Forgotten

An elegy to memory: what is memorialised, what is not, and why

Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine - now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories - and what they might tell us about the land and the people who have lived (and are living) on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned or erased - and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land. In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba - the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians - but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration in our own time.