For the first time in more than nine months, Raja Shehadeh was a long way from home. When I sat down with the 73-year-old Palestinian author and human rights lawyer in the lounge of a west London hotel, he told me his trip to the UK marked the first time he had strayed more than a couple dozen kilometres from his home in Ramallah in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October.
“I had the ceremony in the US for the National Book Award [last November]; I was a finalist, and I couldn’t travel” due to the lack of flights out of the region, he told me. “Also, when something like this happens you don’t want to leave. It’s too intense and you want to be close by.” He lowered his voice. “And if you leave when you don’t need to leave, you will take it with you.”
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