear for their revealing dialogue and sets vivid scenes with a keen eye.

Serious themes emerge in the literary tapestry, concerning human rights issues on the edge of abject poverty and a sense of displacement with the loss of land. Paralleling these hardships, we begin to appreciate the adaptations of nonviolent Palestinians to the daily humiliations and irrationalities of military occupation.

A natural storyteller from a culture in which oral history remains a central force, stories within stories unfurl like modern tales of Arabia. As the memoir evolves, Shihab slowly realizes a social distancing, from being an insider to becoming an outsider, determined by the decision about his property. Will he sell it or will he return to build on it? The title forms a provocative ques tion—"Does the Land Remember Me?"—symbolically representing his long exile in conflict with a possible return to Palestine.

His mother pleads with him not to sell his land. The male relatives convince him that if he sells, he risks losing respect, but if he retains ownership, judgments will be held in suspension. However this essential question includes another problem, since a nephew has squatted on the land and begun to build on it without permission.

In a passionate dialogue with a former judge who had secured the title to his property, Shihab expresses views on the prevailing political situation, confessing disappointment in his countrymen. The judge responds at length and then remarks: "I think you have been brainwashed, my friend." The exile admits that perhaps he has, and honestly considers it.

While some basic conditions of exile include duration of separation, disorientation in a new social context and a complex series of cultural adjustments, an exiled writer learning a second language may be the most challenging. Shihab’s mastery of English to the point of having a career as a journalist (he once worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) stands as a remarkable achievement. His development as a literary stylist in this memoir eclipses his excellent journalism and the charming vignettes in "A Taste of Palestine."

Without question this unique memoir must be read on its own terms, but because it adds personal flesh to the clarifying bones of Jimmy Carter’s controversial "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," readers will experience this native viewpoint that deepens Carter’s empathetic American view. Shihab’s truthful text will engender a fresh understanding—in wise and humane terms—of the wounds that remain unhealed nearly 15 years later in the shadow of a wall.
—San Antonio Express-News, April 29, 2007

Description
Summoned by his dying mother, Palestinian-born Aziz Shihab returns to the homeland he and his family fled as refugees decades earlier: to a Palestine reclaimed by Israelis and to a country no longer that of his youth in a nation whose estate has been challenged by history. This gripping book chronicles that month-long journey.

Part memoir, part travelogue, it reveals the complexities of leaving behind such the past and coming to grips with its abandonment. With his sharp ear for dialogue and with a journalist’s eye, Shihab records and considers, sometimes with fond humor, the Palestinian psyche. Family meetings brim with soothing time-honored ritual and cultural blindness. Pungent street anecdotes resonate with profound themes like human rights, land dislocation, and poverty. Shihab’s stories of departure and return, loss of land and reconnection provide enriching insights into the depth and intricacy of Palestinian culture and history and its legacy of displacement.

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Author
Aziz Shihab is known for his independent newspaper, The Arab Star. He has written about the Middle East for The Dallas Morning News and The San Antonio Express-News.

5 x 8, 136 pages, 10 black-and-white illustrations