David Marchese

Here's my interview with Raja Shahadeh.

Mr. Shahadeh, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

Please call me Raja.

Raja, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Just to start, your mother and your father, who's a lawyer, were from Jaffa, which is now part of Tel Aviv, Jaffa area.

But when they lived in Jaffa, it was part of the British mandate, Palestine.

Can you tell me about how your family ended up in Ramallah in the West Bank?

I know in your work you've written about the experience of being in Ramallah and seeing the lights off in the distance.

And, you know, they were the lights of Jaffa.

And, of course, you've lived in Ramallah your whole life.

Can you tell me about how living in the occupied territory in the West Bank has affected your own sense of agency over your own life?

You use the term an exile's consciousness.

How would you characterize that?

You know, it's striking to me in reading your works that you often express anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But at the same time, I never get a sense from your work that anger consumes you, that the anger has curdled into a hate or is the prism through which you view the situation in Israel and the occupied territories.

So what is your relationship with anger?

How have you not let it define you?

I think it's fair to say that justice or the pursuit of justice is one of the great themes of your work.

And given that, particularly now, when politics that are based in raw power are so ascendant, what is the role of a justice-driven writer?