"So let us put the narrative of injustice away and find the joy, if it’s the last thing we ever do. " Tala Abu Rahmeh, Palestinian poet and writer

Wadi Qelt, Jericho. Photo by Ramzi Hazboun.

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4116&ed=223&edid=223

Contemporary Palestinian Literature In Search of Joy
By Tala Abu Rahmeh
 
“…there is no rain
anywhere, soft
enough for you.” Michael S. Harper

I used to have this recurring dream that I was wearing a red dress and walking down the steps to a jazz parlour in Harlem. It would take me a second to see through the smoke but then I would see him, John Coltrane, holding the saxophone and taunting gods with Naima. He would sway and I would wake up to the realisation that he’s been dead a while, and I no longer knew what my story was.

I always thought I knew what I would write about. My life has been cluttered with images of bombs and the small details of debris. I knew how to construct the perfect phrase about the exact sound of a shell escaping the tank and landing in the middle of my heart. The geography of my first book had the thick lines of the Apartheid Wall and the graves of all my grandparents, dead on the way and in exile.

Then, as destiny willed it, my mother died from cancer. As I tried to hold myself through grief it hit me, what if Palestine is no longer my story? What if this loud whimper matters more than all the other big bangs? I was slowly losing footing into my poems that suddenly became all about morphine and infested limbs.

Through my exploratory journey into modern Palestinian literature, I found myself to be an ever-found alien. The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi defined my loneliness, Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani unravelled a multi-faceted anger, and Madih Adh-Dhill Al-‘Ali by Mahmoud Darwish dusted the pieces of all that was broken in me and forced me to look at them, one by one. Nevertheless, I was still an alien. My pain over the loss of my mother had never transformed into a metaphor for a lost country. As much as I tried to reshape it, it still nudged me awake in one simple statement, “Your mother is dead.”

What is it about this country that made us feel guilty for being our particular selves? Why is it that in the past 60 years we have only accepted literature that held together the collective narrative, but never our own? Our modern history is built on singular stories of lost children and destroyed villages, so why do we matter less today? In the past 15 years, authors have tried to drag their details into the bigger picture, but even those novels were mostly written in English, with the Westerner being the target audience. Even this article is written in English (obviously).

Is it the Palestinian literary scene or the reader that needs an overhaul? I’m thinking both. You might wonder who I am to think that I can gather years of Palestinian literature and relay a statement, and you might be right to ask if it weren’t for the simple fact that I have not read one Palestinian book written during the past period that ignited the fire of my soul. Well, maybe I’m expecting too many particularities, but why is it that it’s easier for me to relate to a writer in Kansas that it is to one in the West Bank?

The stark reality is that we are hungry for personal stories, but not when they are written as part of our wider notion of representation. When the story is printed for the public to read, we always need it to look, feel, and sound a certain way, even if that obliterates it. Palestinian writers are always daunted by the potential of straying from their national identity, whatever that may mean. Every time I read a new Palestinian book, I feel the struggle to try to prove a commitment to the “cause” in the veins of the pages.

The individual, especially in the complex layers of literature, does not erase the collective, nor does it threaten the struggle for freedom. Moreover, it is not a selfish concept, simply because our entire existence is an individual endeavour. At the end of each day we are alone, and if that story is not worth telling, nothing is.

Maybe my contemporary argument is that we have lost our capacity for joy. The first time I had this epiphany was when I looked at a portrait taken of all the major jazz and blues artists in Harlem in 1958. During that time, Harlem was barely pulling through under the weight of oppression and brutality, and yet, those beautiful men and women stood around and took a picture that contained one thing more than any other, pure joy. Maybe it was because it was a good day, or maybe because each one of them played their instruments with such individuality that it helped them wade through that water.

Joy in Palestine is a modernist idea that we do not buy. Dancing at weddings or right through a checkpoint might make us happy, but happiness is fleeting, whereas joy is there to stay. Joy is not communal, but incredibly specific. It is the feeling of wonderment over what we are able to create with pens, hands, vocal chords, fingers, and minds. It is the quiet corner in our spirit that, when found, can never be lost or taken away. So let us put the narrative of injustice away and find the joy, if it’s the last thing we ever do.  

Tala Abu Rahmeh is a Ramallah-based young writer and professor of literature and creative writing. She holds an MFA in poetry from American University in Washington, DC. She is a regular contributor to Mashallah News Magazine, and her poems have been published in a number of magazines and books. She is also the cofounder of the blog The Big Olive: the Tales of Two Professors in Palestine, http://thebigolive.tumblr.com/. Tala can be reached at tala.ar@gmail.com.

See PDF www.thisweekinpalestine.com/i186/pdfs/article/contemporary_palestinian_literature.pdf

***

Tala Abu Rahmeh | Facebook

 Palestinian poet and writer

Originally from Yaffa, she was born in Amman in 1984.  

After moving to Ramallah, living through the second intifada,

 and graduating from Birzeit University, Tala moved to Washington
DC to study for a Masters of Fine Arts at American University.

Tala's work has earned recognition from Palestine to the US and she
has received the Eliav-Sirtawi Middle East Journalism Award and the 

Expressions of Nakba Competition 2008 Best Written Work Award. 

She will also be featured in the upcoming anthology 25 under 25, which is edited by 
Naomi Shihab Nye, and published by HarperCollins.

She has been a featured performer at the American Poetry Museum, Black Church Maraca, the Peace 
Mural, Katzen Arts Center at American University, and readings ranging from Mahmoud Darwish 
commemorations to Gaza events.

She is currently working on her first book poetry

My letter to the Washington Post RE Palestinian couple from Syrian refugee camp fulfills dream of marrying in the West Bank

 In this photograph made on Thursday, April 12, 2012, Palestinians wait with a horse to be used by the groom Thaer Qasem during his wedding with Maha Surougi in the West Bank village of Deir Istiya, near Nablus. The bride and the groom, Syrian citizens with Palestinian roots, who currently live in the Yarmouk Camp, were invited by the Palestinian government to celebrate their marriage in the West Bank. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

RE: Palestinian couple from Syrian refugee camp fulfills dream of marrying in the West Bank
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/palestinian-couple-from-syrian-refugee-camp-fulfills-dream-of-marrying-in-the-west-bank/2012/04/14/gIQAqGkOHT_story.html

Dear Editor,

I very much enjoyed the photos and the story "Palestinian couple from Syrian refugee camp fulfills dream of marrying in the West Bank." It was a happy story of dreams come true- made possible by the generosity of all who helped make that wedding possible, and all who happily celebrated and publicized the event.  Good to read some nice news regarding Palestine!

I did very much enjoy the article- but it is odd however, a tad discordant that there was no reference to the fact Israel controls all Palestinian borders and movement: "The traffic jam is a metaphor of our life stymied under Israeli occupation." Dr. Ali Qleibo Palestinians at the Israeli Checkpoint This Week in Palestine April 2012

I very much hope that the Israel/Palestine conflict ends soon-and that all Palestinian refugees who want to are able to return to rebuild their own lives, as well as a fully sovereign and free Palestinian state. Some of course will want to return to their original homes and lands in Israel, for that is what the right of return (a universal basic human right) really means. Return, real return, not more involuntary relocation and more forced transfer- and more home demolitions, and more forced exile. Men, women and children should not be denied freedom and rights and security and respect because they've been deemed the 'wrong' religion and thus are classified as a demographic threat, nor should tax payers (here and there) be forced to fund religious "scholars" and schemes.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab 

NOTES
"The mainstream Palestinian leadership in Ramallah has staked its future on a two-state agreement and an end to the occupation. Through the Arab Peace Initiative, the rest of the Arab world signaled unanimously that an Israeli-Palestinian final status agreement would also mean normalization between Israel and the Arab states. Plainly, most Palestinians, other Arabs and their governments would welcome an end to this destabilizing conflict." Hussein Ibish

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

Palestinian Freedom Riders

Palestinian Freedom Riders
Inspired by
the Freedom Rides of the US Civil Rights Movement
Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli settler buses to occupied East Jerusalem

Ibishblog
The weblog of Hussein Ibish

American support for statehood is Palestine's trump card

December 28, 2010 - 12:00am

NOW Lebanon
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=226069

The diplomatic effort to secure bilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, especially in Latin America, or upgrades to the diplomatic status of Palestinian missions in the West is a net positive, as long as it does not undercut Palestinian relations with the United States.

Last week, Ecuador recognized Palestine in its 1967 borders, and Paraguay has said it will soon join what looks to become a virtually unanimous South American recognition of Palestine. Reports suggest that the United Kingdom is preparing to upgrade the mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the international representative of the Palestinian people, joining France, the United States, Portugal and Norway, which have all already done so.

The Latin American recognitions obviously embrace Palestine as, at least in theory, a fully-sovereign state with fully normalized diplomatic relations, and imply that it should be a member state of the United Nations. The Western upgrades to PLO missions have raised the status of Palestinian officials to ambassadorial or near-ambassadorial rank, thereby treating the representatives of Palestine as if they were officers of an established fully-sovereign state.

All of this seems to have taken Israel by surprise. If that’s the case, it only underscores the extent to which many Israelis are living in a state of denial about the viability of the occupation and the plausibility of preventing Palestinian statehood.

It is true enough that Israel has the military means to continue to deny Palestinians independence, and to colonize East Jerusalem and the West Bank, through force of arms. But what some Israelis appear to have failed to comprehend is the international stake in ending the occupation.

The world has not turned against Israel. There is still an overwhelming international consensus that it is a legitimate member state of the United Nations. Even in the Arab world the appetite for a long-term project aimed at the dissolution of the Israeli state has been relegated to the political fringes. While many Israelis mistakenly conflate outside reaction to the occupation with that toward their state, misrecognizing opposition to the occupation as “delegitimization” of Israel, the rest of the world sees the distinction more clearly than ever.

This point of view is most importantly being embraced in Washington, certainly by the administration of US President Barack Obama and also by many important members of Congress. There is a virtual consensus in the foreign policy establishment surrounding the government that resolving this conflict by ending the occupation is essential, not optional, for the United States. Many Israelis do not seem to have understood or truly processed the extent to which the United States now sees Palestinian statehood as essential to its own national interests and therefore “inevitable.”

Israeli Industry, Trade, and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer recently tried to warn his fellow Israelis that, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the US will also recognize a Palestinian state in the coming year, and then we will have to provide explanations as to how it happened.” This is probably an exaggeration as the United States will almost certainly continue to push for an agreement, but it recognizes the deep-seated American determination for the creation of Palestine.

But it is also essential that Palestinians realize this as well. Pursuing recognition in Latin America and mission upgrades in Europe is normal and positive diplomatic activity. Insofar as it causes Israel discomfort, that is largely beside the point. However, Palestinians need to be very careful to protect their relationship with the United States and the emerging American consensus in favor of ending the occupation and establishing a state of Palestine.

For a start, the United States has been the single biggest donor to the Palestinian Authority and increasingly used cash treasury-to-treasury transfers meaning that the authority has been able to use much of this aid at its own discretion. More importantly, Washington is the only country that under the current circumstances could conceivably broker an agreement with Israel whereby the Palestinian state is actually established. Palestinians will not be able to force their independence on Israel; they will have to somehow get the Israelis to agree to it. And for that, American support, cooperation and leadership is indispensable.

Thus far the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the Latin American recognitions, and earlier this year engaged in its own diplomatic upgrade of the Palestinian mission in Washington. But it did not like being put in the position of blocking PLO efforts to upgrade its status at United Nations agencies. Apparently the United States understands the need for Palestinians to pursue increased international recognition at the bilateral level, but isn’t ready to allow the issue to become multilateral, for fear that this might compromise, or supersede, the negotiations that Washington is overseeing.

The bottom line is that Palestinians need to be extremely careful here. Recognition from Paraguay and ambassadorial status in the UK is highly desirable, but the American consensus in favor of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state is the only real, powerful and actionable political leverage the Palestinians have that can actually achieve the goal of independence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have a Question for Ibish?
Please submit a question that you would like Hussein to answer. ALL QUESTIONS WILL BE KEPT STRICTLY ANONYMOUS Submit a Question to Hussein Ibish