The Bells of Memory: A Palestinian Boyhood in Jerusalem

Orthodox Christian, Palestinian Arab, and former Arab literature professor at McGill University, Boullata's memoir is of his youth in Jerusalem's Old City in the decades preceding Israel's formation in 1948. Boullata's autobiographical sections afford local color, as when he portrays how "men frequented coffeehouses, among which some had a storyteller to entertain their clients until a late hour with customary narratives, chivalrous romances, and folk epics." The account flourishes when describing Boullata's courtyard home in Jerusalem's Christian Quarter and his mother's cooking, or when highlighting various Arab writers and teachers of the period who influenced Boullata's own career. Personal memoir strays into political history, and while his views are understandably clearly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, the book will appeal to those interested in the milieu of Jerusalem before the advent of sectarian violence. (Apr.)