As I began reading this book, I remembered what Pico Iyer, a wonderful travel writer, said about Jerusalem: “I would never call Jerusalem beautiful, or comfortable or consoling. But there’s something about it that you can’t turn away from.” I wonder if Paola Caridi felt the same way. Did she also find in Jerusalem something that she would never forget?
Born in Italy, Caridi is a journalist who specializes in the Middle East and North Africa. After a two-year stay in Cairo, from 2001-2003, she left for Jerusalem where she lived for ten years. In 2013, Caridi’s portrait of Jerusalem was released in Italian and was this year published in English, under the title “Jerusalem without God: Portrait of a Cruel City.” The English translation was published by The American University in Cairo Press.
Caridi found the ten years she spent in Jerusalem to be the most demanding of her life. When she bade farewell to Jerusalem, she wrote that she felt no nostalgia or regret. She felt nothing until, months later, she heard the Muslim call to prayer in Sicily.
“Those words… roused in me the sweet taste of nostalgia, the soothing sense of nostalgia. Suddenly, I discovered with a resonant flash that I did not regret the streets of Jerusalem, the sacred stones, the dazzling white of its historical architecture and the artificiality of its present architecture… I missed the rhythms of the day,” Caridi wrote.
“The call to prayer has been so precious to me that, even now when I am no longer in Jerusalem, it takes me back to real time, time that is more consistent with a nature we have violated over the years and centuries,” she wrote.
This book, however, is not a complacent and lyrical description of Jerusalem. The author takes a hard look at the city. Nothing escapes her blunt judgment.
The visit to Jerusalem starts in the old quarter of Musrara in the company of 80-year-old Michel. His father, an accountant who worked for the British Mandate of Palestine, moved his family to the first mixed district, which was created outside the walls of the Old City.
As the mandate came to an end, the British thought it was necessary to divide the street in half to separate the adversaries. However, the situation reached a point of no return with the horrendous massacre at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. This mass slaughter triggered the Palestinian flight from Jerusalem’s city center and the surrounding villages.
Michel and his family, like almost all of Musrara’s inhabitants, left their homes. They were replaced, between 1948-1964, with immigrant Jews who predominantly came from Europe.
Nowadays, more than 2000 people live in 610 lodgings, which more often than not consist of one single room. The public authorities allowed Musrara to fall into disrepair because the long-term plan was to drive the inhabitants to sell their old Arab houses. However, the inhabitants refused to leave and wanted to have a say in the renovation plans, which involved the challenge of restoring the traditional Arab houses. Musrara is now home to Orthodox Jewish families and a small community of international diplomats and journalists.
“Arab Musrara, like many parts of Palestinian Jerusalem, is today a remnant of what it used to be… It is like a fossil buried in stone, following that same historical path of the two parts of Musrara: The Israeli part, fully within the social changes of the country, and the Palestinian part, frayed and… without a new identity that could take the place of its ancient heritage. Arab Jerusalem is more and more split into tiny islands, compounds, enclaves and districts that have lost the connection to city life. The reasons, of course, lie in the conflict,” the author wrote.
Despite all these divisions and ill feelings, there are places, like Mega or Malcha Mall, which the author describes as “reconciled common space” were everybody meets. Israelis and Palestinians shop here because you pay less for more — they are united in their hunt for a bargain.
“The problem, if anything, is how to translate a common belonging into political and institutional terms,” Caridi wrote. For a growing number of Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals, “the remedy is as simple as it is revolutionary: Jerusalem should be one and shared. That is, it should remain united and should be shared — one city for two communities.
“The idea of a city undivided and shared by its inhabitants springs exactly from the utter awareness of what takes place in the city. Daily life is, in fact, the primary indication that Jerusalem cannot be divided,” the author noted.
Speaking her mind with an open heart, Caridi gives the reader an in-depth look at a complex city and its daily dramas.
Book Review: Life in Jerusalem
Book Review: Life in Jerusalem
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘California Amphibians and Reptiles’
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Authors: Robert Hansen & Jackson D. Shedd
California is home to more than 200 species of reptiles and amphibians that can be found in an extraordinary array of habitats, from coastal temperate rainforests with giant redwoods to southeastern deserts offering dazzling wildflower displays each spring.
“California Amphibians and Reptiles” covers every species and subspecies in this biodiverse region of the United States, with outstanding color photography and in-depth species accounts that draw on the latest findings on taxonomy and distribution.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘There Are Rivers in the Sky’
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- Narin is a Yazidi girl surviving genocide in 2014 Iraq, her spirit as unyielding as the ancient lands she is forced to flee
Author: Elif Shafak
This historical novel by Elif Shafak, “There Are Rivers in the Sky,” was published in 2024 and is a meditation on life, loss and love.
Anchored by the Tigris and Thames rivers serving as motifs, the story drifts across centuries, stitching together fractured lives bound by intimacy, trauma, and the quiet power of water.
There are three characters at the heart of this story.
Arthur is a 19th-century linguist whose passion for Mesopotamia’s ruins eclipses his ability to connect with the living.
Narin is a Yazidi girl surviving genocide in 2014 Iraq, her spirit as unyielding as the ancient lands she is forced to flee.
And then there is Zaleekhah, a hydrologist in modern London, drowning in family secrets until she learns to swim toward redemption.
Their stories collide, ripple and reshape one another. Water is not just a metaphor here, it is a character. The rivers breathe life into memories, erode pain, and carry the weight of history.
Arthur’s obsession with the “Epic of Gilgamesh” mirrors his own loneliness as a man chasing immortality through dusty texts while real love slips through his fingers.
Narin’s resilience, rooted in Yazidi traditions, becomes a lifeline in a world determined to erase her people.
As for Zaleekhah, her journey from guilt to grace feels like watching a storm clear — messy, cathartic, and utterly human.
Shafak’s writing is lush, almost tactile. You can taste the silt of the Tigris, feel London’s rain, and ache with the characters.
But here is the catch: this book demands your attention. The timelines —switching between Victorian letters, wartime horror, and modern angst —are a high-wire act.
While the layers add depth, some readers might stumble over dense historical nods or Yazidi cultural nuances. (A glossary would have been a welcome raft.)
Yet, even its flaws pulse with intention. The same complexity that overwhelms also rewards.
This is not a book you breeze through. It is one you wade into, letting the currents tug you into deep, uncomfortable places.
The pacing does drag at times, and Shafak’s ambition occasionally outruns clarity.
In the end, Shafak asks: Can we ever truly outrun history? Or do we, like rivers, carve new paths while carrying the scars of where we have been?
This novel does not answer so much as invite you to sit with the question, long after the last page turns.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The African Revolution’ by Richard Reid
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Africa’s long 19th century was a time of revolutionary ferment and cultural innovation for the continent’s states, societies, and economies. Yet the period preceding what became known as “the Scramble for Africa” by European powers in the decades leading up to World War I has long been neglected in favor of a Western narrative of colonial rule.
The African Revolution demonstrates that “the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism.
What We Are Reading Today: The Power to Destroy
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Author: Michael J. Graetz
The postwar US enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards — and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity.
In 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a “second American Revolution,” setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy.
In The Power to Destroy, Michael Graetz tells the story of the antitax movement and how it holds America hostage — undermining the nation’s ability to meet basic needs and fix critical problems.
What We Are Reading Today: Habitats of Africa
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Authors: Ken Behrens, Keith Barnes & Iain Campbell
With breathtaking wildlife and stunningly beautiful locales, Africa is a premier destination for birders, conservationists, ecotourists, and ecologists.
This compact, easy-to-use guide provides an unparalleled treatment of the continent’s wonderfully diverse habitats.
Incisive and up-to-date descriptions cover the unique features of each habitat, from geology and climate to soil and hydrology, and require no scientific background. Knowing the surrounding environment is essential to getting the most out of your travel experiences.