A Map of Absence Read online

  Outside Palestine, other novelists of this time, such as Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, identified Palestinians as people in need of cultural reformation and refinement. Culture and art were seen as essential to national and universal healing, and to human development. This strand of thought was common among the Arab inheritors of the nineteenth-century An-Nahda, or ‘renaissance’, such as Constantine Zurayq, who popularised the term ‘Nakba’ in reference to Palestine and investigated its roots.

  Inside Palestine, the rise of writers such as Emile Habibi, Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qassim, Fadwa Tuqan and others from the 1960s onwards spoke directly to Palestinians, with writing that knows of their pains and aspirations. Yet these authors, particularly Mahmoud Darwish, came to universalise Palestine. Their literature reflects the Palestinian sense of displacement and struggle; it counters oppression with beauty and magnanimity, and thus still strikes a chord with those outside the country and the cause. Theirs is a poetry of commemorative healing, as much as it is of resistance and defiance; an outcry for justice and truth in the face of powers that have denied them both.

  Palestinian writers who came of age in the 1960s were to define Palestinian literature, looming large over the literary scene for decades to come. They became significant political and literary figures, through whose writings Palestinian identity is assessed. They came to exemplify a genre in world literature called ‘resistance literature’, as they were seen as significant revolutionary voices standing for the downtrodden, with Palestine serving as a litmus test for international solidarity.

  Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) is particularly important, as his poetic vocation covers nearly six decades of the Palestinian struggle. He became the most eloquent voice of Palestinian refugees, his work anchored in the Palestinian predicament. At the same time, humanism and universalism were a part of his message from the start of the 1960s, when he wrote his stirring poem Record, I am an Arab. Over time Darwish’s poetry evolved away from the directly nationalist, and this in part explains why he was able to find such a broad audience and bring in individuals who had not previously associated with the Palestinian cause. The same can be said for Palestinian poetry more broadly at this time, which, though committed to local justice, also encompassed appreciation of the predicament of peoples all over the world.

  The writings of the Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said also amplified the voice of Palestine on an international stage, particularly from the late 1970s to the end of his life in 2003. A writer with an exceptional command of the English language and the cultures that use it, Said began to educate the West about Palestine, its Nakba of 1948 and the on-going effects of the catastrophe. His work made conspicuous virtues of knowledge and style, but also sincerity of emotion and expression. Said inspired Palestinian writers to be bold in defending Palestine and linking its plight to other struggles, so that the entire world could have a stake in the liberation of Palestine.

  The third generation of writers, writing after the Oslo Accords in 1993, are prepared to challenge elitism as well as questions of national identity. The Accords, ostensibly a whole suite of agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel, perplexed Palestinian writers and the wider community. Although some hailed the agreement as a political breakthrough, many others believed that, rather than pave the way towards an independent Palestinian state, they had effectively created a Palestinian-administered Israeli occupation. Their literature examines in depth the political contradictions of Palestinian life and the state in general. The memoirs of Palestinian writers from this era are riddled with agonising incongruities and dilemmas, deepening their understanding of commitment to Palestine, but increasing their anxiety over its fate. In new ways they revisit the hopes and aspirations of earlier writers.

  Palestinian literature from the 1990s onwards is rich in experimentation and expressionism. It is no longer a literature of direct resistance that uses militant language, even though this continues to be found in the younger generation’s writings. When literature documents, it does so through details; through minutiae, big subjects are examined. This can be found in many Palestinian memoirs and novels, such as those of the prolific writer Ibrahim Nasrallah, of Salman Abu Sitta and Ghada Karmi, all of whom visit a pre-1948 past. Therein, the landscape of Palestine is a ground for dramatic human happenings, stretching back in time; life under the Ottoman Empire or the British Mandate might provide them with useful lenses through which to view the concept of their nation. This narrative comes severely and irreparably to a halt with the 1948 Nakba, leaving a void and silence that continues to haunt Palestinian lives.

  Palestinian writers from this new generation, such as Adania Shibli, explore Palestine philosophically. Abstract questions of time and space are examined in relation to the realities of the Palestinian past and present. Shibli chronicles the long Palestinian journey of creative writing as one that continues to inspire, even when the Palestinian struggle seems to freeze in time. Her writing is particularly marked with the absence of subjective presence, so that writing itself is an ambiguous activity, loaded with collective angst and personal loss. It occupies a realm of irreconcilable inner forces, fed by conflict and tension, inflicted with anxiety and unrealisable nostalgia. Yet Shibli extols writing in such conditions as an act of continuity. Reflecting on Azzam’s aforementioned Man and His Alarm Clock, Shibli writes:

  The text, in turn, had engraved in my soul a deep sense of yearning for all that was – including the tragic – normal and banal, to a degree that I could no longer accept the marginalised, minor life to which we’ve been exiled since 1948, during which our existence turned into a ‘problem’.

  * * *

  There is hardly any writing tradition in the modern world that follows one linear path. Palestinian writing offers no exception to this. Yet the Nakba cannot cease to be a seminal event in Palestinian lives. While the work in this anthology attempts to reconstruct, describe and reflect on it, it also constantly invents methods of expression and telling. Therefore, while the catastrophe of the Nakba continues, so do the Palestinian writers’ efforts to recover their history and convey its significance. They inhabit their own stories not only as victims of a major historical injustice, but also as agents in the development of Palestine – the idea and the living reality.

  The writing here may focus on a single theme, but the evidence examined and the conclusions drawn reflect a variety of experiences and fluctuating emotions. The reader will discover that Palestinian literature, while connected to common political events and sentiments, can be surprisingly individual, often innovative and keenly mindful of aesthetic and literary developments outside its own territory. Nowhere has the voice of Palestine resonated more powerfully than in the literature of Palestinians.

  IBRAHIM TUQAN

  My Homeland

  My homeland, My homeland

  Majesty and beauty, sublimity and splendour,

  Are in your hills, are in your hills,

  Life and deliverance, pleasure and hope

  Are in your air, are in your air

  When will I see you? When will I see you?

  Secure and prosperous

  Victorious and honoured

  Will I see you in your eminence

  Reaching the stars, reaching the stars?

  My homeland, my homeland

  My homeland, my homeland

  Our youth will not tire, until your independence

  Or they will die, or they will die

  We will drink from the cup of death and never be to our enemies

  Like slaves, like slaves

  We do not want, we do not want

  An eternal humiliation nor a miserable life,

  An eternal humiliation nor a miserable life,

  We do not want, but we will bring back

  Our great glory, our great glory

  My homeland, my homeland

  My homeland, My homeland

  The sword and the pen, not talk nor quarrel,

&nb
sp; Are our symbols, are our symbols

  Our glory and our covenant and a duty to be faithful

  Arouse us, arouse us

  Our glory, Our glory

  Is an honourable cause and a waving banner

  Is an honourable cause and a waving banner

  O, behold you in your eminence

  Victorious over your enemies

  My homeland, My homeland.

  Excerpt from Red Tuesday

  When your ill-fated star rose

  And heads swayed in the nooses,

  Minaret calls and church bells lamented,

  Night was grim, and day was gloomy.

  Storms and emotions began to rage

  And death roamed about, snatching lives way,

  And the eternal spade dug deep into the soil

  To return them to its petrified heart.

  It was a day that looked back upon past ages

  And asked, ‘Has the world seen a day like me?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered another day. ‘I’ll tell you

  All about the iniquitous Inquisition courts.

  I have indeed witnessed strange and odd events.

  But yours are misfortunes and catastrophes,

  The like of which in injustice I have never seen.

  Ask then other days, among which many are abominable.’

  Dragging its heavy fetters, a day responded,

  History being one of its witnesses:

  ‘Look at slaves, white and black,

  Owned by anyone who had the money.

  They were humans bought and sold, but are now free.

  Yet time has gone backwards, as far as I can see …

  And those who forbade the purchase and sale of slaves

  Are now hawking the free.’

  A day wrapped in a dark-coloured robe

  Staggered under the delirium of suffering

  And said, ‘No, yours is a much lesser pain than mine.

  For I lost my young men on the hills of Aley

  And witnessed the Butcher’s deeds, inducing bloody tears.

  Woe to him, how unjust! But …

  I’ve never met as terrible a day as you are.

  Go, then. Perhaps you’re the Day of Resurrection.’

  The Day is considered abominable by all past ages

  And eyes will keep looking at it with dismay.

  How unfair the decisions of the course have been,

  The least of which are proverbial in injustice.

  The homeland is going to perdition, without hope.

  The disease has no medicine but dignified pride

  That renders one immune, and whoever is marked by it

  Will end up dying undefeated.

  Everyone hoped for [the High Commissioner’s] early pardon,

  And we prayed that he could never be distressed.

  If this was the extent of his tenderness and kindness,

  Long live His Majesty and long live His excellency!

  The mail carried details of what had been put in a nutshell.

  Please, stop supplicating and begging.

  The give-and-take of entreaties is tantamount to death.

  Therefore, take the shortest way of life.

  The mail was overloaded with pleading, but nothing changed.

  We humbled ourselves and wrote in various forms.

  Our loss is both in souls and in money,

  And our dignity is – alas – in rage.

  You see what’s happening, yet ask what’s next?

  Deception, like madness, is of many kind.

  A humiliated soul, even if created to be all eyes,

  Will not be able to see – far from it.

  How is it possible for the voice of complaint to be heard,

  And for the tears of mourning to be of any avail?

  The rocks that felt our plea broke up in sympathy.

  Yet, on reaching their hearts, our plea was denied.

  No wonder, for some rocks burst with gushing fountains,

  But their hearts like graves, with no feeling.

  Don’t ever seek favours from someone

  You tried and found to be heartless.

  All translated by Issa J. Boullata

  GHASSAN KANAFANI

  A Present for the Holiday

  I was sleeping very late. There is a Chinese writer whose name is Sun Tsi and who lived hundreds of years before Christ. I was very attracted by him. He relieved my weariness and held my attention. (However, all that is beside the point of what I am going to write about.) He wrote that war is subterfuge and that victory is in anticipating everything and making your enemy expect nothing. He wrote that war is surprise. He wrote that war is an attack on ideals. He wrote …

  But all that is beside the point …

  I was sleeping very late and the telephone rang very early. The voice that came from the other end was completely refreshed and awake, almost joyful and proud. There were no feelings of guilt in its modulations. Half asleep, I said to myself: this is a man who gets up early. Nothing troubles him at night. The night had been rainy, with thunder and strong winds. Do you see what men do in times like this, the men who are marching in the early darkness to build for us an honour unstained by the mud? The night was rainy, and this man, at the other end of the line …

  But all this is also beside the point.

  He said to me: ‘I have an idea. We’ll collect toys for the children and send them to the refugees in Jordan, to the camps. You know, these are holidays now.’

  I was half asleep. The camps. Those stains on the forehead of our weary morning, lacerations brandished like flags of defeat, billowing by chance above the plains of mud and dust and compassion. I had been teaching that day in one of those camps. One of the young students, called Darwish, sold cakes after school was out and I had chased him in between the tents and the mud and the sheets of tin and the puddles in order to get him into the evening class. His hair was short and curly and always wet. He was very bright and he wrote the best creative compositions in the class. If he had found something for himself to eat that day, his genius knew no bounds. It was a big camp. They called it …

  But that too is beside the point.

  The man at the other end of the line said to me: ‘It’s an excellent idea, don’t you think? You’ll help us. We want a news campaign in the papers, you know.’ Even though I was half asleep, just the right phrases leapt to mind: ‘Mr So-and-So spent his New Year holiday collecting toys for the refugees. High society women will distribute them in the camps.’ The camps are muddy, and dresses this season are short and the boots are white. Just yesterday I had torn up a news story and photo: the lovely Miss So-and-So spent the evening in such-and-such a nightclub. The young man sitting with her spilled his drink on her dress and she emptied a bottle on his suit. I said, that must have cost at least a hundred pounds. I said, at that price …

  But all this is beside the point.

  Going on, he said to me: ‘We’ll put them in cardboard boxes and find trucks to bring them free of charge. We’ll distribute them sealed and that way it will be a surprise.’ A surprise. War is surprise too. That’s what the Chinese writer Sun Tsi said five hundred years before Christ. I was half asleep and I couldn’t control this folly. Such accidents occasionally happen to me, especially when I’m tired, and then I can’t believe my eyes. I look at people and ask: are these really our faces? All this mud that June has vomited on to them, how could we have cleaned it off so quickly? Can we really be smiling? Is it true? …

  But this, too, is beside the point.

  As the telephone receiver slipped from my hand, he said: ‘On the morning of the holiday, every child will get a sealed package, with a surprise toy inside it. It will be luck.’ The receiver fell. The pillow carried me back nineteen years.

  It was the year 1949.

  They told us that day: the Red Cross will bring all you children presents for the holiday. I was wearing short pants and a grey cotton shirt and open shoes withou
t socks. The winter was the worst the region had ever seen and when I set out that morning my fingers froze and were covered with something like fine glass. I sat down on the pavement and began to cry. Then a man came by and carried me to a nearby shop where they were lighting a wood fire in some kind of tin container. They brought me close and I stretched my feet towards the flame. Then I went racing to the Red Cross Centre, and stood with the hundreds of children, all of us waiting for our turn.

  The boxes seemed very far away and we were trembling like a field of sugar cane and hopping about in order to keep the blood flowing in our veins. After a million years, my turn came.

  A clean starched nurse gave me a red square box.

  I ran ‘home’ without opening it. Now, nineteen years later, I have completely forgotten what was in that dream box. Except for just one thing: a can of lentil soup.

  I clutched the soup can with my two hands red from the cold and pressed it to my chest in front of ten other children, my brothers and relatives, who looked at it with their twenty wide eyes.

  Probably the box held splendid children’s toys too, but these weren’t to eat and so I didn’t pay any attention to them and they got lost. I kept the can of soup for a week, and every day I gave my mother some of it in a water glass so she could cook it for us.

  I remember nothing except the cold, and the ice that manacled my fingers, and the can of soup.

  The voice of the man who wakes up early was still ringing in my head that tired grey morning when the bells began to clang in a dreadful emptiness. I returned from my trip into the past which continued to throb in my head, and …

  But all of that too is beside the point.

  Translated by Barbara Harlow

  ABDELRAHIM MAHMOUD

  The Martyr

  My soul I shall carry on my palm