{"id":8318,"date":"2022-05-15T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T07:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=8318"},"modified":"2024-05-20T01:10:08","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T23:10:08","slug":"being-there-being-here-palestinian-writings-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/being-there-being-here-palestinian-writings-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Being There, Being Here: Palestinian Writings in the World<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being There, Being Here: Palestinian Writings in the World<\/em>, by Maurice Ebileeni
\nSyracuse University Press<\/a> (2022)
\nISBN 9780815637653<\/p>\n

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Brett Kline<\/h4>\n

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In a comparative study of works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction by writers who identify as Palestinian, Maurice Ebileeni argues that this cultural and linguistic identity must include authors and academics of a multitude of diaspora origins, born and raised outside of historic Palestine.<\/em><\/p>\n

The parents or grandparents of these writers were forced to flee the region by the soldiers and politics of then nascent Israel in the 1947-48 war, and many fled the war before it arrived at their doorsteps, in what the Arab world has since called the Nakba (the catastrophe). Others left earlier, during the British Mandate period or even the Ottoman Empire, or later, and so these authors grew up writing in other languages, be it English, Spanish, Italian or Danish, while the descendants of Palestinians who remained in what became Israel wrote in Arabic or Hebrew.<\/p>\n

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Being There, Being Here<\/em> is published by Syracuse University Press<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In fact, when the reader considers the authors of Palestinian origin whose work is examined in Being There, Being Here<\/em>, it is apparent that those who do not write in Arabic, especially Anglophones, far outnumber those who do, with the possible exception of poets. This is what Ebileeni calls the \u201cpolylingual framework\u201d of Palestinian identity.<\/p>\n

The \u201ccultural diversification\u201d of Palestinian identity is largely what Ebileeni is after here, and it is, anthropologically, a fascinating if unsurprising development, as so many Palestinians have been exiled from their family’s country. Just as English ceased to be the language only of the British and the Americans and the Australians and New Zealanders, but a world language, Palestinians, by becoming citizens of other nations and writing in a language other than Arabic (or Hebrew in rarer cases), are becoming more universal. Could this be a good thing for the Palestinian culture, making it impossible for Israel to completely marginalize it? If Palestinian writers are getting books published in English, French, Danish, German, Spanish and other languages, doesn\u2019t that reinforce Palestinian identity?<\/p>\n

An all-important component of the scripted narrative of this identity is \u201cel awdah\u201d \u2014 the return to the homeland. But for Ebileeni, it is the narrative of an identity without borders.<\/p>\n

The narrative, Ebileeni writes, \u201ccertainly stores passions of allegiance and delineates the sense of a distinct moral being across borders, but owing to the appearance of linguistically distinct Palestinian writers around the globe, its monolingual character does not adequately encompass\u2026literary and cultural productions\u2026of both the diaspora and the homeland. The long-term implications of displacement overflow the edges of this curricular national framework and necessitate the creation of new spaces to expand the scope of Palestinian literature and cultural production.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the on-going cultural diversification of what is often a shared, scripted identity needs that polylingual framework. While fascinating for the literati, Ebileeni\u2019s study can be a tough read for the lay reader, including myself, a journalist based in Paris with a certain amount of experience working in Palestine and in Israel. But it is well worth the effort.<\/p>\n

Maurice Ebileeni himself was born in Copenhagen of Palestinian parents from what is now the prosperous Israeli northern Galilee town of Tarshiha, linked by administration to Ma\u2019alot, close to the Lebanese border.\u00a0 He writes that he grew up a Dane loving all things Danish, but also vacationed with family in Tarshiha every summer. He studied in Israel and married a girl from Tarshiha, and moved there, his home now for decades. He teaches in the department of English language and literature at the University of Haifa. Ebileeni is in effect Palestinian, Danish and Israeli, regardless of his passports. This is a privileged position in academic, cultural and political arenas. The Israeli government does not accord all foreign-born Palestinians the right to live in Israel, even when they are married to a so-called \u201clocal girl\u201d and come from a friendly western European or North American country. He never mentions this, but it might have something to do with him being from a Christian family.<\/p>\n

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Who are these authors who are at once considered American, British, Chilean, Danish and also Palestinian, according to Elibeeni? The list is long. I think it is more easily read as a list than put in paragraph form, as Ebileeni himself does.<\/p>\n