'The Great Book Robbery': The Fate of Palestinian Books Left Behind After the 1948 Nakba!

Watched this documentary 'The Great Book Robbery' on the 'Witness' program on ALJAZEERA English this afternoon. Incidentally, it will also be screened at Mosaic Rooms in London on May 15. 'The Great Book Robbery' was produced and directed by Benny Brunner, 2911 Foundation, and Xela Films in association with Aljazeera English. There is currently a copy of this film on YouTube or on Aljazeera. View it by clicking HERE. You can also purchase it HERE.

Very interesting stuff!

Review: 'Time of White Horses' by Ibrahim Nasrallah

Time of White Horses

It's been six years since the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) crowned its first winner, Egyptian writer Bahaa Taher, for his book 'Sunset Oasis'. Managed in association with the Booker Prize Foundation in London this award is a big deal for Arab authors. Not only do those on the shortlist find themselves $10,000 better off (the winner receives an additional $50,000) but the more important gain is the jump in book sales the authors can look forward to enjoying thanks to the exposure their work receives. 

More importantly the IPAF has fulfilled a key promise: to translate quality Arabic literature into other languages. All prize winners and even many on the short and long list have been secured translations with various publishing houses in the America, Asia and Europe. One such translation is of a book by Ibrahim Nasrallah, 'Time of White Horses' which was shortlisted for the IPAF in 2009 and which hit shelves in its English translation last year. 

'Time of White Horses' is the story of Palestine before the establishment of Israel in 1948. The novel, translated by Nancy Roberts, is divided into three books: Book One is Wind, Book Two: Earth & Book Three: Humankind. It has been twenty years in the making and although a work of fiction it is footnoted when certain parts are based on real historic accounts obtained by the author from witnesses who after 1948 had 'been uprooted from their homeland and had gone to live in exile'. Sadly many died never having seen their homeland again.

The novel follows the life of the family of Haj Mahmud and his son Khaled who live in the fictional village of 'Hadiya' -which means Peaceful- first under Ottoman rule and later under the British mandate right up to the 1948 war when the village is wiped out and the land annexed to Israel rendering the villagers homeless and destined to a life spent in refugee camps dreaming of a day that never arrives. Nasrallah himself was born and raised in the Wihdat camp in Jordan.

In Book one we are introduced to Hadiya village, to the mare Hamama and to various village characters as well as to some living in the neighbouring areas. We meet Habbab, a psychopath of sorts who in the early pages seems to disappear (probably with the Turkish army) only to come back wealthier, stronger and meaner still. His main enemy is the village elder, Haj Mahmud himself. Indestructible, he finally meets his match when he marries his third wife Rayhana and his story reads like one from a Thousand and One Nights. We are introduced to al-Barmaki whose story of his son Ghazi's birth is the most comical yet towards the end of the novel proves to be one of the saddest twists of the book.

Book one exhibits a simplicity, a lyricism even, which makes it read like an Arabian nights tale as author reminisces of customs long given-up and of a way of village life that has ceased to exist except in children's fairytales and bedtime stories. As things get more difficult for the villagers of Hadiya under British rule in the next two books so does Ibrahim Nasrallah's style of writing. The novel takes on a dis-organised, crammed even claustrophobic feel and by the end of it as life is slowly squeezed out of Hadiya the reader is truly feeling boxed-in already. The translator's brilliant command of the language creates a real picture of helplessness and despair that manages to jump off the pages of the book and grasp the reader firmly in its hold. A feeling that is very hard -nearly impossible- to shed and further compounded when the reader already knows that there will never be a 'happy' ending to this story.

The story of Hadiya's monastery is a very interesting one and it is one that Nasrallah says is not only true but is the story of his village monastery. In the beginning Ottomans sold off Palestinian lands to the Greeks to sustain war with Turkey's enemies. However, by the 1920s things were tough on everyone and by the time the British Mandate was upon Palestine the Patriarchate was officially bankrupt. The British stepped in forcing the Patriarchate to sell off lands that they owned to the Jews who were returning after World War II to settle in Palestine. What is interesting to know is that in 2005 patriarch Irenaios (140th Patriarche of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem) was deposed in the aftermath of a scandal involving selling of church land in East Jerusalem to Israeli developers. Land that the Palestinians were hoping would be part of the Palestinian State.

Packed to the brim with an interesting cast of characters this novel is a serious powerful achievement. 'Time of White Horses' is testament that Arabic literature is well and truly a force that can easily hold its own on the international literary platform. When asked why he had written this novel in particular, Nasrallah answered it was so that the young would not forget and that the old would forever be remembered. It is said that to know oneself one must return to the root, and that is exactly what Nasrallah has done for a generation who has lived all its life far from a homeland it dreams of returning to. It is possibly a gentle reminder that those who do not remember the past are most condemned to repeat it.

This is a story of remembrance, love, heartbreak, loyalty, betrayal, justice and greed. It is a story about family, honour and decency. A novel about courage, heroes, tyrants and doing the right thing. It is all of the above and much more but most and foremost I see it as a story of beginnings or a story of endings giving birth to new beginnings for George Santayana once said: 'We must welcome the future remembering that soon it will be the past, and we must respect the past remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible".

An emotional roller coaster of a book with the hardback cover beautifully illustrated by Palestinian artist Tamam al-Akhal who I had the honour of interviewing for a TV show I was presenting around ten years ago. A great read particularly for those who enjoyed Rafik Shami's 'The Dark Side of love' or Naguib Mahfouz's 'Cairo' Trilogy this is not one you want to miss.

Book Review: 'Out of It' by Selma Dabbagh

In 1993, following the Oslo Accord signed by Israel and the Palestinians, it was agreed that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) would withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank captured in the 1967 war with the Arabs, and Gaza would be included in the territories of the Palestinian National Authority. In 2005, when Israel pulled out its final troops from the Gaza, it declared its occupation of that area as over. A fact disputed by the Palestinians because Israel still controls Gaza's land and water borders as well as its airspace.

Two military factions inside Gaza, Fatah and Hamas, fought to gain control inside of Gaza (sometimes with deadly gun fighting and assassinations). In 2007, the Islamist militant group Hamas won the elections and in response, Israel to this day continues not only to impose severe restrictions  from and into the city of Gaza but has carried out various military operations against Hamas claiming that it is protecting its borders and its inhabitants from  Hamas' militant rocket shelling. Many civilian lives have been lost and casualties sustained on both sides in the process.

It is during one such military Israeli bombing operation of Gaza (exact timeline not specified) that the novel 'Out of It' opens. Rashid, a twenty-something member of the Mujahed family is terrified out of his mind by the bombing that has struck a nearby hospital. Thanks to his cannabis plant 'Gloria' he eventually passes out stone cold under his bed. As he awakens with 'face and floor tiles sealed together by a membrane of spittle' and checks his emails he finds that he has managed to secure a one-year scholarship to London. As far as Rashid is concerned this opportunity along with the work at The Human Rights Documentation Centre he set up with his best friend Khalil to record the violations happening against Gazans mean one thing and one thing only: a one-way ticket out of Gaza.

Iman, Rashid's twin sister, has just returned from studying in Switzerland. They are obviously a family with better means compared to other Gazans; their father (who now lives in Dubai with his Lebanese girlfriend) used to work for the Palestinian Authority when it was in exile. Already back for a year and teaching at a local school she feels that she is alienated by those who had not left during the occupation. She is desperate to be taken seriously to show how much she wants to help the situation in Gaza. After the night's bombing claims one of her students and his cousin (who she had a crush on) she blindly comes to a decision that could spell a disastrous outcome to everyone.

Sabri is the family's older brother, who has lost his legs, his wife and his child in an attempted assassination. But, in spite of his losses Sabri, the weakest character physically in the novel, is by far the strongest. He seems to rise above his disability (confined to the family's top floor apartment with no lift) and to rise above his daily humiliations (his mother has to change his catheter daily) channeling all his energy to compiling information and documentation and writing a record of the Palestinians' struggle for freedom. Throughout, he holds on to the hope that peace and justice will one day be granted to the Palestinians.

The novel is split into five parts. The first and fifth take place in Gaza, the second and fourth in London and the third in Dubai. We follow Rashid's life in London with Lisa where things don't turn out quite exactly as he had planned. In London, Rashid and Iman come face-to-face with notions of the Palestinians as a 'desolate and abandoned people' (neither of which Rashid feels) and of Israel as 'the most democratic country in the world' (which Lisa utterly refutes). Eventually, Rashid ends up arrested in a case of mistaken identity and ultimately has to leave London to return back to Gaza when his father will not pay for his tuition any longer. 

For the brief period that Rashid is there, Iman also joins him after spending a brief and disastrous time with her father in Dubai. In London, she meets Charles whose skin "was foreign and on it his sweat had the smell of wet potato peel." Iman, unlike her brother, does not lose sight of wanting to eventually return to Gaza after her temporary exile. She soon returns in the last part of the book and when Rashid questions her why when she could have stayed longer, she simply answers, "but I don't exist there" as if it were 'incredibly obvious'.

In the novel it seems that everyone is trying to get out of something. The father who has decided that there really is no cause to fight and gets out of it to live a rich man's life in the Gulf. His girlfriend, a Palestinian from the Lebanon camps, trying to put as much distance between herself and the camps as possible. Rashid who just wants out of it: out of Gaza, out of the conflict and out of his Palestinian skin. Iman trying to 'get out' of the feeling of being an outsider in her own country and with her own people, the fighter Ziyyad Ayyoubi trying to get out of his parents' shadow to carve a destiny and legacy of his own. The mother (aka The Sparrow), Abu Omar, Lisa, and many others throughout the novel including carrot boy who is a terrifying personality born of the dire situation in Gaza.

In the final part of the book Rashid has reached the ultimate truth: Gloria is dead, and he is trapped in Gaza. It is in this final utterly sad (at the same time strangely hopeful) part of the book that  Rashid finds his own happiness and comes to terms with his life confident in the realization that he is finally free to choose his own way 'out of it'.

Selma Dabbagh has managed to touch upon a lot of current Arab and Palestinian themes in her novel ingenuously avoiding over-crowding. A feat that is testimony to a very skilled writer indeed. Dabbagh shows supreme confidence in handling her characters and in the weaving of the various elements allowing the story to unfold and ultimately flow beautifully and with ease. This is a sensitive, gripping, compelling, powerful and assured novel. A beautiful story of  love, tragedy and ultimately hope. I smell a sequel!

For more on British Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh, click HERE.