Certain trees - particularly the mulberries and medlars - still tell the story of how long ago, in another life, before the nakba, Ramallah was, for the well-off, a town of leisure and ease, a place to retreat to from nearby Jerusalem during the hot summers, a resort. The nakba refers to the 'catastrophe' of 1948 when ten thousand Palestinians were killed and 700,000 were forced to leave their country.

LRB 24 July 2003 | PDF Download