Dear
Sayed,
Congratulations!
You have made the pages of the New Yorker. That is major. I think it is a first
for a contemporary Palestinian voice, even if it is originally in Hebrew and in
the company of a ‘real’ Israeli writer.
Though
we have never met in person, I am a fellow countryman and a big fan of yours. I
have read all your three translated books in English and every article I have
run across in the English issue of Haaretz. Once or twice I have even taken the
unusual step of watching “Arab Labor” though I had stopped seeing Israeli TV. Long
before you I had given up and defected to the American side even if physically
I have stayed on my little plot of land in my Galilee village, Arrabeh. It is a
matter of fidelity to my inheritance.
Let
me hasten to add that, like you, I am a half-breed, an Arab struggling to make
sense of our conundrum to speakers of a foreign language, English in my case.
But I enlisted for the cause late in the game, in retirement. In the
introduction to her English poetry collection, My Voice Sought The Wind, Susan
Abulhawa says she feels phantom pains deep in her heart where her Arabic once
dwelled. Does estrangement from Hebrew hurt at such a deep level? I am curious
if it did send such roots in your soul? To this day English hasn’t in mine.
As
to your friend, Etgar Keret, we have never met before in person or on the page.
I guess one local cynic is enough for me. But let me be frank and register my
discomfort with his first name “Challenge.” What parents want to burden their
child with such a load of Chutzpah from birth! Still, Just for your sake, I
will read his short story collection before I decide if he is allowed in my
living room or is to join my list of boycotted Israeli authors, the likes of
Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua. No liberal Zionists on my father’s piece of land, I
have long decided.
Now
let me address the central point I want to communicate to you regarding your
published correspondence with Keret in the New Yorker: Stick with Haaretz my
friend! They know the facts on the ground a little better though I often catch
them cheating a little on those facts especially when I compare the full
original Hebrew with the contracted English version. It all is relative, I
guess. But let us stay away from conspiracy theories and look closely at their
editors’ note about your exchange of letters with Keret: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/tell-story-happy-ending-exchange-etgar-keret-sayed-kashua
On July 19th, just days
after Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian writer
Sayed Kashua published a piece in the Guardian, titled “Why I Have to Leave Israel.”
Well,
well! To the folks it was just “a ground invasion.” What about air raids and
bombardment from the sea? Had the editors placed their empathetic conscience
where your thoughts and heart had been in those days, Mr. Kashua, they would
have stated it a little more realistically. It was the heaviest testing run of
modern weaponry from air land and sea. What about drones, smart bombs, Apaches
and F-16s? Readers are left high and dry, thirsting for a taste of Gaza’s
bitter reality, the physical and mental suffering that lasted an eternity of
over seven weeks. They deserve a little more telling line than just “a ground
invasion.” It is like referring to the Vietnam War as America’s South East
Asian skirmish. It feels insulting to all involved especially to the memory of
those targeted kids on the beach.
Or
take the following innocent-sounding neutral piece of information.
Kashua, who was born in
the predominantly Arab town of Tira, spent most of his life in Jerusalem.
“Predominantly”
as in ‘one hundred percent.’ An essential element of truth is missing here that
doesn’t even occur to the American reader. The smoke screen is so heavy one
doesn’t even know it is there. You and I know better. I am a regular reader of
the New Yorker. For the sake of maintaining my one-sided love affair with the
iconic weekly I will blame this on pure ignorance. The reader is left with the
impression that Arabs and Jews in Israel mix at will in their residential
choices. But Mr. Keret, you and I know that Arabs and Jews in Israel live in
segregated communities. And the racial exclusion mechanism on the Jewish side
has just been given the blessing of the Supreme Court of Israel. In so-called
mixed cities like Lod and Ramla, Arab slums are separated from Jewish
neighborhoods by concrete walls and barbed wire. And Tira, if it has any Jews
at all, has only the errant Jewish women who had married Arabs and had so far
escaped the outreach of Lehava, the NGO
dedicated to saving their souls and to returning them, by force if need be, to
the warm bosom of their tribe. Correct me if I am wrong Mr. Kashua, but I am
wagering that members of the said genre in Tira do not exceed the fingers of
one hand. In Arrabeh we had five at one time. Only two have not returned to the
fold.
Then
the editors drop another silent smoke bomb. They casually use “Jerusalem”
without any comment, reservation or explanation as if it were the most normal
of places. Did you actually live in West or East Jerusalem? Within the original
city boundaries or within the massively expanded borders nibbling at the edges
of Ramallah? Within or outside the wall? The Old fortress wall or the new
apartheid one?
Then
this:
He devoted his weekly
column in Haaretz to
telling “the Palestinian story,” and he is the creator of “Arab Labor,” a
popular sitcom that is a sendup of problems experienced by Israel’s Arab citizens.
I
don’t object to this characterization of your literary contribution. But it
lacks the needed emphasis on the one nuance that I consistently find in your
writing: mocking the image of the Arab as seen by Jews in Israel. That
tongue-in-cheek flare is what endears your style to my heart. That, my friend,
would be the greatest gift I would emphasize for your American and
international readers.
For
whatever it is worth, here are a few comments about your exchange of letters,
starting with the most objectionable:
You and your friend, Mr. Challenge, seem to feel at liberty
to grab all the Mid-West prairies, fold them neatly and lug them away in your
luggage. How many Native Americans have you consulted before deciding on that?
Have you even met any members of the indigenous Illinois tribe? They had given
their name and color to the physical space you so covet. They are the Azazmi,
the Turshan and the Jahaleen of the Midwest. Haven’t you yourself been at the
losing end of land theft practices? Now you turn around and want to do unto
others what you don’t want done unto you! For shame’s sake, Sayed! I am going
to tell on you! I will go to Tira and tell your parents. And, while at it, I
will find out how many Jews live in your “predominantly Arab” town.
Now, about those kernels of corn you worry Obama might spill
on your balcony: You have every reason to object. I have it on good authority
that he is a neat and careful person. His parents and I attended the same
university at the same time and I was aware of their presence on campus,
especially Hussein’s. I spoke to a good friend who remembers pushing little
Barak in his stroller around the lush campus of the University of Hawaii. She
assured me that, contrary to the impression the wild flare of his ears gave the
toddler, he was not messy. So any kernels he drops are intentional and targeted.
Look around you from Yemen to Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria!
In your second letter to your friend you go off the deep end
to discuss such trivia as ISIS, Israel’s legitimacy and the setting of its
borders and apartheid and distinguishing the system from the people behind it.
Believe me that all is sick.
But take it from a health professional and an intrepid
practitioner of the art of psychic fencing: Your wife is wrong. You are not “a
coward with a paranoid-personality disorder.” You are just another serial survivor
adept at walking between raindrops and at interpreting the new looks in the
eyes of kindhearted neighbors. We all develop the acute wariness and sensibility.
How else did Keret’s father know that he needed to take a coat?
That little story about him having “survived because he took
a coat,” is a true gem. I am going to take your advice and invest in coats for
all the members of the Kanaaneh clan. It is getting so chilly for us here in
Israel that we may freeze on the way to the mall. Pray for warmer weather. In
America they call it Indian summer.
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