Narratives from Palestine: Ethics and Politics in Raja Shehadeh’s When the Bulbul Stopped Singing (2003)

Abstract

This article examines Raja Shehadeh’s When the Bulbul Stopped Singing (2003), a testimony of life under the 2002 Israeli siege of Ramallah, focusing on the ethical and political criteria of narrating suffering. Shehadeh navigates between intimate, sensory descriptions of stillness and moments of sharpened political criticism as the violence intensifies. By transcribing the everyday texture of the siege experience, his memoir avoids over-politicization to offer instead an empathetic testimony. Drawing on Michael Jackson’s The Politics of Storytelling, this article argues that Shehadeh negotiates the tension between private experience of suffering and public discourse of politics, rendering his narrative a symbol of survival and resistance.