After being held at the Jordan-Palestine border for three hours by Israeli immigration control the Palestine Festival of Literature kicked off to a full house at Jerusalem’s Dar el-Tifl.

The first session’s theme was ‘journeys’ and it got off to a great start with Will Dalrymple on top form – regaling the audience with stories of his travels in Palestine and his conversations with From the Holy Mountain’s Father Theophatis. Then Esther Freud took over and her account of her childhood in Morocca was witty and heartfelt while Brigid Keenan’s razor-sharp tales of her diplomatic posting to Kazakhstan really got the audience going. Talk of journeys was enjoyable but nicely counterbalanced by recognition of how difficult/impossible journeys are for people here.

Hanan Ashrawi was witty and well-read as chair – and seemed relieved and happy to be talking literature rather than politics.

Second session Andy O'Hagan, Hanan al-Shaykh and Jamal Mahjoub on Kin: kicked off with Andy totally captivating the audience reciting Robert Burns by heart and claiming he and Edward Said decided they could prove he was the greatest poet of all time – but would need a bottle of whiskey and an accordion. Hanan al-Shaykh was the highlight for many Palestinians who have read her work for as long as she's been writing. Jamal, then, struck an excellent balance between the academic and the everyday as the discussion turned towards the relationships between language and nation and identity.

In the end there was a palpable sense that this had been two hours of literary and social engagement of the best kind: it was funny and fast while being serious and enlightening and of such a high calibre that everyone went home filled with a sense of optimistic solidarity.