{"id":258,"date":"2024-01-10T18:33:14","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T16:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/?page_id=258"},"modified":"2024-02-03T20:38:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T18:38:49","slug":"the-nakba-through-literature-and-culture-by-alex-martinez","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/activities\/war-in-the-news\/the-nakba-through-literature-and-culture-by-alex-martinez\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nakba through Literature and Culture by \u00c0lex Mart\u00ednez Vega"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the 13th of October 2023, the Frankfurt Book Fair announced the cancellation of an award ceremony honoring Adania Shibli. Her book Minor Detail <\/em>was deemed too controversial for the current political climate, or more specifically its historical context: the Nakba<\/em>. Derived from the Arabic word for \u2018catastrophe\u2019, the Nakba has existed for decades in a state of contradictory duality \u2013 both known and written about by the peoples of the Middle East, yet unspoken of in Europe and the United States.The Nakba refers to the process in 1948 that permanently displaced most of the Palestinian population, as well as the persecution of those who remained in the land and the suppression of their culture. By that point, The Palestine war \u2013known in Israel as the Independence War \u2013 had already been ongoing for a year. It continued until the British relinquished their mandate and gave way for the declaration of Israeli independence. For that to happen, however, 78% of the Palestinian territory had to be occupied and given to the new-coming Israeli settlers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first English-written novel with widespread popularity to talk about life in Palestine following the catastrophe of 1948 was Mornings in Jenin<\/em>, originally published in 2006 as The Scar of David<\/em> by Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa. It follows a Palestinian family,  serving as an analogy for the entirety of the population of Palestine, \u2013 before, during, and after the Nakba<\/em>, for four generations. Just as the family manages to survive thanks to their love for each other, the people of Palestine are still standing because of their mutual aid, strength and resilience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story begins in 1941 in the village of Ein Hod, before the displacement of Palestinians from their land. Six years later the United Nations would decide that this village was no longer Palestinian but Israeli, forcing Yehya, his sons, and their wives to seek refuge in Jenin, a camp in the West Bank.  Over the decades, the family witnesses pain and loss through death but also displacement \u2013 one of their children is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier to take to his wife, who struggles with infertility. The kid grows up under the name of David, ignorant of his true origin, and becomes a soldier of the Israel Defense Forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generations of the family are born, raised and very often lost to war. But even when all hope seems lost, with only one of the members of the family still alive and left to raise her daughter on her own in the United States, the reunion of family ties brings her back to the Middle East. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The motto \u201ca land without a people for a people without a land\u201d,<\/em> used by the Jewish Zionists throughout the Nakba, is one of the most cited and dissected sentences in both the Israeli and Palestinian literature following 1948. Joe Sacco, a Maltese-American cartoonist, weighs on the motto in his graphic novel Palestine<\/em>. With a critical and almost satirical voice, Sacco narrates his experiences in Gaza and the West Bank in the early \u201890s while also explaining to his overwhelmingly Western public the events that triggered the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Sacco brings back that sentence focusing on the first part: \u201cA land without people\u201d. With the same almost cynical tone that permeates the entire text, the author writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThings aren\u2019t as cut dry as that Zionist slogan. Plenty of Arabs live in Palestine: in 1917 Arabs out-numbered Jewish inhabitants ten-to-one. But you know mathematics, it doesn\u2019t always fit into the equation.\u201d <\/em>(Sacco, 13, 2001) \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The intriguing element of Sacco\u2019s work is how he presents the main character and narrator of this story. He never presumes to be unbiased, in fact, he makes it very clear that he went into Gaza thinking of the Palestinians as terrorists, a belief influenced by the American media, as he states himself, that he tries to uphold while meeting face to face with the injured, the incarcerated and the peaceful protesters along the way. Palestine<\/em> hammers one point consistently, and it\u2019s the desperation of the Palestinian people to have their stories told in a world that has reduced them to numbers, casualties and in the worst cases, murderers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tunnels<\/em> (2021), another graphic novel, this time by the Israeli author Rutu Modan, is inevitably read in comparison to Palestine<\/em>. Even though the tone is critical and satirical, Modan seems to approach the conflict as a bidirectional war, where everyone is deserving of criticism, in opposition to the idea of targeted oppression we see in the former work. Tunnels<\/em> tells the story of the daughter of a renowned Israeli archeologist, on a race to unearth a relic before her opposition does. This treasure, however, is buried in Palestinian land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most enlightening panel of the entire graphic novel, at least regarding the topic of the Nakba, is found halfway. Nili, the main character of the story, encounters Mahdi, a Palestinian man excavating the same tunnel as her, which triggers a discussion over who really has a claim over it: Nili claims her father started the tunnel, and even if they left it, it is theirs because they were there first. Mahdi, however, says that his own father dug the tunnel, and whoever was there first is a subjective statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a clear analogy being used in this panel \u2013 the tunnel is the land of Palestine, now occupied by Israel. While Palestine<\/em> and other works by Palestinians talk about the Nakba as a colonial catastrophe, Israeli voices, even the critical ones, frame it as an impossible debate of equals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been a Palestine after the Nakba, both in Palestinian land and in the diaspora. The poet Mohammed el-Kurd, born in East Jerusalem exactly 50 years after the day of the Nakba, saw his house seized by settlers when he was just a child and has since devoted his poetry to giving the people of Palestine a face and a voice. In the foreword titled \u201cLove is Older Than Israel\u201d<\/em> by Aja Monet, in el-Kurd\u2019s first anthology \u201cRifqa\u201d,<\/em> she writes: \u201c(\u2026) what would Mohammed seek to be except a testament, a siren, a freedom song conjuring a key that fits a hole in a heart the size of Falasteen.\u201d <\/em>(El-Kurd, Monet 2021)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

El-Kurd managed to merge both the devastation of the atrocities done to his people and the unimaginable strength they muster to not just survive, but also keep their culture and traditions alive. The third poem in \u201cRifqa<\/em>\u201d, titled \u201cBorn on Nakba Day\u201d, encapsulates this feeling of existing halfway between desperation and hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside the hospital room:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

smelling of tear gas, skies tiled with<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

rubber-coated bullets,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

a few bodies shot, dead\u2014died<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

numbers in a headline.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born among poetry<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

on the fiftieth anniversary.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The liberation chants outside the hospital room<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

told my mother<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

to push.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(El-Kurd, 2021)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abulhawa, Susan. 2006. The Scar of David: A Novel<\/em>: Journey Publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

El-Kurd, Mohammed. 2021. Rifqa<\/em>.: Haymarket Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modan, Rutu. 2021. Tunnels<\/em>. Translated by Ishai Mishory: Drawn & Quarterly Publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oltermann, Philip, and Arundhati Roy. 2023. \u201cPalestinian voices ‘shut down’ at Frankfurt Book Fair, say authors.\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, October 16, 2023. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/oct\/15\/palestinian-voices-shut-down-at-frankfurt-book-fair-say-authors<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacco, Joe. 2001. Palestine<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the 13th of October 2023, the Frankfurt Book Fair announced the cancellation of an award ceremony honoring Adania Shibli. Her book Minor Detail was deemed too controversial for the current political climate, or more specifically its historical context: the Nakba. Derived from the Arabic word for \u2018catastrophe\u2019, the Nakba has existed for decades in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2772,"featured_media":0,"parent":252,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-258","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2772"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/258\/revisions\/295"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/g4roc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}