For Edward Stated, to be Palestinian was to be an exile. In 1979 he wrote, “Behind each Palestinian there’s a nice normal truth: that he as soon as—and never so way back—lived in a land of his personal known as Palestine, which is now not his homeland.” But Stated 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 typically obscured, ignored, or willfully misrepresented.”
Stated’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 girls, 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 Collectively the journalists—the one 4 of Palestinian descent at their newspaper—are assigned to interview an outdated man who’s his household’s final dwelling eyewitness of the 1948 Nakba, throughout which greater than 750,000 Palestinians fled from their dwelling or had been expelled by the brand new state of Israel. By way of the interview and its absurd aftermath, Khalifah satirizes the thought of telling your story as a noble and even politically efficient pursuit. As a substitute, Sand-Catcher asks what’s misplaced when the multiplicity of expertise is lowered 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That type of flattened narrative—simply packaged and offered—is strictly what the journalists hope to extract from the outdated man.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 outfitted with “digital recorders, papers, good tablets, cameras, and nineteen questions.” Surrounded by his members of the family, the outdated man sits silently by every of the journalists’ rigorously crafted questions, providing nothing in response. Flustered, Qaa’id finally says, “You may’t think about how helpful your testimony to the occasions of the Nakba will likely be. The world has declared battle on the collective reminiscence of the Palestinians, ‘ammi, and also you’re a soldier on the proper facet 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 surprising, 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 reminiscences, even though they’ll be “mediated by strangers.” The outdated man’s grandson, too, is inquisitive about his grandfather’s previous, recalling a college task for which he had tried to interview him concerning the Nakba:
After I obtained dwelling from college that day, I approached him and instructed him what the instructor 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 forged themselves as victims, not aggressors, within the battle to unearth the outdated man’s reminiscences. In any case, they suppose, their careers are on the road. In the event that they fail, their editor threatens, he won’t simply assign different writers to the interview, however he’ll make the ensuing article totally 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; in addition 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—typically bodily—with each other.
What lies behind their rabid depth? The journalists will not be 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 reminiscences. For them, and for others of their technology who’ve by no means frolicked in Palestine, these tales grow to be 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 day-after-day with out ever attending to comprehend it absolutely, a mystifying textual content he didn’t know learn how 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 replicate 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 standard Palestinian dish, she burned it “to a crisp.” Khaa’ina remembers 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 girls, looking for a type of profound, mystical connection that he imagines he may discover with a girl with whom he shares a land of origin. By way of its polyvocal construction, Sand-Catcher refutes the demand for one Palestinian story to be instructed (and offered), as a substitute providing many tales, about many varieties of individuals, with many alternative relationships to Palestine.
However maybe essentially 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 non-public, 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 file,” belonging to not him however to all Palestinians. He considers the realities of life that individuals favor to maintain to themselves: intimate relationships, embarrassing moments from childhood, troubles at work. However witnesses to vital occasions, particularly violent ones, will not be 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 Might 15, 1948, till Might 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 loss of life recorded, represents a person, an entire world of goals, concepts, and idiosyncrasies. And a few of these folks may favor, just like the outdated man, to maintain their experiences to themselves. When atrocities grow to be commonplace, when dominant narratives flow into unchecked and unopposed, too typically the burden of collective reminiscence involves relaxation on particular person witnesses—individuals who, Sand-Catcher suggests, might need one thing to lose within the telling.
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