When The Bulbul Stopped SingingPalestine's greatest prose writer Observer Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise Colm Toibn Battered by repeated suicide bombs, the Israeli army invaded Palestine in April 2002 and held many of the principal towns, including Ramallah, under siege. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh's road; there were Israeli soldiers on the rooftops; his mother was sick, and he couldn't cross town to help