“Writing is an act of emotion and action that comes from mental upheaval. It moves between states of joy, pain and sadness. The physical pain isn’t over for me yet, and it’s now assuming new forms. Writing is a painful act in itself,” he said. “When you put yourself in that situation and add to that tremendous physical pain, the situation becomes incomprehensible. Still, you become a more modest, merciful, kind and loving person. I’m at this place and in that moment, my most loving, vulnerable and creative moment.”
—Khoury speaking in English last year with his Israeli translator, Prof. Yehouda Shenhav-Shaharabani.
As he put it, two things teach us to love life: writing and love. “I now live between the two, and so today I may be in a place that’s not the prettiest or most charming, but it’s a spiritual place, very spacious, very new and very beautiful.“
—From a piece by Sheren Falah Saab in Haaretz
When Elias Khoury was teaching at NYU every spring, his unofficial office hours would take place at La Lanterna di Vittorio café on MacDougal. He would often be at a table with a group of his students, joking with them, talking politics, listening attentively, sharing stories. He was always inclusive, he knew how to make the shyest or sternest crack a smile and laugh with him. (Elias had a great laugh.) He was always ready to laugh at the absurdity of a situation, of life.
I spent many hours at Elias’s table in La Lanterna and learned so much from him, about writers (not only from the Arab world, but from everywhere) and history, but above all about how to live. I learned from his stories, from his advice, but mostly from the example he set. He took human injustice personally. It wasn’t enough to dissect or fume at the events of the world—khallas (enough already)—he needed to write an op-ed for a newspaper right away, he needed to take action. It was a physical obligation. He could get more done in one day in his laid-back, matter-of-fact way than most of us could dream of doing in weeks.
When Elias became a grandfather, he was reborn. His eyes (and entire being) would light up when he talked about his grandson. He would have to buy an extra suitcase to fill up with treasures for him for their reunion in Beirut. It was his own grandmother who introduced him to the great classical Arabic poets. They would read Imru’ al-Qais together, probably before he could walk. Elias taught me a wonderful Arabic expression: the heart is on the heart. More than anyone I’ve encountered, Elias was guided by his heart. His intellect was of course off the charts, but what I will remember most about Elias is his heart. His friends were family to him, and he’d mastered the art of friendship. It seemed effortless for him to keep even faraway friendships alive. They kept him alive.
Elias, you will be missed. The heart is on the heart.
—Jill Schoolman
About Khoury
A public intellectual who wrote novels, essays, and reportage, Khoury led an exceptionally rich life. Khoury was an unflagging champion of the Palestinian people and spoke out against dictatorships in the Arab world and beyond. In his youth, he cared for Palestinian refugees in refugee camps outside of Amman, and later joined the Fatah. Khoury is one of the most beloved and respected practitioners of Arabic literature. For many readers, his novel Gate of the Sun (translated by Humphrey Davies) is a life-changing work. For many years Khoury served as the editor of the cultural supplement of one of Lebanon’s major newspapers, Al-Nahar, where he created a platform for political dialogue around the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war. During the reign of Bashar al-Assad, Khoury published the writings of Syrian dissident intellectuals in Al-Nahar. Khoury taught Arabic literature courses at Columbia and New York University for many years.
In July, Khoury wrote on his experiences of the painful illness he was suffering. He ended his piece with an acknowledgement of the suffering of Palestinians (as reported in al-Jazeera): “Gaza and Palestine have been brutally bombarded for almost a year now, but they stand steadfast and unshakable. A model from which I have learned to love life every day.”
In addition to Gate of the Sun, Archipelago has also published five other novels of Khoury’s, each one a formally inventive and ambitious work, with deep emotional and political implications: Yalo (translated by Peter Theroux), White Masks (translated by Maia Tabet), As Though She Were Sleeping (translated by Marilyn Booth), Broken Mirrors, and Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam (each translated by Humphrey Davies). Khoury’s humor and compassion emerge again and again in his work. In November, we will publish the second volume of the Children of the Ghetto series, Star of the Sea.
To read more about Khoury’s influence in both public and private spheres, please read Yasmina Jraissati’s words on Khoury. And Khoury speaks for himself in this brilliant interview published by the Paris Review.
Words of Rememberance
“Unwavering” is perhaps the word that best characterizes Elias. He was unwavering in his commitment to social justice, in his criticism of the corrupt Lebanese state and Arab dictatorships, in his championing of the Palestinian cause, and in his love for life despite all the horrors he bore witness to in his writing.
Mr. Khoury felt that the constant turmoil of war, displacement and oppression that marked the modern Arab world required a new type of novel, one that reflected his era’s discombobulated reality. Often beginning with a single sustained encounter, his novels spin outward, kaleidoscopically, into the past and across borders.
I will forever treasure Elias’s utter irreverence for all forms of officialdom, his humor, his profound humanity, and the wounds he suffered on behalf of others and things greater than himself. As our dear mutual friend Anton Shammas wrote me since hearing the news: “I’ve been trying to collect the shards of my heart.”
Khoury was perhaps the greatest living Arab novelist of the last few decades. Discreet in character, very different from other figures of Arab literature, Khoury was much more important than his fame. His career, solid and constant, is beyond the media discoveries of genius. He was a writer in the fullest sense of the term, discreet, cultured, incisive, politically committed to the freedom of Arabs in general and to the future of Lebanon and Palestine in particular. And he was, without a doubt, the one who best conveyed the living history of Palestine to narrative .
I found his seminal works, such as Gate of the Sun (which I re-read last summer) and Children of the Ghetto, to be invaluable in shaping my socio-political awareness of the Middle East. Despite having studied at AUB, it was years later, through Khoury’s literary masterpieces that I gained a profound understanding of Lebanon’s intricate socio-political landscape. With every book, I rediscovered my compassion and affection for the country and its people, as well as for the broader Arab region and why, as a region and people, we are where we find ourselves today.
The void left by Khoury’s absence feels akin to losing a close friend and mentor and his passing represents an immeasurable loss for Arab literature as a whole.
Through his prolific work as a novelist, journalist, playwright and critic across different genres, he was dedicated to exploring themes around collective memory, war, exile and trauma.
Elias Khoury was one of those writers whose work etched itself into the landscape of my mind, and shaped it in so many ways. His passing is shattering, but he lived a full, committed life, and he has left us books of immeasurable richness.
Khoury on the greatest prize he ever won
But in the last analysis, literary prizes are quite meaningless. They are good, and they help a little—but they are not the things writers and critics should expend their energy on. Lately, I was discussing with a friend who asked me about the Nobel Prize. I told him the greatest prize I ever won was in 2013 near Jerusalem, when a group of Palestinian youngsters—350 people—settled on a piece of land that was going to be confiscated by the Israelis to build a colony. So they settled on it, and they built a village. They called it Bāb al-Shams [Gate of the Sun], like my novel. For me, this is the real prize. Normally, novels imitate reality; here, reality was imitating a novel. For a writer, this is the best award he can have from his readers. Other prizes are OK, and if they come, why not? I’m not against them. We don’t have to wait for them thought—we have to be more serious an engaged.
