The memoir is the story of Aziz Shihab’s journey from Palestinian refugee to American citizen and back to Palestine on various journeys home. His question “does the land remember me?” is central to his story. This moving and well-written narrative gives a glimpse into the mind of one man, an Arab, displaced from his home, who becomes an American citizen and builds a beautiful family and successful life, and yet justice never comes, the past never resolves, and for many of his family members who stayed behind in Palestine and in Jordan, the struggle for their lives and dignity continues.

Shihab’s story is a story not broadcast on the mainstream news in America. No one has made a movie about his life. And yet, this is in many ways an American story. A talented, independent-minded immigrant comes to America fleeing violence and misfortune in his country (caused in part by US foreign policy) works hard, becomes a citizen, and makes a life here in the United States, but part of his heart and his family remain in a troubled place.

Aziz Shihab was born in Palestine in 1927 and their family was forced out of their home in 1949 during the Nakba, what Palestinians refer to as the “catastrophe,” when countless hundreds of thousands fled violence supported by UN Mandate to establish the state of Israel. Shihab’s family fled their Jerusalem home and has never been able to return, though his mother kept the keys to the house until her death, and Aziz kept the doorknocker. He writes,

“My dilemma was to live quietly and obediently in a country that helped make me into a refugee and that I chose to make my home, pretending it is the greatest home for justice in the world. Or I could go back to Palestine and live miserably under occupation and possibly die fighting injustice.”

When he arrives in the United States, himself a journalist, he comes to realize that the story told in our newspapers does not match his reality, over and over he tells his story—that his family did not sell or donate their house to Israel, the house was taken from them by force. When he tells people he’s from Jerusalem in the 1950’s they assume he’s Israeli and he has to explain that he refuses to be called by the name of the people who stole his home and are occupying his country.

Shihab takes advantage of and appreciates the life and freedom available to him in the United States and in that way he becomes an American. Like many of us, Shihab is aware that the same country that grants him freedom and opportunity is complicit in the misery of others elsewhere in the world. In his case, those “others” are friends and family, the very land where he grew up. Through Shihab’s narration, the reader visits the family and places Shihab left behind. We see through his American eyes the conditions people live under all these years later—checkpoints, passports, arrests, interrogations, and poverty.

His central question "does the land remember me" is one I found particularly haunting. In a place where olive trees are bulldozed as an act of war, water use tightly controlled, homes bulldozed, the very land is a victim of war. His leaving it feels like betrayal. But he cannot stay and be free there. It reminds me of a poem by the great poet Mahmoud Darwish, titled “Why’d you Leave the Horse Alone?” in which he remembers his family being forced out of their home as a child, and they leave their horse behind. Why’d you leave the horse alone, Darwish asks in his book length poem “to keep the house company, my son/Houses die when their inhabitants are gone.”

As an American, Shihab describes himself as someone obsessed with real estate. He buys and buys and buys property here in the US and even buys a piece of property in Palestine, but he cannot get his home back.

Not only is this story a critical piece of understanding the unrest in Palestine, but it's told by a gifted story teller.

“Does the Land Remember Me?” is a bridge from America to Palestine, past the border guards, to the heart of its people. I wish our next president would take the journey.