thinking about this today
Tweet by Aneela "Reading a novel about a Palestinian Christian who is forced to flee his home in Jerusalem during the Nakba in 1948 and takes up a teaching job in Baghdad, where he falls in love with a Muslim girl. Was deeply struck by this passage shot through with anger at the Christian West."
Text from Hunters in a Narrow Street (1960) by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra.
"these very streets and hills and houses and hovels. For me Christ is a part of this place. But how do you suppose they think of Him in the West? Do you suppose our Christianity is like theirs? When they sing of Jerusalem do you think they mean our own arched streets and cobbled alleys and terraced hills? Never. Christ for the West has become an idea-an abstract idea with a setting, but the setting has lost all geographical significance. For them the Holy Land is a fairy land. They have invented a fanciful Jerusalem of their own and made it the city of their dreams. But for us the geography is real and inescapable. When they sing of Jerusalem in their hymns they do not mean our city. Theirs is a paradise, ours is hell, Gehenna, the city of no peace. Nor is their Jerusalem the city of Christ any more. It is the city of David. What does it matter to them if our houses are destroyed, if a thousand Leilas are blown to bits and our city gates are turned into shambles? They've stolen our Christ and kicked us in the teeth."
