For Edward Mentioned, to be Palestinian was to be an exile. In 1979 he wrote, “Behind each Palestinian there’s a nice basic reality: that he as soon as—and never so way back—lived in a land of his personal known as Palestine, which is now now not his homeland.” But Mentioned is cautious to take care of that regardless of this shared previous, all Palestinians have distinctive histories and experiences. “What I’ve tried to insist on,” he writes, “is the richness of ‘the query of Palestine,’ a richness usually obscured, ignored, or willfully misrepresented.”
Mentioned’s want for “richness,” for specificity and element, resists the impulse to settle right into a conclusive story concerning the previous. This philosophy underlies Sand-Catcher, Omar Khalifah’s sharp, darkly humorous debut novel, translated from Arabic by Barbara Romaine. The novel follows a gaggle of 4 younger Palestinian journalists who work at a Jordanian newspaper, characters recognized solely as archetypes: Two males, Qaa’id (that means “chief”) and Khaa’in (“adulterer”), and two ladies, Mutarjima (“translator”) and Khaa’ina (“adulteress”). (Nobody in Sand-Catcher is referred to by their correct title.) Collectively the journalists—the one 4 of Palestinian descent at their newspaper—are assigned to interview an outdated man who’s his household’s final residing eyewitness of the 1948 Nakba, throughout which greater than 750,000 Palestinians fled from their house or had been expelled by the brand new state of Israel. Via the interview and its absurd aftermath, Khalifah satirizes the thought of telling your story as a noble and even politically efficient pursuit. As an alternative, Sand-Catcher asks what’s misplaced when the multiplicity of expertise is decreased to a single, traumatic story.
That type of flattened narrative—simply packaged and offered—is strictly what the journalists hope to extract from the outdated man. Sand-Catcher is about within the lead-up to the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, in 2018. The novel begins with the interview, the 4 journalists geared up with “digital recorders, papers, sensible tablets, cameras, and nineteen questions.” Surrounded by his relations, the outdated man sits silently by every of the journalists’ fastidiously crafted questions, providing nothing in response. Flustered, Qaa’id finally says, “You possibly can’t think about how invaluable your testimony to the occasions of the Nakba might be. The world has declared battle on the collective reminiscence of the Palestinians, ‘ammi, and also you’re a soldier on the proper aspect of this battle. All of us have an obligation to inform the world our tales, in order that—” He’s interrupted by the outdated man: “Get the hell out of right here, you motherfuckers!”
The outburst might sound stunning, however we quickly study that the outdated man’s solely want is “to die with out being pressured to inform anybody about 1948.” He has spent his entire life refusing to excavate his previous as a type of nationwide obligation. Even his eldest son doesn’t know what occurred to his father in 1948; he scheduled the interview within the hopes that he may lastly have the prospect to listen to his father’s recollections, even supposing they’ll be “mediated by strangers.” The outdated man’s grandson, too, is interested by his grandfather’s previous, recalling a college task for which he had tried to interview him concerning the Nakba:
Once I bought house from faculty that day, I approached him and informed him what the trainer had requested for. My grandfather mentioned, “Write.” I opened a pocket book and sat down by him.
“Palestine was misplaced.”
“Palestine was misplaced.”
“Full cease.”
This line turns into the outdated man’s solely chorus when his household asks concerning the Nakba: Palestine was misplaced.
If the outdated man’s silence frustrates and hurts his household, it outrages the reporters. That is the place Khalifah’s satire is at its sharpest: The journalists start to solid themselves as victims, not aggressors, within the battle to unearth the outdated man’s recollections. In spite of everything, they assume, their careers are on the road. In the event that they fail, their editor threatens, he is not going to simply assign different writers to the interview, however he’ll make the ensuing article solely about their failure. The editor is aware of what sells: a dramatic story.
Freshly decided to get the outdated man to talk, the journalists hatch a ridiculous plot. They accost him after Friday prayers and kidnap his grandson, utilizing him as leverage to coerce the outdated man into speaking with them; additionally they attempt to get their arms on a diary that he has saved since 1948. In chronicling their growing desperation to complete the job, Sand-Catcher grows darker and extra absurd. The journalists overstep boundaries, ignore their conscience, and battle—generally bodily—with each other.
What lies behind their rabid depth? The journalists usually are not simply motivated by their skilled ambition: All of them really feel a private stake in listening to the outdated man’s account. As a result of every of them lives in exile, their homeland is accessible solely secondhand, by anecdotes and their household’s recollections. For them, and for others of their era who’ve by no means frolicked in Palestine, these tales turn into virtually cipherlike, obscuring the place itself. The grandson displays that for him, Palestine “acquired the character of one thing like a legend: concurrently actual and unreal—one thing he noticed on daily basis with out ever attending to understand it totally, a mystifying textual content he didn’t know the best way to learn, regardless of its highly effective impact on him.”
The journalists have equally difficult emotions about Palestine. Early on within the novel, Khaa’ina asks her colleagues to “title one particular factor, one thing distinctive, about your connection to Palestine.” The scene morphs from dialog into confession, revealing truths that every journalist continues to mirror on over the course of the novel. Qaa’id admits that he nonetheless mixes up the colours of the Palestinian flag. Mutarjima tells the group that the primary time that she ever made maqlouba, a conventional Palestinian dish, she burned it “to a crisp.” Khaa’ina recollects that she set her wedding ceremony date for the anniversary of the Nakba, which she didn’t understand till the Palestinian band she’d employed refused to play. Khaa’in seeks out affairs with Palestinian ladies, looking for a type of profound, mystical connection that he imagines he may discover with a lady with whom he shares a land of origin. Via its polyvocal construction, Sand-Catcher refutes the demand for one Palestinian story to be informed (and offered), as an alternative providing many tales, about many varieties of individuals, with many alternative relationships to Palestine.
However maybe probably the most highly effective perception of Sand-Catcher is that the decision to bear witness shouldn’t supersede the proper to privateness. The outdated man calls the journalists “thieves,” condemning their almost-vampiric starvation to take one thing important—his recollections—from him. His reminiscence is “an intimate concern, one thing personal, and he didn’t need anybody else getting close to it. Why not respect the one distinctive factor left to him from his homeland?” The grandson says that everybody—his father, the journalists—sees his grandfather’s story “as a matter of public document,” belonging to not him however to all Palestinians. He considers the realities of life that individuals desire to maintain to themselves: intimate relationships, embarrassing moments from childhood, troubles at work. However witnesses to important occasions, particularly violent ones, usually are not given the choice to remain silent. For them, talking out turns into an ethical obligation, as Qaa’id tells the outdated man—a nationwide, collective accountability to counter the historical past being written by these in energy.
Ultimately, the outdated man surrenders his diary in change for his grandson. However he will get the final phrase. When the journalists open the pocket book, every entry is similar: a date, from Could 15, 1948, till Could 15, 2018, and beneath it, the phrase “Palestine was misplaced.” Studying Sand-Catcher in late 2024, because the horrible violence in Gaza and Lebanon continues, is a poignant reminder that every image, every demise recorded, represents a person, a complete world of desires, concepts, and idiosyncrasies. And a few of these folks may desire, just like the outdated man, to maintain their experiences to themselves. When atrocities turn into commonplace, when dominant narratives flow into unchecked and unopposed, too usually the burden of collective reminiscence involves relaxation on particular person witnesses—individuals who, Sand-Catcher suggests, may need one thing to lose within the telling.
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