Golda Slept Here

This book is a tribute to Andoni Baramki, one of the Palestinian architects responsible for creating the beautiful neighborhoods of Jerusalem.In many ways this is a book of nostalgia, that looks back through the eyes of Suad Amiry to a period when Palestine culture thrived in Jerusalem prior to 1948 when Palestinian families were forcefully removed without recompense from homes in western Jerusalem and newcomers settled in while whitewashing away all memory of these Palestinian artists and artisans as well as the owners who had invested their life savings. The title of the book highlights former Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir, who took over one such Palestinian home, but defaced the ceramic Arabic calligraphy that named the original owner/ builder.The author, while learning from the past, is a person dedicated to the future as an architect herself and as founder of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Preservation, dedicated to preserving Palestinian architecture in East Jerusalem and the Occupied territories.

Excellent. Easy read and essential info. I highly recommend.

Suad Amiry once again hits the nail on the head with a vivid picture of how the Zionists effected an expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and brazenly occupied them fully furnished, with ''coffee still hot on the table" left by the owners. The book describes how doughty Palestinian women, after the 1967 war, were able to re-visit the sites, but not re-trieve their beautiful homes, some gems of Palestinian architecture, often courting arrest and prison after the irate occupiers reported them to the Israeli police. Laced with dark humour, Amiry goes with them on their nostalgic journeys, and relates the stories, not least that of her own mother, who left their lovely home in Jaffa, of how they fled, and what they left behind. This is a story of the looting of a whole country, not only the land, and their homes, but all the things belonging to the refugees. One startling story describes the famous Palestinian architect Andoni Baramki, whose home was later turned into the Seam Museum, being told he could not have his home, whose occupier had been removed by the Israeli court, returned to him because he was a 'present absentee", despite protestations by Baramki that he was actually there in front of the judge. The wry irony makes the sense of loss experienced by the Palestinians in this remarkable account, even more stark.

Very interesting.