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Countries / Middle East

Palestine

works
11
8 books · 3 films
period covered
1927–1996
language of writing
Arabic

In 1974, a novelist invented a word to designate his situation. Emile Habibi, a Palestinian who stayed in Israel after 1948 and long a communist member of the Knesset, published the story of a man who is neither optimist nor pessimist but both at once, and whom he named with an untranslatable portmanteau word, the pessoptimist. The character crosses the decades apologising for existing, communicates with an extraterrestrial and ends up sitting on a stake. It is one of the funniest books written about a situation that is not.

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That lexical invention tells of a particular literary condition. Palestinian literature is written from at least four places that do not easily communicate: inside Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza, in the camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and in a worldwide diaspora. The authors do not have the same passports, nor the same censorships, nor the same readers, and some write in Hebrew as much as in Arabic. A national literature is therefore practised without a state and without a central institution, without an academy, without a national prize and without a common textbook.

The form that results is the inventory. Villages, keys, title deeds, family names are enumerated, as though naming were enough to hold on. Ghassan Kanafani, novelist and spokesman, published in 1963 the narrative of three men who try to cross into Kuwait hidden in a lorry's water tank, and he was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1972, at thirty-six. Mahmoud Darwish made poetry into a form of land registry. Elia Suleiman filmed his own family in 1996 in fixed, silent shots in which nothing happens.

What awaits the reader is a humour of unexpected dryness, and an attention to objects rather than to speeches. The film that opens this page is called "Chronicle of a Disappearance", and its maker plays in it a filmmaker who watches his own people almost without a word.

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A way to begin

Chronicle of a Disappearance

Elia Suleiman · 1996

Chronicle of a Disappearance: the life of Palestinians in Israel seen by a silent witness; best first film prize at Venice in 1996.

The entry See the author

A filmmaker, played by Elia Suleiman himself, comes home after twelve years in New York. In Nazareth he watches, almost without a word, his parents, a souvenir seller waiting for tourists and filling bottles of holy water from the tap, fishermen gossiping. In Jerusalem the tone turns political: a young Arab woman searches in vain for a place to live.

Timeline

  1. 1957–1963First textsWasif al-Shaikh films; Kanafani writes Men in the Sun.
  2. 1974–1986Habibi and DarwishThe Pessoptimist, then Fewer Roses. Irony and verse.
  3. 1982–1996Palestinian cinemaKassem Hawal adapts Kanafani; Elia Suleiman invents his own form.

Reading keys

1Names and kinship
  • The name reads as a genealogy, and the surname very often indicates the village or the town of origin, including when that place no longer exists. That name is an address and a claim.
  • The hamula, an extended kinship group, organises solidarities and marriages, including in the camps.
  • Christian first names, about one Palestinian in fifty today against far more in 1948, signal an old community present in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Nazareth.
  • The kunya, "father of" followed by the name of the eldest child, is used currently.
2What is said and unsaid
  • The vocabulary itself is disputed: the events of 1948 are called Nakba, "catastrophe", by Palestinians and War of Independence by Israelis, and the choice of words situates a text.
  • Palestinians who are citizens of Israel write under a double constraint, that of the state where they live and that of their own society.
  • The internal political divisions and the relations between the successive authorities are a subject little approached head-on.
  • Family honour, notably that of women, is a narrative device that contemporary women writers question head-on.
3Religion and the unseen
  • Sunni Islam is in the majority, with an old Christian minority of several rites and a Druze presence in the north.
  • Jerusalem is a holy place for the three monotheisms, and mentioning it in a text commits a register.
  • The maqam, tombs of local saints visited by Muslims and Christians, were recorded as early as 1927 by a Palestinian physician.
  • The jinn and the rites of protection belong to the common stock, with a vocabulary shared throughout the Levant.
4Colours, rites, mourning, feasts
  • Muslim mourning is brief, with burial on the same day, three days of condolences received separately by men and women.
  • The black and white chequered keffiyeh is a Palestinian identity marker, the red and white one being rather Jordanian. The nuance is legible.
  • Palestinian embroidery, whose patterns vary by village, makes it possible to identify the origin of a dress. A dress is a document.
  • Mansaf, olive oil and the autumn harvest organise the calendar and the family scenes.
5Shared references
  • The tales collected in 1907 from the three communities in the hills between Bethel and Hebron form the old documented corpus, with its biblical narratives reinvested by daily life.
  • The shrines and beliefs recorded in 1927 by Tawfiq Canaan, a Palestinian physician, constitute the reference ethnography, made from within.
  • The house key, the name of the village and the title deed are symbolic objects that every text assumes to be legible.
  • The olive tree and its harvest are a constant reference, economic as much as poetic.
6Misreadings to avoid
  • Palestinian literature cannot be reduced to protest: irony, the absurd and the burlesque are major registers of it, as in Habibi and Suleiman.
  • Palestinians are not all Muslims, and the Christian minority played a disproportionate role in intellectual life.
  • The word used to designate 1948 varies according to the author and indicates a position: the file uses both and does not decide between them.
  • The keffiyeh, which has become a fashion accessory, is in the works a dated and socially situated object.

Tales and mythologies 1

Available in English 4

The books from this country that can be read in English, in the original or in translation.

  • NovelMen in the Sunرجال في الشمسGhassan Kanafani · 1963Fifteen years after 1948, Palestinian refugees look for work in the oil countries, at the mercy of smugglers.Literature
  • NovelThe Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimistالوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائلEmile Habibi · 1974Around one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians remained in Israel after 1948, under military administration until 1966: the novel tells of their lives in a satirical mode.Literature
  • NovelWild ThornsالصبارSahar Khalifeh · 1976An activist back in Nablus faces his cousin, a worker in Israel, in the occupied West Bank.Literature
  • PoetryFewer Rosesورد أقلMahmoud Darwish · 1986When the PLO leaves Lebanon in 1982, Palestinian exile begins again, and the poet writes from Tunis, Nicosia and Paris.Literature

A selection to begin with 9 / 11

Show only

  • Poetryديوان إبراهيمIbrahim Tuqan · 1955not translated into EnglishThe patriotic and love poems of a pioneer of Palestinian national poetry, gathered after his death.LiteraturePublic domain
  • Poetryمواكب الشمسSamih al-Qasim · 1958not translated into EnglishFirst verses of an Arab poet who stayed in Galilee after 1948, written under military rule, and already turned towards the call rather than towards mourning.Literature
  • NovelMen in the Sunرجال في الشمسGhassan Kanafani · 1963Fifteen years after 1948, Palestinian refugees look for work in the oil countries, at the mercy of smugglers.Literature
  • Poetryأشد على أياديكمTawfiq Zayyad · 1966not translated into EnglishThe resistance poems of a poet from Nazareth, several of which became popular songs.Literature
  • NovelThe Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimistالوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائلEmile Habibi · 1974Around one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians remained in Israel after 1948, under military administration until 1966: the novel tells of their lives in a satirical mode.Literature
  • NovelWild ThornsالصبارSahar Khalifeh · 1976An activist back in Nablus faces his cousin, a worker in Israel, in the occupied West Bank.Literature
  • CinemaReturn to Haifaعائد إلى حيفاKassem Hawal · 1982The only fiction film made by the cinema of the Palestinian resistance in exile, after a short story by Ghassan Kanafani.Cinema
  • PoetryFewer Rosesورد أقلMahmoud Darwish · 1986When the PLO leaves Lebanon in 1982, Palestinian exile begins again, and the poet writes from Tunis, Nicosia and Paris.Literature
  • Feature filmWedding in Galileeعرس الجليلMichel Khleifi · 1987A village wedding celebrated under the eye of the Israeli military governor, in Galilee.Cinema

See all 11 works