Christians in Palestine - Jean Rolin

Last night, I read Jean Rolin's book called Christians in Palestine (Chrétiens en Français) in... about 2 hours. I'm not sure if I absorbed it so quickly because I wanted to know what was going to happen next or because on so many levels I felt I, or close family members, could relate to it so much... Probably a mix of the two. It's basically his account of his encounters with Christian families and church leaders while in Palestine/Israel, as well as Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations there. I felt like I was right there with him, in Bethlehem and Jerusalem and Ramallah visiting those places and families... It definitely made it more personal now that I've actually been there and could visualize the areas in question. The geography there is so complicated that reading the names of the locations without having visited first would have probably left me majorly confused...

I'm so glad I read it, and now own the book (which for some reason was pretty hard for me to find in the first place), but it definitely felt bittersweet. Bittersweet because it's such a complex situation, and because this book highlights another layer of complexity within that very complex situation...

I definitely can't and won't pretend that I know what Jean Rolin felt during or even after his experience that led to the writing of his book. But I just got the impression that his conclusion was a sort of "this was a rather pointless effort on my part"-kind of closure. I felt like maybe he went into his project with so much hope and enthusiasm only to end up feeling a bit let down by the shocking and unexpected reality of things... of course that's my own interpretation of it.

But regardless of how he felt, if I could, I would honestly thank him for going through all that and for caring enough to write a book about it because it really moved me. Thanks to the personal writing style, I was so absorbed that I sometimes felt like he was writing it specifically for me, like I was witnessing something that so few others care about...

Just as Edward Said's biography moved me, this did as well (although of course, in an entirely different manner). Jean Rolin, a French journalist and self-proclaimed non-believer (at least at the time?) didn't have to care and to decide to take on a project all by himself concerning Christians in the Holy Land. But he did. And for that, I truly respect and praise him. And I'm sure others more familiar with his work (like the whole country of France perhaps? since that's where his work is well-known) do as well.

(*book purchase courtesy of amazon.com* :) )