Customer Reviews

A Bedouin Boyhood

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Racism works by--and racism consists of--assuming that the despised people are not really people. Racism bolsters this crazy view by preventing evidence reaching them or anybody else that "these people" are just like them or you or me.
Palestinians are almost always characterized as crazy people. This book lightly chronicles a boyhood in rural Palestine in the mid-20th Century: a bunch of relatives, adventures in the rural neighborhood, school, etc., and only tangentially mentions the establishment of the state of Israel that was happening during this time. Suddenly people had to move. That's about it. Maybe the publisher advised against any mention of Israeli affairs as being sure to attract unpleasant comment.
So the book is just what its title promises. Donkeys, wadis, tents, cousins, village school, trips to town. But these are just the sorts of everyday details that let the reader accept that the writer is "just like me".

Isaak Diqs recounts his early childhood in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel. Poignant story of a people who live close to the land and how their removal from that land disrupts family ties for generations. I have read many books about the political history of the Middle East spanning the last 150 years but this is the only book I have read that dealt with how the tremendous changes that have taken place in the last fifty years have deeply and personally impacted the common people. It helped me appreciate how Native Americans relate to the land and what impact the separation from their traditional way of life has had upon their culture. I recommend this book highly to anyone not only interested in the Middle East but to anyone interested in the tremendous changes all traditional cultures are facing into today's rapidly changing world.