Liat and Hilmi meet inside a Greenwich Village café in a New York City that had just been forever changed by the September 11 terrorist attacks. Their attraction is immediate. Their love is inevitable and life altering.
In those moments when we talk and talk and talk, I feel like I have been a sort of enigma to myself, a difficult riddle to solve, he has come along to know me and to answer all my questions … I feel I am almost becoming him, so close to him and infused with him that I can practically feel what it is like to be him.”
And yet it is an impossible, forbidden love — one that threatens both of their unique understandings of identity, cultural heritage and freedom to choose. Liat is from Israel and Hilmi is from the occupied West Bank. They are our star-crossed lovers, our modern-day Romeo and Juliet.
This is the story of today’s Velshi Banned Book Club feature, “All the Rivers” by Dorit Rabinyan. It is based on Rabinyan’s very real love affair with late Palestinian artist Hasan Hourani when she was in her 20s.
Rabinyan skillfully captures the speed and intensity of real love with short chapters, direct and illustrative observations, and pointed dialogue. The reader is swept away just as quickly as Liat, our narrator and protagonist, is. From the moment Liat and Hilmi met in the café, the reader is fiercely rooting for them. And yet, as immediate as Liat and Hilmi’s love story is, their cultural and political differences are ever-present and intrinsic to their relationship. The moments that make this clear — including particularly pointed phone calls between Liat and her sister — feel like coming up for air after diving under water. Ultimately, “All the Rivers” tells two stories: love of country and love of each other. Then it asks its readers to consider whether they can both co-exist.
There is a pervasive nostalgia throughout “All the Rivers”: phone calls made on land lines, a magnet for a taxi company stuck to a refrigerator door, Nirvana played out loud on a stereo. Liat realizes back in Tel Aviv that she doesn’t have a single photograph of Hilmi and, of course, no social media to scroll. Or perhaps this nostalgia is because “All the Rivers” is more than just a wistful recollection of a life-changing love — it is a tribute to the late Hourani.
The semi-autobiographical nature of “All the Rivers” is not the only aspect of the novel that exists off the page. In late 2015, Israel’s Ministry of Education rejected a request from Israeli educators to add “All the Rivers” to the national high school curriculum. Dalia Fenig, an education ministry official at the time, defended barring the novel to Israeli news website Ynet, saying, “The story is based on a romantic motif of a forbidden, secret and impossible love. [...] Adolescent youth tend to romanticize and don’t have, in many cases, the systematic point of view that includes considerations about preserving the identity of the nation and the significance of assimilation.”
Suddenly “All the Rivers” — a work of art, a real experience, a best-seller, an award winner — became a political symbol and a means of division in Israel. High school educators swiftly expressed outrage and protested. Robinyan got spit on in the street.
The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”
bell hooks
Maybe a few weeks ago — before October 7, in a world that seems so far away now — I would have had something more salient to point out about the Israeli Education Ministry’s statement and the grave need to preserve freedom of speech wherever possible.
Today, though, the book’s most powerful message is love. It proves again and again that stolen moments of passion between two kids one winter in New York City has power — immense power — to change the world.
As the late American author and theorist bell hooks said, “The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”
This is an adapted excerpt from the Saturday, November 11 episode of “Velshi.”
