Description
For those seeking a sense of the passion for the city of Jerusalem and its history from an Arab point of view, this volume consists of essays, memories, and poems written primarily by Arabs and Palestinians scholars, poets, engineers & architects, activists but also including Arab Americans and writers and scholars based in the UK and elsewhere. Themes of exile and longing weave through the book's three sections, which discuss the contemporary scene, the classical scene, and the voices of Jerusalem. Edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (an author and poet distinguished in the Arab world), and Zafar Ishaq Ansarai (he's Director General of the Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic U. in Islamabad and also editor of the journal Islamic Studies ). The collection is not indexed. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Here is a passionate and eclectic collection of essays, poems, and scholarship that brings to life Jerusalem, that most enigmatic and compelling of cities, in its embattled, contemporary guise as well as in its ancient history. The book begins in the immediacy of today’s Jerusalem—with its dispossessions and laws, its bloody conflicts and massive skyscrapers—and moves backward in time to Classical Jerusalem, working to disentangle the knots of the three great monotheistic religions, and finally comes to rest in a section that is a testament to the physical facts of Jerusalem: its monuments and alleys, its smells, its music, its people. Throughout it all, the Jerusalem that emerges is, as Mureed Barghouthy puts it, “the Jerusalem of the people,” for it is the people who live or have lived there, who know the “Jerusalem of houses and cobbled streets and spice markets… of our neighbor the nun and her neighbor the muezzin, who was always in a hurry.” Tellingly, the anthology begins and ends with the words of poets: “I’m not interested in / Who suffered the most,” writes Naomi Shihab Nye in the introductory poem. “I’m interested in /People getting over it.” This book is about a beloved Jerusalem whose intricacies and human inventions are ultimately larger than the current conflict.
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