Author: Paul Larudee |Date: April 2015

BookCover

This book is a delightful and compelling account of the author’s experience as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement in Israeli-occupied Palestine in late 2003.  Alternately poignant and humorous, it captures the fear, anger, frustration, comedy and exhilaration of placing oneself in harm’s way while possessing only rudimentary knowledge of the land, people and issues one has come to address.  This is the ISM experience, common to many volunteers, and Francesca treats it with insight and sensitivity.

 

Her anecdotes run the gamut of encounters with Israeli soldiers and settlers, Palestinian villagers and of course her lunch with Palestinian president and icon Yasser Arafat and other luminaries in the battered and crumbling muqataa, the place where ISM volunteers shielded Arafat by their unarmed presence while  Israeli forces were closing in during the dark days of April, 2002.

 

I have known Francesca since those days, but only discovered her astonishing story-telling skills through this book.  I confess that as a career English teacher I occasionally wanted to pull out a red pen to correct a typo or suggest a phrase more grammatically orthodox.  But I have to admit that it would have made no difference in the effectiveness of the reading experience.  Plan to read it when you can devote a few hours, because you may be unable to put it down.

 

This book will resonate strongly with those who have lived the ISM experience, but more importantly those who have not.  It reminded me of experiences that I had forgotten, but I can imagine the reverse: that if someone goes to Palestine after reading Francesca’s book, what they have read will seem familiar, thanks to Francesca’s skills.

 

Thank you, Francesca for this marvelous gift.

 

Rosa, F.S., Lunch at the Muqataa. San Francisco: Ithuriel’s Spear, 138 pp. paperback

 

Available from the ISM-NorCal store for $16, with free shipping.