A review by adrizeuza
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

This was beautiful and informative in equal measure. The first memoir I read where prose about legal cases can become so evocative and symbolic of a complicated, yet loving father-son relationship, filled with silences and things left unsaid. I found the paradoxical idea that, sometimes, a shared trauma can actually put a gap bewteen two people rather than bring them together fascinating. I also learned so much about the experience Palestinian people have of the geography and landscape of their country - how every hill and tree is a landmark of home, contrasted with the instrumental view of the Israeli state, which has spent the past 70 years bulldozing and cementing everything in their path.
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