A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature by David Tresilian Page B
Authors: David Tresilian
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fact that modern Palestinian literature is in the main not politically propagandistic can be surprising to those who do not know it well. While Palestinian literature cannot help but be politically aware, its relation to politics is usually oblique.
Palestinian writers have tended to stand back from what has seemed to be the permanent state of crisis that has enveloped their country since at least the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, mostly choosing to address the human consequences of this situation. They have emphasized the suffering that this crisis has brought to individuals from every walk of life, sometimes employing a blacksense of humour to do so. They have also explored what it might mean to be identified as a ‘Palestinian writer,’ particularly when Palestinians have long been divided between those living ‘within’, whether in the Occupied Territories or in Israel proper, and those living ‘without’, in the Arab countries or further afield. Should Palestinian writers write about Palestine at the expense of everything else, aiming to serve as ‘spokesmen’ for the people from whom they come? Or should they have the same kind of loyalties as any other kind of literary writer, first and foremost to their writing? Questions of this sort are explored in this chapter, which gives an overview of main themes in modern Palestinian literature, including Palestinian historical experience, the fact of dispossession and exile, and the possibility of return.
The declaration of the state of Israel in May 1948 divided the British mandate territory of Palestine into three parts. There was, first of all, the part of it that became Israel, and most of the Palestinian refugees forced out by the violence that accompanied the declaration came from here. An estimated three quarters of a million of them poured into camps in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, or into those parts of the former mandate territory that were ceded either to Jordan or to Egypt, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively. These areas now made up the second and third parts of what had until then been one Arab country. The experience of 1948 and its after-effects, whether in the bitterness of dispossession and exile or in the new problems that arose for the Arab citizens of the new state of Israel, henceforth became leading themes for generations of Palestinian writers. 1
One of the best-known of these is Ghassan Kanafani, a writer, journalist and political activist who was himself caught up in the 1948 exodus from Palestine. Like many others in similar circumstances Kanafani lived an unstable life, living and working by turns in Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon and finally becoming a spokesman for thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the political factions that emerged in the 1960s. He was assassinated in Beirut in 1972. Kanafani’s literary work, collected in various volumes of short stories published in the 1960s and several novels, captures Palestinian life in exile in the decades after 1948, notably in the novellas
Men in the Sun
and
All That’s Left to You
. 2
Men in the Sun
is Kanafani’s best-known work, and it is probably also one of the best-known pieces of modern Palestinian literature. In it, he describes the attempt of four Palestinians to cross the border from Iraq into neighbouring Kuwait in search of work. The latter country, experiencing an economic boom as a result of oil, is in need of cheap labour. However, the Palestinians, being stateless, do not have the necessary entry papers, and they are forced to fall back on one of the human traffickers that ply the desert roads between the two countries. ‘A man can collect money in the twinkling of an eye in Kuwait,’ one of the four assures himself, having first made the long desert crossing from Jordan to Iraq and now waiting to be smuggled across the border into Kuwait. Before he can collect that money, however, he must make the crossing, and as is
Palestinian writers have tended to stand back from what has seemed to be the permanent state of crisis that has enveloped their country since at least the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, mostly choosing to address the human consequences of this situation. They have emphasized the suffering that this crisis has brought to individuals from every walk of life, sometimes employing a blacksense of humour to do so. They have also explored what it might mean to be identified as a ‘Palestinian writer,’ particularly when Palestinians have long been divided between those living ‘within’, whether in the Occupied Territories or in Israel proper, and those living ‘without’, in the Arab countries or further afield. Should Palestinian writers write about Palestine at the expense of everything else, aiming to serve as ‘spokesmen’ for the people from whom they come? Or should they have the same kind of loyalties as any other kind of literary writer, first and foremost to their writing? Questions of this sort are explored in this chapter, which gives an overview of main themes in modern Palestinian literature, including Palestinian historical experience, the fact of dispossession and exile, and the possibility of return.
The declaration of the state of Israel in May 1948 divided the British mandate territory of Palestine into three parts. There was, first of all, the part of it that became Israel, and most of the Palestinian refugees forced out by the violence that accompanied the declaration came from here. An estimated three quarters of a million of them poured into camps in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, or into those parts of the former mandate territory that were ceded either to Jordan or to Egypt, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively. These areas now made up the second and third parts of what had until then been one Arab country. The experience of 1948 and its after-effects, whether in the bitterness of dispossession and exile or in the new problems that arose for the Arab citizens of the new state of Israel, henceforth became leading themes for generations of Palestinian writers. 1
One of the best-known of these is Ghassan Kanafani, a writer, journalist and political activist who was himself caught up in the 1948 exodus from Palestine. Like many others in similar circumstances Kanafani lived an unstable life, living and working by turns in Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon and finally becoming a spokesman for thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the political factions that emerged in the 1960s. He was assassinated in Beirut in 1972. Kanafani’s literary work, collected in various volumes of short stories published in the 1960s and several novels, captures Palestinian life in exile in the decades after 1948, notably in the novellas
Men in the Sun
and
All That’s Left to You
. 2
Men in the Sun
is Kanafani’s best-known work, and it is probably also one of the best-known pieces of modern Palestinian literature. In it, he describes the attempt of four Palestinians to cross the border from Iraq into neighbouring Kuwait in search of work. The latter country, experiencing an economic boom as a result of oil, is in need of cheap labour. However, the Palestinians, being stateless, do not have the necessary entry papers, and they are forced to fall back on one of the human traffickers that ply the desert roads between the two countries. ‘A man can collect money in the twinkling of an eye in Kuwait,’ one of the four assures himself, having first made the long desert crossing from Jordan to Iraq and now waiting to be smuggled across the border into Kuwait. Before he can collect that money, however, he must make the crossing, and as is
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