- Playing
- The Lemon Tree
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- Homelands Productions
Bashir Al-Khairi (buh-SHEER al-HAY-ree), an Arab, was six when his family was driven out of his stone home in Ramle, in old Palestine, during the war with Israel in July 1948. Dalia Eshkenazi, a Jew, was ten months old when her family arrived from Bulgaria in November 1948, and moved into an old stone home in Ramle. Nineteen years later, after the Six Day War, Bashir went to visit his old home. He rang the bell. Dalia answered.
The Lemon Tree is part of the World Views series, produced by Homelands Productions. World Views is a series of international first-person documentaries revealing the human truths beneath the surface of daily events. The Lemon Tree was first broadcast on Fresh Air on April 24, 1998. It won the Overseas Press Club's Lowell Thomas Award for best radio news or interpretation of international affairs. It is the subject of Tolan's book of the same title, published in 2006 and republished in paperback in May 2007. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named best nonfiction book of 2006 by Booklist.
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Piece Description
Bashir Al-Khairi (buh-SHEER al-HAY-ree), an Arab, was six when his family was driven out of his stone home in Ramle, in old Palestine, during the war with Israel in July 1948. Dalia Eshkenazi, a Jew, was ten months old when her family arrived from Bulgaria in November 1948, and moved into an old stone home in Ramle. Nineteen years later, after the Six Day War, Bashir went to visit his old home. He rang the bell. Dalia answered. The Lemon Tree is part of the World Views series, produced by Homelands Productions. World Views is a series of international first-person documentaries revealing the human truths beneath the surface of daily events. The Lemon Tree was first broadcast on Fresh Air on April 24, 1998. It won the Overseas Press Club's Lowell Thomas Award for best radio news or interpretation of international affairs. It is the subject of Tolan's book of the same title, published in 2006 and republished in paperback in May 2007. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named best nonfiction book of 2006 by Booklist.
Broadcast History
First broadcast on Fresh Air on April 24, 1998. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY in Philadelphia, and distributed by NPR.
Transcript
INTRO: On May 14th, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared Israel's independence. The war began the next day. For many Jews, the creation of modern Israel marked a return from two thousand years of exile, and gave them a safe haven they lacked during the Holocaust. But the birth of the Jewish state, endorsed by a United Nations partition plan in November 1947, also meant dispossession for the Palestinians. Seven hundred thousand Palestinians fled their villages and towns during the fighting in 1948. For Israelis, it was a war of independence. For Palestinians, it was the "nakba," or catastrophe. Today we consider the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflct in a deeply personal way, from two people who know no home except for the land that they each claim. The documentary that follows comes from Sandy Tolan of Homelands Productions. He says the story is about an Arab, an Israeli, and an old lemon tree...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
00:00 -- story begins
11:30 -- brief musical break
12:04 -- story continues
38:23 -- ends
Musical Works
Original music composed and performed by Dorothy Wang.
Additional Files
- Host intro and outro (LemonTreeIntro.txt)
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Emon Hassan
Posted on June 13, 2006 at 07:00 PM | Permalink
Review of The Lemon Tree
One of the best pieces on PRX. Why? It does not take sides, it does not preach, it does not stir up muddy waters, and it does not try and differentiate between right and wrong. It simply tells the story of a home, a tree, and two people who're attached to the place's past and future. But, wait, that's not why I think it's one of the best pieces on PRX. Its greatness comes in the way it unfolds the story, and the narrative smoothness and tone that it possesses. A great piece makes a native out of a foreigner. Don't ask me what that means, and to use Louis Armstrong's words when asked about Jazz, I'll only say, 'Man, if you have to ask, you'll never know." If a piece can put me next to the people it's portraying, as if I were actually there, or as if I felt their happiness and pain, then it's a success in my book. And I'm sticking to it.