Near Ramallah on the West Bank. Photograph: Godong/Alamy
Ramallah, my home city, has been utterly transformed during its half-century of struggle against occupation. But what has really been achieved? By Raja Shehadeh
Thu 8 Aug 2019
It must already be 8am, I think, as I listen to the national anthem blasting out of St George’s school near my house in Ramallah. I am standing at the bathroom sink, manoeuvring the razor around the deep folds in my face that have formed over the past few years.
I look in the mirror. It is all there in front of me: the bags under my eyes, the furrowed forehead, the corners of my mouth that used to be mobile but have now descended into a permanently sad expression. I try to convince myself that I am as old as my face, which is not at all how I feel. Mine is already the face of an older man, sombre and serious, with thin lips and wrinkles. I have aged with the years and with the occupation. This day, 5 June 2017, marks its 50th anniversary.
Raja Shehadeh Photograph: Frédéric Stucin/MYOP
Past anniversaries of the occupation used to arouse strong feelings in me. I would try to ward them off by taking a long walk in the hills. It used to be possible to leave the city behind me. This was preferable to staying at home and brooding. Today, I will walk to my law office, taking my time. My first meeting is not until 1.30pm. Perhaps more will be happening than I expect.
I stand in front of the shirts and coats from different periods of my life. I am tempted to believe that, like my city, my wardrobe – the various shirts, suits, hats or ties – is a repository of what I have tried to be. My different lives are represented by the different clothes I have worn, as by the homes located in different parts of the city where I have lived. To this day, I have my writerly clothes and my lawyerly ones, some from when I started my career 37 years ago – shirts, belts, trousers and jackets.
Like our bodies, our houses and our clothing are but sparks of our existence, our self, which we inhabit for a while and make our own. Then we leave them and the connection is severed. Clothes wear out and houses are sold to other people or fall into ruin, and the city continues as if we were never there. Until the city itself ceases to exist, whether through war or natural disasters, and then it is as though it never was.
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Categories: Arab World, Asia, Israel, Palestine