Lying bare the souls of Palestinians, ready or not
2006-03-19
As the dust settles—if it ever does—after the international uproar surrounding the lousy Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, a series of puzzling questions come to the fore about the role of art in the Arab region today. President Bush’s mantra that democracy should be exported as a tool for change collapses under the realization that in repressive societies art—seen in Western civilization as an invitation to put a mirror in front of our face, one capable of reflecting who we are and where we come from—isn’t welcomed. And without art there is no separation between the self and the world and, as a result, no space for criticism and a sense of humor. Without laughter, it’s impossible for democracy to thrive.
The publication of “Gate of the Sun,” about the Palestinian experience, is thus an occasion for at least a modicum of relief, if not full-fledged hope. This extraordinary narrative is about ambiguity. Elias Khoury, its author, is the editor of the cultural supplement of An-Nahar, the daily Beirut newspaper, as well as a human rights advocate. In Arab nations, his work is enthusiastically received and has been compared often to that of the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. Like the poet Mahmoud Darwish, with whom he sometimes collaborates, Khoury is said to unravel the secrets of the Palestinian soul, although, strictly speaking, he isn’t Palestinian, as he was born in East Beirut to a Christian family in 1948. He was part of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, worked for the Palestine Research Center and is on the faculty at New York University.
The novel is built as a tribute to “The 1001 Nights,” through the contemporary prism perfected by Michael Ondaatje in “The English Patient.” The plot moves in several directions at once, but the basic premise is rather simple: In a hospital in Beirut’s refugee camp of Shatila, Yunes Al-Asadi, a fallen hero, is in a coma while his friend, Dr. Khalil Ayyoub, sits at his side, retelling stories of survival to keep him alive, even as assassins seek to kill him. Ayyoub’s syncopated tales re-create Palestinian life with all its ups and downs, from the pre-Israel period as experienced in the valley of Galilee to the refugee plight, the work of the fedayeen and the subsequent struggle, disillusionment and criminalization of the movement.
Khoury’s view is anti-war. He is also mature enough to understand that the tension between resistance and consent among Palestinians, between the need for a homeland and the utilization by others of their own national suffering, is, paraphrasing Stephen Daedalus, a nightmare people are eager to awake from. Indeed, the unifying sentiment in the book is honesty. If art is about knowing and not knowing, Khoury proves that confusion is a natural state of mind and that it is the responsibility of art to explore its extremes while humanizing them.
A movie based on “Gate of the Sun,” directed by Yousry Nasrallah, called “Bab el Shams” in Arabic and, in French, “Porte du Soleil,” was released in 2004. It is a worthy adaptation, but, as is often the case in the transition from a demanding literary text to the screen, it simplifies the corrugated landscape Khoury depicts. I wholeheartedly recommend the book, which, predictably, received a mixed response in Western countries as translations started to appear. In France, for instance, a country with a larger if also dissatisfied Muslim minority, it was celebrated as a masterpiece. In Israel, writer Ronit Matalon, author of “Bliss,” described it as “a lamentation for a generation that was corrupted and lost its children,” while historian Tom Segev, in Haaretz, approached it as falsifying, among other things, the account of Palestinians being executed by Palmah troops in the war of independence. In other words, “Gate of the Sun” was seen in Tel Aviv as a polarizing effort, ready to seize upon the responsibility of the novelist to reflect on history but surrendering that responsibility to fabrications about the past.
It is important to know, however, that Khoury himself has sought ways to have it translated “at least into one language—Hebrew,” for he believes it to be not only about Palestinians but also about Israelis. He once stated that, in metaphorical terms, it was simultaneously written in Arabic and Hebrew, because, as he put it, “I discovered that the ‘other’ is the mirror of the ‘I.’ … The Israeli is not only the policeman or the occupier, he is also the ‘other,’ who also has a human experience, and we need to read that experience.”
In the United States, the reaction is just as baffling. Intellectuals such as Ammiel Alcalay and Anton Shammas, the former a Sephardic Jew at Queens College, the latter a Palestinian at the University of Michigan, applauded the novel in print even before it came out in Humphrey Davies’ fluid English translation. However, it took almost a decade for it to materialize, courtesy of Archipelago, a small publisher in Brooklyn. The reviews have been dazzling. I wonder, though. Why didn’t a Manhattan publisher bring it out? Are they asleep at the weal? Or is it that they’re exercising a form of mercantile censorship by shying away from works of unquestionable credentials with unavoidable political bent? Do they fear an unpleasant reaction from their clientele? It is no secret that Americans are consistently misinformed about Muslim society. Isn’t a book like “Gate of the Sun” the perfect excuse for a deeper analysis?
Khoury might not be able to bring democracy to the Arab region, but he has certainly brought amazement and delight to this reader.
Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. He is the host of the syndicated PBS show “Conversations With Ilan Stavans.”