Abstract
Salma Dabbagh’s Out of It and Suad Amiry’s Golda Slept Here are sites of negotiation, resistance, and hope despite the bleak conditions caused by the economic and social policies imposed on Palestine. Borders are terrains for staging resistance by dramatizing characters’ movements. These texts politicize Palestinians’ everyday life and imprisonment whereby the intimate becomes political and a platform for resistance. Interwoven with momentous political events, private lives are emblematic of larger suffering under colonial violence. Living under arbitrary colonial laws is endured largely by the need to move and cross boundaries. The intended aim of colonial policies is hallowed out by the Palestinian spirit of survival through patience. In the works of Amiry and Dabbagh, characters resist incarceration by always being mobile. Likewise, these texts move between fiction and reality and resist Western generic classification.
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Notes
- 1.
Israel began the construction of the separation wall, sometimes called the Apartheid Wall, in 2002 on confiscated Palestinian lands to separate the West Bank from Israel.
- 2.
Robert Bransky, Wall and Piece (London: Century, 2005), 111. He calls the wall, Segregation Wall and adds that Palestine has become “the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti artists,” thanks to the wall. He includes nine of his famous works of graffiti in his book. Branksy, Wall and Piece, 111.
- 3.
These so-called terrorists may be called freedom fighters for they are fighting to liberate their land from colonization.
- 4.
The building of the wall claimed “more than 10 percent of Palestinian lands. Bearing in mind that the West Bank and Gaza constituted 28 percent of the area of Mandate Palestine.” Zahi Zalloua, Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 98.
- 5.
Avram Bornstein, Crossing the Line between the West Bank and Israel (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 106.
- 6.
Magali and Pieprzak 2007, 120.
- 7.
Kanafani was born in Accra, North of Palestine, before the Nakba of 1948—the date that marked the partition of Palestine and the expulsion of many Palestinian from their homes and villages. He was assassinated by the Mossad in Beirut with his niece on July 8, 1972. I refer to the Arabic text not to the translated version, Adab al Mouqawama in Arabic means resistance literature.
- 8.
Ghassan Kanafani, Adab Al Mouqawama fi Falstin al Mohtala: 1948–1966 (Cyprus: Rimal Books, 2015), 12.
- 9.
See Gilles Deleuze, “What is the creative act?,” in Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, ed., David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 2007), 312–324.
- 10.
Kanafani , Adab Al Mouqawama, 8. This is echoed in Edward’s Said preface to Orientalism, when he addressed the charges against the personal tone of the book by maintaining the importance of the personal in his theories—by personal he simply meant Palestine.
- 11.
Kanafani, Adab Al Mouqawama, 18.
- 12.
Kanafani, Adab Al Mouqawama, 18–19.
- 13.
Barbara Harlow uses the term “resistance literature” to refer to third world literature that engages the political and positions itself as a changing force within society. She employs Kanafani’s theories to frame and sustain her argument in Resistance Literature.
- 14.
Ramallah is also known under the name of West Bank, colonized after the 1967.
- 15.
Golda Meir (1898–1978) was an Israeli prime minister from 1969 to 1974.
- 16.
Suad Amiry, Golda Slept Here: Palestine: the Presence of the Absent (Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2014), 4.
- 17.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 5.
- 18.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 19.
- 19.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 75.
- 20.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 76.
- 21.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 77.
- 22.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 14.
- 23.
Zalloua, Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question, 44.
- 24.
Georgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Zone Books, 1999), 81–2.
- 25.
In Crossing the Green Line between the West Bank and Israel, Avram Bornstein defines the Green Line as “Jordanian-Israeli armistice line that separates the West Bank from Israel” and “shape[s] everyday life, more than ever, in the opportunities to make a living.” Also called the 1949 Armistice Line and recognized by the United Nations as the official border of Israel, the Green Line fell under Israeli control in 1967. Avram, Crossing the Green Line, ix.
- 26.
Absentees Property Law is a law designed by Israel to confiscate Palestinian properties. See the law provisions, pdf retrieved from The Knesset, accessed: September 15, 2020, https://www.knesset.gov.il/review/data/eng/law/kns1_property_eng.pdf
- 27.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 50.
- 28.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 76.
- 29.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 10.
- 30.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 62.
- 31.
Edward Said, “My Right of Return,” in Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, ed. Gauri Viswanathan (New York: Vintage, 2001), 447–8.
- 32.
Amiry, Golda Slept Here, 40.
- 33.
Homi Bhabha, forward to Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 1963), xxxviii.
- 34.
The only one who managed to get a Jerusalem ID is the author’s dog Nura. As crazy as it seems, the soldier at the checkpoint is convinced that Nura has the right to be driven to Jerusalem by her owner since “she” has the right paper. See Suad Amiry, Sharon and my Mother-in-Law (Norwell, MA: Anchor Press, 2005), 108.
- 35.
See Lila Abu-Lughod, “Return to Half-Ruins: Memory, Postmemory, and Living History in Palestine,” in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, eds. Lila Abu-Lughod and Ahmad H. Sa’di (New York: Columbia University Press. 2007), 77–104.
- 36.
Abu-Lughod, “Return to Half-Ruins,” 79. For the continuity of Nakba and the prolongation of pain see Rosemary Sayigh, “On the Exclusion of the Palestinian Nakba from the “Trauma Genre,” Journal of Palestine Studies 43, no. 1 (2013): 51–60.
- 37.
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 210–11.
- 38.
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 210.
- 39.
See Judith Butler, “Shadows of the Absent Body,” YouTube, March 2, 2017, Menschel Hall, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, 1:40:48, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o9_ZP2Z7aI
- 40.
See Judith Butler, “Shadows of the Absent Body.”
- 41.
Selma Dabbagh, Out of It, (Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation, 2011), 7.
- 42.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 103.
- 43.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 27.
- 44.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 3.
- 45.
Palestinian Liberation Organization, referred to after the Oslo Agreement as the National Authority and the return of some of its leaders.
- 46.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 79.
- 47.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 107.
- 48.
Theodor Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 34.
- 49.
Hamid Dabachi, “Gaza: Poetry after Auschwitz,” Aljazeera, August 8, 2014, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/8/gaza-poetry-after-auschwitz. The 2014 Gaza invasion is also known as Operation Protective Edge, launched on July 8, 2014, and resulted in the killing of 2200 Palestinian, the majority of them civilian. See “World Report 2015: Israel/Palestine,” Human Right Watch, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/israel/palestine
- 50.
See for example, Robert Mackey, “Israelis Watch Bombs Drop on Gaza from Front-Rows Seats,” The New York Times, July 14, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html?_r=1. Lizzie Dearden, “Israel-Gaza Conflict: 50-day war by Numbers,” The Independent, August 27, 2014, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-conflict-50-day-war-by-numbers-9693310.html. Kate, “Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any children left’—Israeli chant,” Mondoweiss, July 28, 2014, https://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/tomorrow-children-israeli/
- 51.
Abu-Lughod, “Return to Half-Ruins,” 11.
- 52.
Joe Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel (London: Palgrave, 2000), xi.
- 53.
Note that Gaza is on the Mediterranean coast and like many Mediterranean towns its land is good for planting Hash.
- 54.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 166.
- 55.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 170.
- 56.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 170.
- 57.
Dabbagh, Out of It, 96.
- 58.
Modern terrorism, nonetheless, is based on a literal reading of the Koran that transcends current contexts and Daesh (ISIS) or Taliban are instances of how Wahhabism can easily go wrong. Wahhabism is an ideology first initiated by Najd scholar Muhammad Ibn Abd el Wahhab (1703–91), who formed an alliance with Muhammad Ibn Saud in 1747 and resulted in the establishment of Saudi Arabia, fusing religion and politics to secure its continuity and legitimacy. Dominant more in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and less appealing in other parts of the Islamic world, Wahhabism values the study of Islam and Sharia over all studies. Its puritanical, rigid interpretation of Islam still forms the basis of extreme reformists and terrorists’ views on the Islamic nation or the concept of Umma. See for example, Karen Armstrong, “Wahhabism to Isis: how Saudi Arabia Exported the Main Source of Global Terrorism,” The New Statesman, November 27, 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/11/wahhabism-isis-how-saudi-arabia-exported-main-source-global-terrorism
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———. Sharon and my Mother-in-Law. Norwell, MA: Anchor Press, 2005.
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Aouadi, L. (2021). Mobility, Incarceration, and the Politics of Resistance in Palestinian Women’s Literature. In: Beck, C. (eds) Mobility, Spatiality, and Resistance in Literary and Political Discourse. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83477-7_5
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