Ahmed is a Palestinian living in the Bethlehem area. He is not yet thirty, but his studies were long ago interrupted by the closure of his university in the occupied territories and nowadays he earns part of his living by escorting foreign visitors around the West Bank. His itinerary is selective, leading from one dark scene of bereavement or injury to another. We meet in Bethlehem on a wet December morning. The shopkeepers are already closing up - the half-day is a regular feature of the intifada, a mass protest, now over a year old, against the Israeli occupation, itself over twenty years old.

LRB 2 February 1989 | PDF Download