All The Rivers

 All The Rivers is written by the author Dorit Rabiyan.  I picked thjhis novel top read with my Banned Book group because it was banned in Israel for students in high school and caused a public fire storm because of the banning.  Also because Jewish and Israeli authors are being challenged and dismissed here in the US.  I am so glad I decided to read this novel.

All the Rivers is a beautifully crafted novel about the tug and pull of being in love with someone who you can never spend your life with.  An intimate relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian.  Finding each other in NYC and falling in love but knowing can never be relationship you can bring home to your family.

Liat is an Israeli studying in the United States.  She is staying in an apartment while the owners are away traveling.  She is house sitting and dog sitting.  She is studying to be an English translator, with all the intentions of going back to Israel in six months.  One night she meets Halimi, a Palestinian, living in Brooklyn try to make it as an artist, in a bar. The attraction is almost immediate.  As they travel the streets of the city together they are falling in love.  For the next few months they are together constantly.  Their relationship is intense and star crossed.  Lovers from different societies that can never really be together. While they are in New York it is like being on an island alone with each other.  But even then the outside world interferes.  Liat knows she can never tell her family about Halimi.  She hides every Sunday when she calls home to check in.  Halimi wants to share Liat with his family, but finds out that it will. not work out well.  Even Liat and Halimi have trouble getting over the very opposing views they carry of the other's political stance.

The story is told from Liat's perspective and she is constantly reminding herself that she is leaving in a matter of months.  That this relationship is temporary and cannot exist once she is back in Israel.

Beautifully worded prose paints the detailed feelings, confusion and deep divides that run through the communication and daily activities of Liat and Halimi’s lives as they intersect.

Also very interestingly is that this novel is based on a true story and the story is about the author.  Rabiyon lived in New York and had a very similar relationship.  She as lived though the emotions described in this powerful novel.