The Parachute Paradox

Winner of the 2017 Eric Hoffer Award and the 2016 Nautilus Book Award for Best Memoir.

On a flight out of Tel Aviv, still shaken by another airport interrogation, Steve Sabella remembers a tandem parachute jump over Haifa-the rush of free fall, and the instant the chute opened and he understood that he had never been falling alone. Someone strapped behind him held every cord: when the parachute opened, the direction of the descent, where they landed, and whether he reached the ground safely at all.

That is the paradox at the heart of this memoir. Born in Jerusalem's Old City, Sabella grew up a foreigner in his own home-a Palestinian under occupation, bound to a reality he never chose. Later in the book, he gives the parachute image its political meaning: there is an Israeli on the back of every Palestinian-not merely present, but controlling every aspect of life.

The Parachute Paradox is the story of how one artist set out to reclaim the cords of his own life by attempting something no one had told him was possible: to liberate not the land first, but the imagination.

Structured as a reverse countdown-from Chapter 15 to zero-the memoir unfolds with the tension of a thriller. Each chapter draws Sabella closer to the decisive question: can he reclaim control of his own descent before occupation determines not only where he lands, but who he is allowed to become?

From the alleys of Jerusalem through both intifadas, a kidnapping in Gaza, exile in London and Berlin, and a life remade through photography and art, this is a memoir of identity, love, loss, and a freedom no checkpoint can contain.

First published as a limited artist edition by Kerber Verlag, The Parachute Paradox is a firsthand account for anyone drawn to the story of Palestine and Israel, to the inner life of an artist, or to the quiet and radical idea that the way out begins in the imagination.

Steve Sabella was born in the Old City of Jerusalem and lives in Berlin. For three decades, this Palestinian artist and author has made photography, collage, and installation out of a single question: who controls the image-and how does a person reclaim it? He does not document exile. He excavates what lies beneath it, and imagines a way out.His memoir The Parachute Paradox won the Eric Hoffer and Nautilus Book Awards; his art is held in the British Museum, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. His life and work have been the subject of several documentaries.In everything he makes, Sabella works beyond the borders of nation and exile, toward what he calls global citizenship.www.stevesabella.space