Translation By: Abdul-fattah Al-Qalqili
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- Selected Works of Young Palestinian Talents
- The Secrets of the Sparrow By: Akram Hanniyeh
- The House of Fire “ The First Place – The First Poem”
- Memoirs of a Chicken
- Oh people! Your enemy is not one who could be soft or merciful Oh people! Evacuation is the only choice before you, so pack up.
- The Neighing of Distances
- A River Bathing in a Lake
Zainab’s Windows The events of this novel take place in the city of Nablus at Christmas during the first Intifada. Key events move in two areas in the same city. People in Nablus, as in all other places, are neighbors who love each other and marry from each other. At that time, their was an engagement waving in the horizon but normal living is rendered impossible under such abnormal circumstances as occupation troops are deployed in the city, children are throwing stones on soldiers, bullets’ sounds rock the air .. and Youngman Nasser Al-Hawwash falls down hit by one bullet that leaves him staggering between life and death. In another place, inside Israel, a Jewish man enters hospital after suffering a heart stroke ; doctors judge that his case is hopeless unless he receives a new heart transplant,but who would sacrifice his heart in favor of another person ? A strange idea crosses the mind of Yesrael’s family : To buy the heart of a wounded Palestinian who has no hope in recovery.Therefore, they offer the deal to Nasser Al-Hawwash’s family: a heart for Yesrael against a large amount of money …. In normal human situations, people would reciprocate, as in many donation cases we hear about. For Nasser’s family the matter goes far beyond Yesrael being an Israeli whose people are occupying Nasser’s country. The real problem was that they were those who tore out his body with their bullets, could they, then, be rewarded by taking the heart of their victim to save their son? If the equation was such as clearly seen by Nasser’s family, how could it bee seen from an academic doctor’s standpoint? It is a man saving another…this is not an easy solution as a matter of fact.The one whose heart is to be taken away would die. The logic of life replies that the alive is better than the dead.The logic of the bereaved family : the one who would become dead is only that who was killed by the folks of that whom they want to see alive…. Through such an inhuman incident , occupation interprets the conditions of human relations. What makes the problem even worse is that the deal offers money vis-a-avis life. The opportunity for human sympathy is thus wasted in the midst of a massacre whose toll claims more innocent souls everyday. In the midst of this perplexity and confusion, Nasser Al-Hawwash dies which most likely means that Yesrael would die too. The symbolic level stops here as the death of the Palestinian and the Israeli does not mean at all that the rivals on this land died. Nasser’s family is still there ; Yesrael’s family is still there too. Death threatens to spread out so long as others’ rights are usurped and so long as there is resistance. The last light signal is one of different symbolic feature as on the day of Nasser’s death came Christmas which is,in principle,a symbol of life revival but if it meant the birth of Jesus himself, then its meaning would expand to the possibility of thinking of peace which was not practically realized. The question is : who makes the advent of Christmas connected with tears and blood? It is not Nasser’s family, of course… as they were attacked, their homes, freedom were confiscated and their children are nominees to join Nasser as the bullets of the occupation troops are waiting for them. The occupation soldiers are also in a state of war, and consequently, each of them is in danger ; but who is the aggressor? In the novel, there is an opportunity to present various views on this issue. In fact,everyone who gives an opinion expresses a position or an attitude at the level of ethics or at the level of the nation… The victim remains the human life in itself. If the scene’s conditions were fair, there would not have been death except in the natural meaning which visits all people. Confined in a pale corner is a love story which could not emerge like it should. The light in Zainab’s far away Windows becomes dim as if asking the question : how did this happen and why? Selected Works of Young Palestinian Talents The most important feature of creative works of young writers in Palestine is perhaps their indulging into the details of daily life in an act closer to restoring the normalcy of life and getting closer to the private and personal concern in the midst of a reality that witnesses dramatic transformations including everything built on it . The breakdown of the “big thoughts” in the political sense which used to characterize the consciousness of a whole phase has tainted the Palestinian creative production in the occupied territories and the Diaspora with their dictionary and desires.That breakdown left its deep impact on the young writings of Palestinian talents who suddenly found themselves before a question and facts of different nature, most prominent among which are: -The collapse of the notion of “hero” and the continued process of dissecting its traits, status, description inside the text and in life as well.This could be felt in most young texts both in story and poetry.A group of ideas and questions accomplished by Palestinian intellectuals over the last three decades had contributed to stirring the mainstream national political Palestinian venture and moved it a little away from all that stands as “sacred” to a fresh awareness and knowledge of this generation. Proposing new community –based and civil- society means and tools onto the Palestinian resistance venture has perhaps contributed a great deal to open holes in what used to be viewed as “sacred” and deep rooted with all the different meaning, dictionary, relationships, implications, perspectives and aesthetical aspects which those propositions carried. Hence, I found that there is an utmost importance, a research field and a rich knowledge in the clear signs which the young generation of Palestinian talents leaves on the new trends of Palestinian creative writing. This shift has not yet crystallized into a key trend in the scene though it continued to be there and received a boost from the contributions of a large number of young writers including a substantially noticeable rate of creative female writers. The return of many Palestinian intellectuals from exile to Palestine under the “Oslo Accords” has no doubt contributed to finding a new level of controversy between the exile experience and expertise on the one hand and the experience accumulated by Palestinian intellectuals who lived under occupation inside on the other ; a thing which made it possible to open a wide space for questions and exchange of expertise from which the young Palestinian creative generation benefited a tremendous amount as there experience was formulated in the midst of that controversy and its varieties.The questions, knowledge and consciousness of the new text arose in between the openness of the text written in exile onto Arab and international experiences on the one hand,and the text accomplished inside under the occupation’s conditions, policies and the text’s ability to network with the place and its loads. We could here mention names of poets like : Walid Al-Sheikh, Mahmoud Abu Hashash, Kifah Fanni, Sumayya Al-Susie , Dunia Al- Amal Ismael, Hala Al- Shrouf, and Mohammad Al-Dirawi , names of story writers such as : Basima Takrori, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Ahlam Besharat, Nibal Thawabteh, Said abu Al-Mu’la, Majed atef, Yousef Al-Shayeb, Ziad Khaddash, Saleh Masharqa and names of young critics such as : Abdel Rahim Al-Sheikh and Malik Al-Rimawi, all of whom have bestowed new dimension and variation to the Palestinian scene. The Secrets of the Sparrow By: Akram Hanniyeh The Secrets of the Sparrow is the fifth collection of writer Akram Hanniyeh which appeared 15 years after publishing his fourth book “When the night of Jerusalem lights” in 1986. In order of age, Hanniyeh belongs to the middle zone between the second and third generations of short story writers in Palestine. His stories are distinguished with that special mixture of an extremely daily normality through marginalized characters and patterns breathing in the shadows and roaming in live while carrying their casual and random loads: memory, home, work,concerns of daily living and their dealing with the great events through their own perspectives whereby occupation in all its painful details like the checkpoints, Apaches and street demonstrations turn into a part of their daily adaptation to others’ intervention to spoil their life. Hanniyeh’s patterns have a political platform and great thoughts though they do not wish to change the world as they are deeply preoccupied with their day-to-day issues and protecting their little dreams similar to returning home safely, passing through a checkpoint without losses or watching the Apache hovering over looking for its preys….. Sometimes, the narrator of Hanniyeh’s stories sounds to be a smart outsider and far removed from events fostering others’ destinies and their safe passing ; he stands as a describer more than a partner in the tale, which is very much closer to the oriental text methods in the tale or the “Moqamas” (telltale song). He does not seem to be able to change the reality or the destinies of those who move about in the tale despite all his attempts which sound as partnership with the reader more than an actual presence in the text to adjust the courses of the tales though he uses “data” and knowledge foreign to the place; a knowledge which attributes to himself rather than his patterns or characters, and attempts together with recipient to transform them into margins, descriptions or clarification to offer assistance to those who live inside the text.
In his “ Ordinary Day”, he mixes between the simplicity of people’s concern with death and the Apache aircraft in cross line with the Red Indian massacres in America! As an example one could choose his story called “ The Magic of Love ” which draws the attention as providing an evident pattern of Hanniyeh’s making.
“I got fed up with writing “militant” stories ; I want a story with no jails, no militants, no occupation and no martyrs….I want to embody long nights where lovers wait for their loved ones’ letters rather than waiting the knocks of occupation troops patrols …I want to portray the moments of real joy …I want to write an ordinary love story..a very ordinary one…. The austere language I used to resort to in my previous stories would disappear … I will be set free from many chains of content and language…” Hanniyeh’s attempt to rebel against war as a prevalent and current text filling the place all over, his rebellion against his writing and his personal creative history is similar to turning around a violent reality and producing a desirable ordinariness ; such ordinariness is what happens to others outside this war and outside the rhetorical fences of the place ; a thing which Mahmoud Darwish tries to do in his book “ The Memory of Oblivion” when he tried to resist the invasion , the siege of Beirut, the Israeli air force, the others’ death and the war’s fluency by attempting to restore an ordinary day starting with making the very special coffee, ignoring the war which continues its madness at the edge of the window and going to the rhetoric of a lost personality. In Darwish’s book, it was noticeable that the dead were those who had special names while the alive were roaming in the text using symbols and vague signals similar to masks protecting the faces of their wearers. Hanniyeh, however, is confronted with the rebellion of his two heroes against him when they decided without consulting him to join the demonstration which will end with their killing at the hands of the Israeli troops. “No doubt”, they preferred their real place to that proposed by the writer and his desire to get out of the “place’s ordinariness” towards borrowing a lost “ordinariness” manufactured with extreme diligence and awareness inside this “war”. Numerous small wars spread out like islands in an overwhelming ocean : a war of the writer with his writing past and his attempt to change his writing and a war of the writer with his writing habits of isolating himself from what is happening outside his idea. He did not listen to the morning news bulletin as an unintentional trick to turn around the war which would appear upon leaving home to his workplace in the form of a demonstration, university closure, a settlement and soldiers ……..He would watch the demonstration in the city to the end and the two heroes he “created” would be shot dead…..There is no story telling here ; war is the real story told and the key narrator in the scene. When the place is filled with the other’s version of the story which is occupation, the text will directly go to protecting its own version. The House of Fire “ The First Place – The First Poem” By: Ali Al-Khalili The autobiography in the House of Fire goes far beyond the personal autobiography of Ali Al-Khalili, the writer, to turn into a vivid biography of Nablus, the city, and the dramatic changes which happened between 1943-1962 covering twenty years which were probably the richest and most confusing in contemporary Palestinian history involving a long Palestinian journey through the last century. The strength of the autobiography lies in the writer’s ability to simulate the daily life of Nablus, follow people’s movement in and about their special place, particularly the artisans’ group to whom his family belonged by reason of his father’s profession as a baker who makes muffins in a conservative environment within the wall of the old city,the “Kasbah”. The “tale” moves forward through three main terminals: the Bakery, the Sophists’ Corner and Al-Mograbi’s Library while the narrator watches the whole city through a child’s eye,“the baker’s boy” who wanders in the city carrying the muffins’ board moving between houses, people and narrow alleys like a candid camera. The boy roams in the Kasbah carrying his muffins from Tuqan’s house, the Artisans’ Steps, poor and wealthy homes thoroughly monitoring the architectural beauty in Palestine, the class differences between the different social strata, and observing the introduction into the popular beliefs not as a parallel or isolated margin but as a basic part in the text’s structure. There is a robust borrowing from the place’s assets and loads in the biography, as well as subtle recollections of life terminals in the Kasbah of those years: the Women’s Bath, the Men’s Bath,building tools for daily use, life in the bakery’s “Hole”, Popular Artisans’ Quarters, Al-Mograbi’s Library, the Sophists’ Corner, their tales and celebrations, Ramadan, the Soap Factories, the School, the refugees’ arrival from town’s rims, reflections of the Palestinian Al-Nakba on the socio-economic structure and the political changes that rocked the sky of Palestine. All this crowded in a noticeable manner where the Dervishes gather at night to commemorate the Prophet’s Birthday at a time close to the arrival of the existentialist thoughts, the Arab poem’s questions as regards the shadows of the Nasheeds and Tawasheeh (chants and Andalusian type of songs ) up to the opening of Nablus public library which resembled a sudden window opened onto an other planet while the boy wanders watching with fascination and surrounded by people’s professions, their weariness and sweeping desire for writing. Ali Al-Khalili could in his House of Fire visit a zone almost forgotten in the Palestinian writing through offering such an early youth biography without losing the dramatic thread which emanates from cruel life conditions, and following up on the family’s traces back to the turn of the century, the Ottoman wars, execution platforms and the memories of those convicted. Life sound really pulsating in the House of Fire as introduced by Ali Al-Khalili in a most honest aesthetical narrative with a huge load of knowledge. The book : House of Fire Author:
Memoirs of a Chicken Dr. Ishaq Mousa Al- Husseini Dar Al-Ma’aref – Cairo -1943 The novel draws its importance and worthiness to be revisited from the fact that it was written and published as part “IQRA’ ”, the widest read and distributed series in the Arab world in 1943 which was the summit year in the 2nd world war and the peak of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Though classified as symbolic literature, the novel talks about the land and people of Palestine. Therefore in the introduction he wrote to the novel, Taha Hussein, the Dean of Arab Literature, called that chicken Palestinian chicken. Symbolic writers usually claim that they translate to us animals tongue. In his introduction to the reader,Husseini said: “ In fact, I translate to you what I have been inspired by them “. As a distinguished reader (critic ), Taha Hussein replied saying: “ I wonder who translated who!! Did Ishaq Husseini translate the chicken or did the chicken translate Husseini?” . Taha Hussein has had replied before that in this kind of literature,we get animals to express “ what we can not express when we portray our lives and describe our defects and their medications”. Did the chicken study sociology and give lectures ( as seen by Taha Hussein)? Did it study political affairs and offered solutions ( as seen by some of his Palestinian contemporaries?”. If the question is still raised up to date, we would say that through the chicken, Dr. Ishaq Al-Husseini was studying the issues of political sociology, specially that a new discipline called Political Sociology had started to be studied in France in the sixties of the twentieth century – as Ibrahim Abrash said in his book called “Political Sociology”.pp11 In pp 11, the reader would think that starts the journey socially, the immigration of the peasants to the city, in particular. Quoting his chicken, he would say “ I used to see the field of life very wide when I was in my old house ; the air was free but I was suffering from hardship and lack of food”.When the writer portrays the cruelty of her ex-house wife and how she uprooted her from her house(pp12), the political features emerge, and the reader would imagine that the chicken was a Jew whom the Zionist movement displaced her from Europe to Palestine where she would be fed with excessive generosity (13). Soon the writer would lead the reader once again to the sociology zone where he would deal with the advantages of the peasant’s life in the city, polygamy, praising men’s predominance over women,and call for accepting the status quo when he said (pp17) in the chicken’s tongue: “ Let’s take life as it is if we want to enjoy peace of mind “. A few pages later , politics looks over revealing its sharp teeth. As soon as chickens celebrate ( in a gesture perhaps to emancipation from Turkish colonialism), yet an other fearful enemy lands, not knowing where it came from. Most probably, the writer there was portraying the Arab rulers in general and Sheriff Hussein in particular as the cock who left his chickens confronting that enemy without leaving for them any tools with which to defend themselves. In page 45, the writer tackled the differences between the various groups emphasizing their seriousness,and how necessary it was for the vanguards to attempt to mend the crack that befell the national unity. The wise chicken sees the setting of a good example as the optimal means and solution for the predicament. Said she: “ If you want to spread virtue and suppress vice, let that be exemplified in emergence before other creatures as virtuous” (pp48). The writer occasionally uses direct political terminology. On the tongue of the rational chicken addressing other chickens, he says: “ While we now face the threat of invasion and aggression, if you return to your old disagreements and feuds, the enemy would crack down on us mercilessly and ruthlessly, but if you cling to the rope of love and concurrence, you would then repulse the early signs of decadence”(pp59). On the tongue of his chicken, the writer rejects out of hand the saying that pain, not love, is which unites the hearts (pp61). The writer points to the fierce resistance which the exhausted chicken showed in the face of the coming stranger when she felt the threat against her little chicks. Husseini’s moderate chicken, however, resorts to making peace with the coming stranger who arrived from other conflict zones ( he perhaps meant the Jews) and sympathizes with her suffering in her old house there where “material cruelty never subsides or shows mercy”(pp74).The “ moderate” chicken could “normalize” relations between the coming stranger and the “hennery’s” residents. The writer returns to general human issues as he indicates to the total similarity and equality between all “the chickens” in their first days, but disparity would later arise on the bases of color, race or power.The moderate chicken then attempts to reconcile the feuding groups but to no avail. When they get starved, she advises them to travel abroad to the vast land of God so as not to quarrel with the well off, as if Husseini (himself a Jerusalemite)hints to the immigration of Palestinians from Jerusalem to the Americas (North and South Americas). When corruption appears in society, Husseini, viewing in the eyes of his chicken, sees that “ the new generation will follow suit of the older generation, and will in fact outdo it in its wrong doings”.(pp100) The sweeping Jewish immigration then comes in page 139 when the “hennery’s” residents were surprised with the foreign creatures occupying the place. One of the occupiers attempted to re-assure the “hennery’s’ residents by saying : “ we are creatures like you ; we were carried to this shelter”. The writer hints to the conflict between the Zionist organizations who unite only against the “hennery’s” owners. The strangers trespass the line when they chose the best part of the shelter and took it away. In fact, their superior insulted the shelter’s leader when he wondered:” does the like of you has any principles to start from?” (pp143) When the chickens’ leader “could take no more”, he almost attacked the strangers’ superior. At this moment, the moderate chicken circles the moderate’s neck with her arm to contain her and made her give up. The leader told the moderate chicken: “we have to choose between two things : either we relinquish our shelter or cling to it and drive the strangers out of it ”(pp151).The moderate chicken,however, refuses to use force and suggests instead to wage a propaganda war only to preach to all creatures to comply to the legal right alone”. (pp153) Thus, the chickens and their leader were displaced. As the novel was written five years before Al-Nakba, we could see that it was predictive of the upcoming events reminding us of Ibrahim Tuqan’s poem in which he criticized the Palestinian performance and expected that events would lead to immigration and to the great tragedy. Therefore, he wrote a poem in the same year the novel was written saying: Oh people! Your enemy is not one who could be soft or merciful Oh people! Evacuation is the only choice before you, so pack up. Acre and the Kings Ahmad Rafiq Awad – Beit Al-Maqdes for Publishing and Distribution Ramalla- 2004 Acre and the Kings is the sixth and most important novel written by Ahmad Rafiq Awad, and is his second historical novel preceded by his “Al-Qormoty” in its first edition 2001 and its second edition 2003. Though Al-Qormoty was a good novel which won the Jordanian state prize, I have chosen his Acre and the Kings because it tackles Palestinian events, studies a period full of contradictions and casts light on the defeat of the so-called “victorious leader” to touch upon the early signs and introductions to the defeat. The novel also dives deep into people’s skin at war times, and makes indirect projections on the Arab position in general and the Palestinian situation in particular. The writer divided his novel into nine chapters: Bin Jubair, Qaraqosh, Bin Shaddad, Juana, Seif Eddin Ali Bin Ahmad Al-Mashtoub, Omer Al-Zain, Rashid Bin Sinan, King Richard and the renews of the Rev. Judge. The chapters proceed and correlate with each other not only because of the single period in which events happened but also through the interrelations between its characters. The writer did not assume the position of a narrator except in the three chapters of: Qaraqosh, Seif Eddin and King Richard. In the other six chapters, their characters were made to narrate their events. When he talked on the tongue of one character, the writer would embody its style and vocabulary ; he squeezes the language and employs intricacy in Bin Jubair and the Rev. Judge. The novel gives due rights to characters whether that was in their favor or the opposite. In page 7, the writer emphasizes on the tongue of Bin Jubair (1145-1217) that Imam Ahmad Al-Gazali (died 1111 A.D) had laid the foundations for Ethics in his book “Revival of Religious Sciences” which Bin Jubair was carrying with him on board.It is worthwhile to say that Mohammad Abed Al-Jaberi, an Arab contemporary thinker, re-asserted the same theme in his recent book called “ The Ethical Arab Mind”. In chapter about Qaraqosh, that Roman effeminate figure whose opponents accused of all kinds of vices, and described as silly, Saladin appoints him as governor of Acre. Acreans were told stories about their new governor which made them expect the worse of a white Roman effeminate governor. However, they were surprised with his serenity, certain silence, marvelous calm and his desire to defend the town and renovate its collapsing walls.”(pp49) Any way, despite the legendary image of Saladin as a triumphant leader the besieges Acre fell while besieging its siege. The Crusaders stormed and sacked the city while his camp was only a few miles away. Though historians and writers overlook the Kurdish identity of Saladin and only point to his Islamic belief or even try to characterize him as an Arab, Ahmad Rafiq Awad gives his Kurdish identity its due respect starting from his early upbringing to the Kurdish customs and traditions (pp81).Saladin was not admired by all commanders. In fact, some of them such as the Mashtoub though very respectful of Saladin and extremely obedient to his orders, accused Saladin of reluctance that tempted the crusading French.(pp135) The writer maintains his realistic look towards the values. Though war teaches us of the worst in us, forces us to do the worst that we can and though it is extraordinary, yet forms the criterion of our ordinary life (pp64). The writer highlights an aspect of Saladin’s character which rejects to involve children in acts of war both practically and psychologically. He single for special mention the incident when the French POW’s were brought in, Saladin stopped his little children from killing them because he did not want children to “underestimate blood”; Saladin gave up besieging the Castle of “Izaz” because a child girl of Nuriddin family asked him to do that at the Eid ( a moslem holiday).(pp82) The writer sounds like recalling the memory of Bin Jubair and Juana, wife of Sicily’s king and England’s king’s sister to re-affirm the saying that the Arabs were masters in sciences,farming and industry (pp33 and 102). He also recalls Bin Shaddad (1145-1234) to relate from him (pp74) that “ The people of guarded Palestine are masters of agriculture and plantation, are the most speedy and most able of all peoples to turn the terrains into singing vivid gardens which I had never seen ever since my birth in Mosul , in Baghdad where I studied or in any of the too many civilized center I have ever been to in my life”. He probably preempts the Zionist propaganda that Palestine prior to the Zionist invasion was barren lands and that the Palestinians wee only traveling Bedouins . As for the projections, they resemble to a great extent those of Radwa Ashour in her Granada’s Triad in the sense that they were noticeable and impressive though indirect. Saladin, known for giving priority to negotiations, known for not fighting his enemy unless negotiations were completely exhausted, said as told by Bin Shaddad, the historian (pp146) : “ Those French who wanted land without is owners were self deceived that they were most right and powerful …Dialogue and negotiations can not be conducted with one who does not see you, who does not recognize you or one who does not recognize your right to live”( pp91). The writer holds the same view on the tongue of Bin Ahmad Mashtoub (pp146): “ The French came to settle these lands, not to leave them ; they breed here, here they burry their dead too and they believe that they are the most entitled to these lands’ ownership”. The siege of Acre in 1191 A.D is not quite different from the siege of Beirut in 1982. The former was besieged by “ thirty nine European kings and princes who came to rescue Tomb of Christ ” , while the latter was besieged by an Israeli army made up from immigrants from over thirty nine nations who came to rescue Jesus’ Galilee. As the two sieges were similar, more so were the defenders “sons of the country’s cities like Acre, Saffouria and Al-Zeeb who suffered for long decades from foreign rule and were prepared to offer the last drop of their blood and sweat so that the city would not fall in the hands of the foreigner” (pp152). Bin Shaddad relates of the princes around Saladin during the siege that they were too demanding and very grumbling as some of them wanted a wider sector of feudal land, while other princes challenged others’ claims in their lands and others still wanted to do business with the French”. All that took place with Saladin, the leader, showing “extreme patience and deep composure and met all with his smiling satisfied face and firm heart.” (pp98)…while “ordinary people who you would find in every city were prepared to stand fast for ever as long as that was for the sake of Allah, for the sake of courage, bravery and rejection of surrendering to the foreigner”(pp152). The fall of Beirut does not differ from the fall of Acre eight centuries earlier. The Rev. Judge relates of the Just King, Saladin’s brother and chief of his intelligence, that he said: “Since fighting has stopped and the army would move to Shafa Amre away from Acre, we could start a new war of a different kind” (pp261). What happened in the two Beirut suburbs (Sabra and Shatila ) after a few days of their fall (17.09.1982) was similar to what happened in Acre a few days after its fall (20.08.1191) when the English king arrived at the Ayyadyeh Hill (the suburb where Saladin had his headquarters ) with his soldiers dragging three thousand Moslem POW’s. Under the beating of drums and blowing of horns, “F.” ordered the swords to behead the prisoners. He looked at the blood which covered he Ayyadyeh hill, took a deep breath from Acre’s air and said: “ Now I could say we won victory!!!!!” The novel is a dialogue between two societies ; the dialogue was hot at certain times and lukewarm at others. Al-Mutawakel Taha, an important poet and critic, says about it: “ it is the novel about the clash of civilization between two dissimilar never converging worlds”. I second his saying that “ religion is an other victim of the war launched by the west in the middle ages against our Arab and Moslem world”. It is possible to say that the position of religion at the time does not differ from its position in the wars launched against us by the Zionist movement since the early twentieth century. Wars, as Al-Mutawakel says “ need casus belli …but in the course of time a suitable expedience is sought so as to forget the casus belli. That is all about wars.” The Phoenix By: Abdul Karim Al-Sab’awi 2nd edition –Dar Al-Nawras for Publishing, Gaza-1997 Phoenix is the first novel of Canaan’s Land triad. Its first edition was published by Sabil for Publishing in Melbourne, Australia 1989 and won Jubran’s prize. It was followed by The “ Faithful Mate” published by Dar Al-Nawras in Gaza 1997.Finally, the last in the triad was “The Ghoul” published again by Al-Nawras in Gaza 1999. The triad tells the history of Gaza and all that has to do with it starting with Ahmad Pasha Al-Jazzar’s rule until the failure of the great Palestinian revolt 1939 i.e over a period of three centuries. Most events in the triad are real except for some fictitious names. Events in The Phoenix end in the interception of Napoleon’s raid on Acre and his subsequent defeat 1799. The title borrowed his novel’s title from Champillion’s ( an archeologist accompanying Napoleon’s campaign ) answer when asked about Gaza: “ No earthquake, no epidemic and no flood could kill it. Every time it would come out of dust alive reborn as a phoenix ” (pp194). We may find an interpretation to the reason why the triad had been given this title of Canaan’s Land in what Champillion said translating a Pharaonic- language weed inscription found at Tal-Al-Ojoul south of Gaza. The weed reads: “ Phoenicians masters of trade, the Hexus were shepherds but we, sons of Gaza, were repellants of invaders. A Canaanite could not have told for certain “how many times he used his sickle as a sword or how many times he used his sword as a sickle”(pp231). In his history of Gaza, Al-Sab’awi did not try to draw an all-time bright picture of Gaza and its population. Rather, he drew the truth about Gaza from history adding a little imagination and creativeness.Like the population of other Palestinian cities, or Arab cities indeed or even other cities in the world at large, Gaza included the understanding type, the silly, thieves, the honest ones, the dissolute, the sanctimonious saints, the dirty, the clean, the militants and the agents. It is a city of its age though this implied a judgment and a projection on what Palestine is currently living through. Gazan society is a male –biased society par excellence: a society of polygamy where a girl is destined to marry her cousin “even if he was a heap of bones in a cheap leather basket ” ( pp46) and “ brothers of the neighborhood test their manhood by oppressing their sisters” (pp47). Artist Shahwan recall his father’s saying : “ a woman in her prayers asks Allah to give her only a husband, and if Allah did give her one, she would hen ask her husband to bring her everything she wished”(117). A husband, in his turn, would want children to use as manpower for production(pp129). Al-Sab’awi attempted to describe the economic and artisan life in Gaza (pp16,153). He also attempted to describe Gazan traditions of marriage, banqueting, wedding’s cash gifts (pp50-53) and snoring like the snores of Kabeer Al-Btoush (pp53), of Salem (pp104) and of Abu Ghoash (pp237). Al-Sab’awi would not miss in this respect to point to the Gazan kitchen, typical meals and delicacies (pp152) as well as some habits which are critically highlighted.He reserved four pages (pp105-108) to portray how inhuman slavery is. He talked about corruption among some people including judges. If a ruler was corrupt, the subjects would inevitably become corrupt too. Not every one,however, as there is always that position aberration such as Sheikh Taj-uddin Al-Kharroubi and his followers, Younis and his in-laws and many other ordinary people.Khadra represented a symbol of social decadence because Gazans had allowed Al-Jazzar’s soldiers to rape her and turned into a curse against them (pp71). Khadra would disappear only to turn up again (pp92,171,172).Gazans ask for rain in their prayers but ask Sheikh Hayyar to stop the torrents. The Sheikh, however could not save his grave when it was swept by torrents (pp131). Even when they heard of the advent of the French troops, their judge suggested that the sophists beat their castanets to drive them away in disgrace without the need to fight them. (pp187) Among the wisdoms which Al-Sab’awi put in the mouth of Khadra, the victim: “ the neighborhood’s people have become equal in ungratefulness after they were equal in disgrace and humiliation; there is no place for prestige when every one touches the bottom ”(pp27). Salem, the mean, who decided to succeed his uncle when the latter resigned as sheikh of the neighborhood under occupation, wanted to marry his obstinate cousin, Fatima, a hero’s widow, and sought to control her property, loudly laughed saying :” all birds in one stone”, also died of black death and was buried in a hole where soil and stones were dropped on him. Hasan Al-Salamin, a friend of his, commented (pp221): “ all stones now hit one bird”.On Younis’s tongue (pp186), the writer resembled those who escaped their threatened country as rats which were inevitably doomed. In page 223, the writer drew a picture of Al-Zahhar who earned a fortune selling all the coffins he had in stock that “they did find a coffin for himself when he died, and therefore rapped him up with his dress”. Hboush, who took the profession of reciting religious verses on the dead, was happy of the black death toll And set up a tent at cemetery, whispered his favorite slogan in his wife’s ear “ stick to where you earn your living”. Next day, they found his dead body in the tent. In page 232, we find pictures of a scene never drawn by an artist of Younis, the martyr, riding his horse on his way back from grave to tell his wife: “ Allah offered me the nymphs but I said unto Him : You said in the Divinely Revelation : Do not forget your lot in life. How could I forget Fatima, my lot.? Allah said : Younis ! go bring her”. Sheikh Taj uddin Al-Kharroubi incarnated the political attitudes of the writer, Al-Sab’awi. Though the Sheikh was put in prison by his unjust ruler, nevertheless, he fought by the side of his jailor against the occupiers who set him free to regain his freedom. Having been captured by Napoleon, he told him :“ you set me free from the small prison to the big prison”. “How can a man be free in a slaved country?!”. When Napoleon said that God made him defeat the unjust Turks, Al-Sab’awi on Kharroubi’s tongue said:” That was a fight between two wrongs where the strong wrong vanquished the weak wrong” (229).Answering Napoleon the Sheikh said : “ Some are waiting you to leave so that they can come in …we will fight them like we fought you..” (pp230). Despite the high- pitched rhetoric towards struggle and steadfastness before the occupying forces, despite his ridicule of the misuse of the Gracious verse : “ If they opt for peace, then opt you for peace ” considering that an act of villainy and surrender (pp197), Al-Sab’awi does not call for war or death at all.Said he on the tongue of Apple Neighborhood’s Sheikh (pp157): “ war is a curse, war is hell ; they committed killings and destruction when they entered our villages and we did like them when we entered theirs. He saw that war shows the worst in human beings. Here is the leader of the French revolution,advocate of human rights, give his orders to kill four thousand prisoners upon leaving the walls of Acre (pp204). In his depiction of characters, the writer sounds like saying that virtue is a generic positive value in all walks of life, and vice is a generic negative value in all walks of life too:
The Neighing of Distances By: Laila Al-Atrash – Dar Sharqiyyat for Publishing and Distrution Cairo -1999 This is the fourth of Laila Al-Atrash’s novels preceded by “ Five- Seasons Woman” -1990, “ Sunrising Westwards” -1998 and “Two Nights and a Woman’s Shadow” -1998. I have chosen this novel because apart from its being a romantic novel which depicts the suffering of alienation and the fears of return, it speaks on the tongue of the basic hero in the novel ( that style which Ahlam Mistganmi in her novel of “The Body’s Memory ” was famous for ). The novel also storms two restricted areas for men and prohibited for women, namely politics and sex. In page ten, the novel on the tongue of the narrating hero “ my tale is based on the inevitable success triad of fame,sex and repugnant politics”. Surprisingly enough to re-affirm her excellence, the writer was more direct in the subject of sex than in politics. The narrator says(pp24): “ Men link their predominance over women to their masculine potency, here my down dropping betrays me”. In page 29, he says : “ My sexual impotency attacks me after my virginity. I try positions which I either saw or read in English which I master”. In his novel about his Italian girl friend which he met in London, he says: “ I exercised patience when my erection betrayed me and I handled it with understanding”( pp66). From his adolescence, he recalls his peeping with Hammoud Al-Washili through the partially open doors or cracks not filled ” (pp77)….And our clothes began to get dirty as a result of the heat and elasticity of night liquids ”. The narrator recalls memory of his friend Hammoud whom Sonia favored. In page (79), he said : “My sight stoped at the point of lifting his dress up to where his legs met like some one spreading a ruler before him…I hated what I saw …. Sonia stood between us, and the comparison obsessed me ”. The writer focuses on the hero’s complex of the sexual collapse which he suffered when he was “forced” to accompany. His colleague Hammoud Al-Washili who raped or tried to rape a poor woman sleeping with her kids. It catches one’s attention that she mentioned the story not by hinting but dared to speak directly. On the tongue of the narrating hero she says(pp122): “Does that dissolute know that he usurped my competency when I poured it warm wet to soak my legs” when the woman “ was patiently waiting for her husband only for her disability to be attacked by a stranger while I stood there reluctant and scared with that wet covering my legs” (pp169). Perhaps it was difficult for the writer to relate in a woman’s tongue of men’s erection and relaxation cases. Therefore, she resorted to put the narration at a man’s tongue so to make possible to disclose these matters. This is made most likely for me because they come at the end of the novel, but she would talk in her own tongue when dealing with general women’s issues. For the events of her novel, Laila Al-Atrash invented unreal places perhaps to be able to attribute them to any Arab country except Syria and Egypt which she mentioned by name. The reader may recall Jordan or Palestine as Jadida and Ghabera or perhaps Southern and Northern Yemen and he may think that Beit Janan was Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or even Lybia. The Narrator holds many names ; in addition to the name Saleh, he was “Nimer Al-Yousufi, a commentator at the Arabs’ Voice, and was Muhsin Al-Zain in Damascus and Aleppo. He held several passports : of Ghabera and Jadida and of Beit Janan. He could be every Arab or a Palestinian wandering in the Arab countries owning all that surrounds him or alien to him at the same time. At the end of the novel he says(pp195): “ All airports of alienation are similar ; Ghabera then Beit Janan keeps chasing me and all the cities of coercive travel lose their special beauty and difference”. Laila Al-Atrash then describes the way he was kicked away from the door of the newspaper of which he used to be editor in-chief (pp43), and the president tells him that Al-Zayed wanted to withdraw his citizenship and drive him out of Beit Janan.He kissed the head of the president twice expressing his fear for his children and his wife which made the president allow him to stay only as university teacher (pp62) where students insult him accusing him of being a spy and refuse to attend his lectures (pp141). Saleh finds out that he is without roots in Beit Janan despite his long and strong relationship with the president.Here, he is considered a disobedient fellow who does not honor his hosts,and bites the hand extending to give him a boon (pp182).All that was because he wrote an article in Al-risalah newspaper over which he presides demanding Beit Janan to be rational in the borders issue between Beit Janan where he lives a naturalized citizen and Ghabera where he comes from. Fearing to be sent back to his country Ghabera where the prime minister will be waiting for his abuse. Hammoud Al-Washili, his colleague, who was the cause of his sexual, political and social impotence endures beating and breaking his arm at the hands of “ a tribal grouping and knot that support each other whether fairly or unfairly” (pp187). Saleh wished that he could have that courage of the president’s niece who eloped with her Asian servant to marry him in spite of the power of her tribe’s and state’s men.When still rapped up with plaster, he felt a hidden sympathy linking him to a girl whom he does not know but one who the chasers’ injustice joined them together (pp190). He kept searching for her news. Saleh waited long in his house before the telephone rang and the president’s voice tells him that a presidential decree would be issued soon appointing him as ambassador of Beit Janan to Geneva. Laila al-Atrash does not feel fed up to keep reminding her readers that she did not name her novel “ The neighing of Distances ” out of luxurious fantasy but because the neighing and distances appear in every and each corner of the novel.The horses of distances in page 11 keep neighing, chasing and besieging the narrator who trembles for “the neighing of the distances”. Distances neigh in page 18 with “visions and dreams ”. The memories of two women whom the narrator knew “neigh always alive in the memory’s distances” (pp38). The old unsettled account between the narrator and Hammoud Al-Washili, the hostile friend,“neighs in the duet of distances, exiles and road ramifications “(pp47). In the narrator’s view, the question is also a neighing extending along the distances of days”(pp104) while he feels his mother’s smell neighing through the distances”(pp110). Saleh imagines a woman whose memory neighs throughout the distances”(pp111).Expressing the president’s niece’s attraction towards her Asian servant, the writer says (pp188): “ Distances neigh between the master and his servant with the desire to cut them short (meaning distances)”. In his book called “ the Rebellion of the Female” (pp47), Nazih Abu Nidal, a critic, says: “ The writer here reads the defect of men through the condition of their historical and social formation, not merely because of their being males who oppress women. Oppressed women trespass their themselves towards the future, while the defective men re-read themselves and their memories since the Ghabera so as to get liberated in reality”. A River Bathing in a Lake By: Yahya Yakhlof – Dar Al-Shorouq for Publishing and Distribution Ramallah- 1997 Yahya Yakhlof wrote ten literary works, six of them were novels. I have chosen this novel called A River Bathing in a Lake because it represents a work returning from the Diaspora: The Lybian desert, Algeria, Port Sudan or Tunisia. The writer converses with his concerns and the symbols of life which are created through death to revive home nostalgia while at home “which still needs to be restored”.. If Abu Al-Ala’ Al-Ma’arri was held in a double prison : Blindness and real prison, then it is possible to say that Yakhlof lived in a double exile : his forceful deportation at the hands of the Jews together with his father to what remained of Palestine after Al-Nakba, and the 1967 defeat when they again forced him to leave to the other bank of River Jordan. He left his youth “ at the Masyoun hill in Ramallah ” without accompanying him to the land of alienation and exile. (pp7). Since then, rarely was he caught red handed with “joy” (pp44).If he ever smiled, then it was against his wish and in spite of him (pp56). In exile he was addict to the absence of face which longed for (pp13). He spent a log time of his life waiting (pp25) for arrival of that person who is similar to Hero Aundo,the Japanese soldier who kept believing for long years that his leadership’s declaration of surrender and the end of the 1st War was only a trick made by enemies to control more land and military positions. Which declaration did Yakhlof mean ? Was it UN declaration (No. 62 issued on 16.11.1948) ending the 1st Arab –Israeli war, which provided for “establishing a permanent truce throughout Palestine” and drew its lines later be called the Green line or 1967 borders? Or did he mean the declaration of the “Oslo Accords” which provided for shifting, through direct negotiations, to permanent peace in Palestine ?. After eight years in hiding, Aundo “wished that those in the leadership had sent him new of the battle’s events ” (pp20). After eight years,the peers of the sheikh who hosted Yakhlof in his house in Gaza had started resistance against the renewed Israeli invasion. It is probable that Aundo realized that his leadership surrendered and that the war had ended but he refused to recognize that because by then, he would turn into “a man without cause” (pp37). Yakhlof arrived in his home, the West Bank, where “tourist groups, occupation soldiers, dirty settlers and street venders ” were the scene of the day( pp37).He arrived in home of Gaza where “ service taxis, traffic police, flying flags, wall graffito and slogans : Fateh –Hamas –the Red Eagle , dusty side walks, piles of garbage and papers flying in the air. Home sweet home, of flesh and blood but one which is deeply wounded ….”(pp6). Though he returned, he stood there lost in his home streets feeling alienated and having a desire to cry (pp26).Said he in page 46 “What liberty do we have in this siege”. When he arrived in his home Samakh, Yakhlof wondered “ Is it really Samakh ? Was this what I had long waited for and expected to meet? The place did not look familiar to me ” (pp99).This is exactly similar to what Edward Said said when he visited Jerusalem after long absence. On the shore of his lake in which the river bathed, Yakhlof said (pp116): “ I felt like a sailor who left his boat, stick his face against the window pane and announced that he was defeated”. Writing about his return, Yakhlof recalls “Aundo’s” return (pp48) who belonged to the Hot war era, a time different from ours ….found himself a stranger at home.. Psych-therapists were at loss persuading him to adapt to the new reality …It was expected (pp52) that an UN organization for social development nominates him for a course held in the Palestinian self-rule territories to enable him to adjust and integrate”. At the end of his trip to Samakh, Aundo entered a cave and Yakhlof tries to follow suit (pp142) but collided with the cave’s gate and cut his forehead. While writing , Yakhlof also recalls the “Onion Basement” (pp40) which was frequented by those “ whose feelings were fossilized, their hearts hardened and their sense of sadness or compassion lost. …They did not eat onion but only peeled it by knives so that their eyes may emit tears…And though those tears were artificial, they made them feel like humans ” (pp40) Although all the members of the narrator’s family are still living in exiles, he decided to defeat the exile, and made is best efforts so as not to feel it (pp21).He decided to return even if he could not do anything here ; at least he would die like his uncle. As his mother once said : “a deer would feel its approaching death, and therefore goes to the place it loves to die that beautiful death away from people’s eyes, so that nobody would see it dying”(pp22). On the way to the lake where the river bathed, they were three : an expatriate holding US passport coming back in a home visit, a PLO top staff returning home under Oslo Accord and woman citizen who stayed at home under occupation (pp45). Perhaps there was a kind of projection when the writer made the American drive while the Returnee sat beside and the woman in the back seat, specially that (in page 57) he sat in the back seat when he disagreed with the American leaving the seat beside the driver for Majd, the woman. Perhaps that was not done on purpose!! The incident tempted me that Akram’s American citizenship was made intentionally by the writer. In page 94, on Majd’s tongue, the writer told a Jew who refused to let them sleep over the night in Samakh that “ Akram, his friend, holds a US passport and has the right to move and reside in Israel”. A Jewish photographer then told them that the Jewish policeman at the hospital’s gate had said :“ Jews could enter but the Arabs no and Mr. Akram alone could go in because he carried a US passport”. Yakhlof returned under Oslo accords but would it be possible to normalize and co-exist with Jews?. Three Palestinians met. There was majd who lived under occupation and who was skeptic of that eventuality. There was Akram ( influenced perhaps by the American culture) who was almost certain of that possibility and who took come over despite all difficulties to meet Bertha Aharon, the Lido dancer, Faris Al-Faris’s lover , symbol of co-existence and image of the possible future (pp122) Together with, he would issue a call for peace.The returnee kept silent and had illusions that he could retrieve his uncle’s dead body from the morgue’s frig to burry him in the land he loved and could perhaps burry with him his revenge. How did things go? Bertha (symbol of co-existence) who, before Israel was established, was a tall pretty woman whom Yafa’s effendies and Tel Aviv’s Khawajas’ (Arabs and Jews) courted was found to be an old woman who “could not hear or speak in addition to her blurred vision” (pp125). Bertha who later joined Faris Al-Faris in his exile and lived with him under a tent for a while was seen receiving the golden ring (the souvenir of co-existence) from Akram,Faris’s nephew to put it away without a word. There was no dialogue of any sort but only disappointment (pp126). Israel takes advantage of its fragile security to use excessive force and poison minds with rumors and myths. As soon as it discovered a small alligator of a kids’ toy’s size, it moved its troops and armored vehicles, spread in its media that the emergence of the alligator on its land was a geological phenomenon connected with an earthquake at Aqaba bay which made River Jordan change its course that, instead of flowing from north to south, the river flew from south to north,i.e stemming from the Dead Sea and flowing into the north Lake and Lebanese mountains “ (pp65). Panic tainted all its decisions, It prevented everyone (including American Akram ) from seeing Yakhlof’s uncle, the martyr kept in the hospital’s frig. He could not retrieve his uncle’s dead body to burry him where he wanted. Akram too could not return his uncle’s ring in the way he wished. The result was that even the American who came over from the farthest place on earth in quest of co-existence had ended up.at the novel’s end (pp144) crying in the Israeli soldier’s face : “ The bomb is inside my chest … deep in me …watch out ! it might explode at any time”. Memory Made NakedBy As’ad Al-As’ad, Bait Al-Maqdes for Publishing and Distribution- Ramallah “Zaid”, hero of “As’ad Al-As’ad’s” novel, does not feature the characteristics of the common or agreed –upon hero prevalent in the Palestinian creative works although the events through which he moves about suggests the notion of “ heroism “ and tempts one to lean on ready- made references which are within the reach of both the writer and the reader together. “Zaid” could almost be a silent witness to a perfect and overwhelming context penetrating Palestinian daily life through out the long years of occupation to the West Bank, particularly “Ramallah”. The venue, Ramallah,is clear and friendly in “Memory Made Naked”,which constitutes an advanced social proposal in Palestine, being an open city capable of accepting a varying social patterns and of arranging them in a away enabling them to breath. One could also notice here a flashy hint to open humanistic relationship drawing on the techniques of political action in Palestine, its plurality and variety of its spectrum from Marxism to Fundamentalism. The writer chose prison as a starting signal for his novel ; the political arrest which draws on references such as “steadfastness”, “solidity” and “purity” in the cause of confronting occupation, its power and resourcefulness. However, it takes a direct turn away from the main open and well-lit direction to move towards dark shadow areas of changing features, not roles, when he uncovers the scene of a “collaborator’s” death in prison, whom the detainees called “ little birds”. The killing was very a cruel action preceded by a trial and confession by the “little bird” ; a trial which justice surrounded with questions, and a confession resulting from trying torturing practiced by the prisoners themselves on another prisoner. The cruelty of occupation and its forcefulness and shrewdness was too perfectly reflected on those detainees to the point that they granted themselves exclusive rights to try a comrade, torture him, sentence him to death and execute the verdict within an accurate, perfect and decisive system of task distribution. “Zaid”, the novel’s hero and silent observer loaded with his own obsessions and haunted with a delicate thread of guilt because he was the reason behind his comrade’s, Salim, arrest and sentence to 15 -year imprisonment ….would wish at the first moment that the killed “little bird” be that whom he trapped but, a little later,he would back down while listening to the interrogation technique used on “collaborators”,which differed a great deal from that used by occupation. Silence is a way to cover up reluctance which controls “Zaid” and chases him even in his little personal choices, his relationship with “Rabab”, his family, his private business and his desires which transformed the shop into a bookstore. The novel is a narrative of that typical classical journey of a young Palestinian who infiltrates the borders at the beginning of occupation crossing River Jordan to Jericho, Ramallah, prison , returning to political action and then to deportation as we stop while the soldiers move him from the helicopter northwards. The writer makes an ambitious attempt to monitor the occupation times in a Palestinian city, in accelerated transformation whose hero is an educated political activist who keeps raising his questions about a changing reality. There is no desire or capacity for giving answers here ; this is perhaps why the novel returned to the first point in the last scene when he found himself out of place but without a clear possibility for making any progress which looks as if the circle was closed once again. The author: * As’ad Al-As’ad The Book: *Memory Made Naked – A Novel *1st edition 2003 *Bait Al-Maqdes for Publishing and Distribution- Ramallah *180 medium -size pages Directory: culture culture -> Selected Readings on Race culture -> Culture and cultural analysis as experimental systems culture -> A cross-cultural comparison of perceptions and uses of mobile telephony culture -> 11 com ith/16/11. Com/4 Paris, 29 April 2016 Original: English culture -> A proposal for the unesco – digiarts Master Class Modules on Computer Graphics and Animation culture -> 11 com ith/16/11. Com/10. b Paris, 31 October 2016 Original: English culture -> Members H. E. Dr M. Sayed Makhdoum Raheen, Minister of Information and Culture of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan culture -> 9 com ith/14 com/Decisions Paris, 28 November 2014 Original: English/French culture -> United nations educational, scientific and cultural organization organisation des nations unies pour L culture -> Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage intergovernmental committee for the Download 138.52 Kb. Share with your friends:
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