TRAVEL BOOKS

‘Freedom is only the insistence of a soul to be left in peace to enjoy the sunrise’

Julian Sayarer’s latest book sees revelations and revolutions in Israel and Palestine, says Michael Kerr

t the 2017 Edinburgh Festival, Julian Sayarer told an Israeli writer that travelling by bike allowed you to cut through to something deeper in places, to tell A the truth about them. In that case, she said, he should go to Israel and Palestine. The result is Fifty Miles Wide, in which he weaves from the ancient hills of Galilee, along the walled-in and down to the Bedouin villages of the Naqab desert. He talks to Palestinian cyclists and hip-hop artists; to Israeli soldiers training for war and to a lawyer who took a leading role in peace talks. His book took courage on the road and is adventurous on the page. It conveys powerfully what life is like for people on both sides of “the world’s most entrenched impasse”. At the same time, it’s full of free spirits and the joys of freewheeling. In the extract below, Sayarer heads for the first time into the hills of Palestine. ‘SENTENCES FORM AS THE WHEELS TURN...’ Julian Sayarer finds philosophy NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF TRAVEL WRITING in the hills of Palestine

GETTY IMAGES; ALAMY IMAGES; GETTY  Jini Reddy, a London  The £10,000  Where does journalist with Ondaatje Prize of Suffolk he goats watch me packed into a sand-coloured jeep, shouts “hello!” and each old man calls multicultural roots, has the Royal heathland meet watching them. wearing shades, the beat of the V8 out “welcome!”. always felt herself an Society of Arizona desert, Those on the edge of engine leaping from under them as Last Sweat runs in my eyes, vision outsider. She has longed, Literature, for pictured the flock look the boys have a whale of a time. word blurring, sun and mist pour too, to enjoy the “spiritual a work that below? In a fearfully at me, this For a split-second I see them down over a countryside where bond” with the land that best evokes moving essay possible predator, before the jeep passes by, each ‘Of all possible subjects, recent rains evaporate towards indigenous people she has “the spirit of a by Francisco standing beside smiling face like a boy scout travel is the most difficult the sky. met on her travels seem to place” (tinyurl. Cantú, a former T another possible with hardware, kids sent to Far into the distance, I see have. In Wanderland com/yczyur8x), US border patrol predator, less familiar and with two earn that “battle-tested” badge for an artist, as it is the the land like a milky white sea, (Bloomsbury), she explores was awarded this officer (and author wheels. I see eyes, shining black as jet, for which Israeli military easiest for a journalist’ the backs of many hills rising Britain in search of “the week to Roger Robinson of The Line Becomes a set on each side of the head so that a products – having already been at the surface just barely, as if wild unseen”. Reddy is a for his poetry collection A River), for the latest goat can see in panorama and detect tested on Palestinians – whales are lifting out above guest on the latest Portable Paradise Virginia Quarterly Review threats approaching as it grazes. And I command a price premium. W H Auden in The and then slouching back beneath episode of The (Peepal Tree (tinyurl.com/y99pkaf5). wonder if the goats detect that my eyes There were times, riding Dyer’s Hand, 1962 the waves. Stubborn Light Press), which are in the very front of my head, through the West Bank, when I would That was a sight to behold, that late of Things, a moves between  From The Daily targeted and precise in their vision, consider how the Arabs of Palestine, afternoon, where one after another new podcast Trinidad and Telegraph archive: Paul inadvertently revealing my distant for all that they had it bad, at least and endlessly repeated, I saw for the from the London and Mansfield follows the trail history as a carnivore, a hunter who were lucky in that they didn’t have to what goes first time the magic of those hills of novelist and takes in the of the bluesman Robert once had to track his prey and strike. worry about being invaded by the around Palestine. Immersed in them, I rode nature writer Grenfell Johnson, pictured above, One intrepid goat moves a little United States. And then I’d pass a Julian Sayarer, upon their rising and falling heartbeat, Melissa Tower fire and through the Mississippi towards me, pushes out of the herd of military jeep with its smiling teenage below, ecountered until it was not a landscape that I rode Harrison (tinyurl. the Windrush Delta (tinyurl.com/ shining eyes. The animal waits, soldiers in their sunglasses, and I’d goats on his travels through but a cardiogram, where up com/y88bynhp). generation. yb25xbhf). watching me, then startles at the realise that they perhaps felt they in the Middle East and down my emotions they sank and sound of a falling rock behind and already had been. soared. runs on thin legs back to that stream of As I ride, a frustration weighs me That afternoon, I think I understood the official status that an occupying accelerated even as the landscape goats flowing over the road and away. down, pulls me backwards, for often it how it could be that those Palestinians force claims for itself – that slowed and, finally, speed returned to I pick up my bicycle, return to its feels like the occupation is designed in I met, none of whom had ever lived in somewhere in this world there is a my wheels as I shot fast out of the wheels; gradually momentum comes such a way that it will kill all hope. their own independent country, could great beauty, and that a part of it frame and into the next. to my pedalling, and I begin to shift. With the guns in the jeep, the still feel with such strength the belongs to us all. The land at last gives me its rhythm, military eyeball lurking above the freedom that was in their spirit. That is how freedom forms, I © Julian Sayarer 2020. Extracted puts patience in my head and cadence olive trees and watching everything, Because to sense freedom is like realised it there in Palestine, and pure from Fifty Miles Wide: Cycling in my legs, offering the small magic of the totalitarian presence leaves me, seeing a person you love out of the as my wheels turning under me, the Through Israel and Palestine the world that is all it ever takes to more than once, asking what use there corner of your eye and for only a idea only grew in me as I rode. It was (Arcadia Books, £9.99). Julian remind you: take your time, enjoy this. is in even writing any of it. And then I moment in a crowded room. You still all part of the same immutable law. Sayarer wrote his first book,Life I look down between my forearms pedal forward, that motion by recognise them. Anyone who ever saw such sunlight Cycles, after breaking the 18,000- and handlebars and at my turning feet. definition optimistic, and again Riding through and along the at an afternoon’s end, the long rays of mile world record for a Here is the desk where I get most of I realise that there is nothing hillsides, I passed a babbling light refracting in red earth to circumnavigation by bike. He won my work done. Here is where I feel for it but to keep on trying. spring near the village of Nabi illuminate the gently burning sky, will the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of thoughts most keenly and so here is Left I bank, down into the Saleh. know innately and forever what the Year award for Interstate and its where I write, where sentences form next turn, around the I passed an open window freedom is because, at root, freedom is depiction of a as regularly as the wheels turn. terraced hillside and into to a kitchen that let out the only the insistence of a soul to be left less-seen United In the deep blue sky above, as I wan sunshine. And I see the smell of sautéing onions, in peace to enjoy the sunset. States. His most round a high hillside, there is a silver chain turn over again, evoking impossibly Hours up and hours down I recent journeys flash and tethered to that sky the reminding me quietly that strongly the sense of home. laboured, coming slowly to realise that and writing have plump body of a blimp comes into I know no other way than In another small town there is no holy site in Jerusalem or been prompted view. Floating there, above a small this. came the sound of notes anywhere else that could hold a candle by the refugee military building, it gathers Up and over the crests of practised on a recorder or to those hills of Palestine, for they and financial surveillance images of the goats and hills I rise on the air flute in a room above, were the most precious of all sights. crises in the the shepherds going about their lives. currents and then blow dropping down to the Among them that afternoon, eastern Closer round the bend comes the back down, carefree for a street below. Such things eventually I found a moment of peace, Mediterranean throb of engines and I see soldiers while, and every child were evidence – no matter my legs turning regular circles that region. PASSAGES TO To city and country, out on the river, and under the rain

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