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Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination

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Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World Edited by Hamid Dabashi Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Hamid chaired the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures from 2000 to 2005 and was a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. His most recent books include Islamic Liberation Th eology: Resisting the Empire ; Makhmalbaf at Large: Th e Making of a Rebel Filmmaker ; Iran: A People Interrupted ; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema . Published by Palgrave Macmillan: New Literature and Philosophy of the Middle East: Th e Chaotic Imagination By Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: Th e Life and Works of `A’ i s h a Ta y m u r By Mervat F. Hatem Islam in the Eastern African Novel By Emad Mirmotahari Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo By Mara Naaman Poetics and Politics of Iran’s National Epic, the Shāhnāmeh By Mahmoud Omidsalar Iranian Cinema and Philosophy: Shooting Truth By Farhang Erfani Egyptian Colloquial Poetry in the Modern Arabic Canon: New Readings of Shiʿr al-ʿĀmmiyya By Noha M. Radwan Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rek̲h̲tī Poetry, 1780–1870 By Ruth Vanita Islam, Migrancy, and Hospitality in Europe By Meyda Yeğenoğlu Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk’s Literature: Existentialism and Politics Edited by Mehnaz M. Afridi and David M. Buyze Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination: Telling Memories By Ihab Saloul Urdu Literary Culture: Vernacular Modernity in the Writing of Muhammad Hasan Askari (forthcoming) By Mehr Afshan Farooqi Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination Telling Memories I h a b S a l o u l CATASTROPHE AND EXILE IN THE MODERN PALESTINIAN IMAGINATION Copyright © Ihab Saloul, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-137-00137-5 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-43359-9 ISBN 978-1-137-00138-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137001382 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. Contents L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s vii N o t e f r o m t h e E d i t o r ix A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s x i I n t r o d u c t i o n 1 1 N o s t a l g i c M e m o r y a n d P a l e s t i n i a n I d e n t i f i c a t i o n 1 5 2 Traveling Theory: On the Balconies of Our Houses in Exile 59 3 Exilic Narrativity: Audiovisual Storytelling and Memory 103 4 The Performance of Catastrophe and Palestinian Identity 141 5 Mankoub : Narrative Fragments of an Ongoing Catastrophe 173 Afterword: Telling Memories in a Time of Catastrophe 215 Notes 2 1 9 Bibliography 2 3 5 Index 2 5 1 Illustrations 3.1 Abu Qais is facing the ground in the Oasis 115 3.2 Abu Qais, Assad, Marwan, meet Abu Al-Khaizaran and discuss the journey 128 3.3 Abu Al-Khaizaran fi nds out that the three men have died 135 3.4 Th e three dead bodies on the garbage heap, with Abu Qais holding his fi ngers as if on the trigger 136 4.1 Um Saleh, together with her grandson, laments her house on which the fl ag of Israel hangs 157 4.2 Amos Keinan testifi es 165 4.3 Abu Adel and Bakri meet David and his son who is carrying a gun on his waist 165 4.4 Dov Yirmiya playing his accordion music to a group of children, and singing We Bring You Peace 168 Note from the Editor he Islamic world is home to a vast body of literary production in multiple languages over the last 1,400 years. To be sure, long Tbefore the advent of Islam, multiple sites of significant literary and cultural productions existed from India to Iran to the Fertile Crescent to North Africa. After the advent of Islam in the mid-seventh century CE, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish authors in particular produced some of the most glorious manifestations of world litera- ture. From prose to poetry, modern to medieval, elitist to popular, oral to literary, this body of literature is in much need of a wide range of renewed scholarly investigation and lucid presentation. The purpose of this series is to take advantage of the most recent advances in literary studies, textual hermeneutics, critical theory, feminism, postcolonialism, and comparative literature to bring the spectrum of literatures and cultures of the Islamic world to a wider audience and appreciation. Usually the study of these literatures and cultures is divided between classical and modern periods. A central objective of this series is to cross over this artificial and inapplicable bifurcation and abandon the anxiety of periodization altogether. Much of what we understand today from this rich body of literary and cultural production is still under the influence of old-fashioned orientalism or post–World War II area studies perspectives. Our hope is to bring together a body of scholarship that connects the vast arena of literary and cultural production in the Islamic world without the prejudices of outmoded perspectives. Toward this end, we are committed to path- breaking strategies of reading that collectively renew our awareness of the literary cosmopolitanism and cultural criticism in which these works of creative imagination were conceived in the first place. H a m i d D a b a s h i Acknowledgments his book reflects an intellectual and personal experience during which I met many people who had decisive influence on my T development. I must content myself with thanking them col- lectively, with only a few exceptions. My teacher and friend Mieke Bal started me on an interdisciplinary journey involving cultural analysis, literature, and many other fields in 2001 and has been a steadfast source of inspiration and critical thinking ever since. Likewise, I thankfully acknowledge the support of colleagues and friends in various places whose criticism and suggestions sharpened the text considerably: Murat Aydemir, Ernst van Alphen, Rey Chow, Timothy Brennan, Sharif Kanaana, Carol Bardenstein, Marianne Hirsch, Tarik Sabry, Ginette Verstraete, Patricia Pisters, Ann Rigney, Maaike Meijer, Lies Wesseling, Renee van de Vall, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, and Rein de Wilde. I was fortunate to conclude this manuscript during 2011—2012, which I spent as EUME-Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). In this unique institution, I have benefitted from the help of several friends, so special thanks to Georges Khalil, Cilja Harders, Angelika Neuwirth, and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin. Brigitte Shull and Hamid Dabashi were an ideal publisher and series editor, respectively, and made the ordeal of preparing the manuscript an instructive and genuinely intelligent process. Finally, special thanks to my wife Barbara and my family in Palestine for their loving support, which made much of the work enjoyable. I dedicate this book to my daughters, Lina and Nour, and their new Palestinian generations in exile. I hope this book will speak to them and that they will carry some understanding of these ideas with them into a better future. .
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