11. The Lemon Tree
18th May 2006
Posting 11. to the On the Ground category, by Vicky Lindsay, 18 May 2006
Dear George,
This week Israelis are celebrating the 58th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, and Palestinians are mourning the 58th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe, their expulsion from their homes in Palestine.
I’m writing to tell you about a just-published book — The Lemon Tree, by Sandy Tolan (Bloomsbury, May 2, 2006) which sheds light on both of these watershed events of May, 1948. It is the story of a house in Ramle/Ramla. It was built in 1936 by the al-Khairi family on land which had been in their family since the sixteenth century. They were expelled in 1948 when Bashir al-Khairi was six years old. Soon after, the Eskenazi family – refugees, dispossessed — arrived on a ship from Bulgaria, and moved into the house — which, they were told, had been abandoned. Their daughter, Dalia was one year old.
Dalia and Bashir meet nearly 20 years later and through the complex, deep, affectionate, and conflicted relationship they forge – the relationship of Bashir, Dalia, and the house with the lemon tree — Sandy tells the story of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
It reads like a novel, and is accessible to a popular audience, but it contains not a drop of invention — it is excruciatingly well documented journalism with every event verified from both Israeli and Arab sources in the 66 pages of source notes - so it will be of great use, as well, to scholars and university students.
If enough people read this book it could change the course of the conflict. One of the greatest obstacles to peace, I believe, is the persistence of ignorance of the Nakba. Of course the forced expulsions are no longer denied by serious historians, but I myself have heard some of the most educated and otherwise sophisticated Israelis pronounce with great authority that there were no expulsions, and the delusion is even more common outside of Israel. Because this book is based on careful research and unimpeachable sources (Israeli and Palestinian), and because it is so fairly and compassionately presented, I think it will finally set the record straight for the non-historian.
The truth about the Nakba is a pill which many Jews have found impossible to swallow. There’s no sugar coating on it here, but because this telling evokes authentic empathy for the needs, hopes, and fears of both groups of refugees, for both families who have known the house as their only home, and the paths that brought them there, I think this book can convince where others have failed. If so, its importance will be immeasurable. Just as you simply cannot make sense of the Israeli stance without the context of the holocaust, neither can you understand the Palestinian stance without the context of the Nakba.
The book is getting praise from all directions, including Israeli and Palestinian scholars. I’ll post some quotes and links below.
But the true potential of the book will be unlocked not by the adoration of critics, but by the candid and uncomfortable engagement of readers — in debate, discussion, argument, in challenging unexamined assumptions, in airing forbidden thoughts, in violating taboos, in lifting up fears and doubts and hopes.
I hope that your readers will read The Lemon Tree. I look forward to reading their reflections on this site.
Yours,
Vicki Lindsay
The first chapter is available at salon.com
www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/05/08/tolan/index.html
An interview with Terry Gross was aired on Fresh Air May 15. www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=05-15-2006&view=storyview
A 1998 radio documentary that was the inspiration for the book.
www.homelands.org/
Reviews:
Institute for Middle East Understanding
imeu.net/news/article001239.shtml
Christian Science Monitor:
csmonitor.com/2006/0509/p15s01-bogn.html
Mother Jones
www.motherjones.com/arts/books/2006/05/books_may_lemon_tree.html
A review from the head of a Hadassa book club in the readers’ reviews on the Amazon site
www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/1582343438/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/103-7026954-4276643?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
Advance praise:
This truly remarkable book presents a powerful account of Palestinians and Israelis who try to break the seemingly endless chains of hatred and violence. Capturing the human dimension of the conflict so vividly and admirably, Sandy Tolan offers something both Israelis and Palestinians all too often tend to ignore: a ray of hope.â€
-Tom Segev, author of One Palestine, Complete and 1949: The First Israelis
This is a hard book to read with dry eyes and without a lump in one’s throat. And it is a hard book to read, also, without feeling – dare one even say the word in speaking about the Middle East? – something approaching hope. Sandy Tolan has found a remarkable story and has told it in all its beauty and sadness.
-Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold’s Ghost
This is a passionate and astonishing story through which some of the most extraordinary events of the twentieth century unfold. The inspiring lives of two unique people, and Tolan’s compassion and cleverness in narrating them, illuminate the tragedy of Palestine in the most moving and revealing way. Readers will acquire a huge amount of knowledge while being carried along effortlessly through the epic events of war and peace in the Middle East.
-Karma Nabulsi, Prize Research Fellow, Oxford University,
and author of Traditions of War
This painfully beautiful narrative lingers in the mind long after the book is over.
-Elif Shafak, professor of Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona,
and author of The Flea Palace and The Saint of Incipient Insanities