This week I read Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani. Kanafani was born in 1936, but left Palestine for Beirut in 1948 with his father along with a massive number of Palestinians after Israel was declared a sovereign state and new territory lines were drawn, exiling the Palestinian people who were indigenous to the land. The exact land that is considered Palestine is very highly debated, as Israel has many settlement camps in Palestinian territory. Palestine comprises two areas: The West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west; by Egypt on the southwest and by Israel on the east and north. The West Bank is bordered by Israel in the north, south, and west; and by Jordan and the Dead Sea in the east. Palestine is deemed a “non-member observer state” by the United Nations and in 1988 Palestine declared independence from Israel.
The author of Men in the Sun, Ghassan Kanafani, was a journalist and teacher in Kuwait and Beirut before he began his work with the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He was seen as a spokesman for the organization and ran their political newspaper. Kanafani was killed in 1972 when a bomb was placed in his car. There is controversy over who placed the bomb, either the Israeli Secret Service or members of another Palestinian political group.
At his core Kanafani fought for the liberation of Palestine and its people. He believed that “the Palestine problem could not be solved in isolation from the Arab world's whole social and political situation” and he used his fiction writing as a tool for the transformation of society.
Though he writes directly about Palestinians and he wrote “to serve the cause of Palestine”, his stories have a universal appeal that has made him a popular and esteemed figure.
In this novel the stories included were written between 1956-1969. The novella, Men in the Sun, takes up the majority of the text. It centers three Palestinian men who are trying to smuggle their way from a refugee camp in Iraq to Kuwait so that they can get jobs and earn money for their families. The three men are: Abu Qais who wants to make a better life for his wife and son, Asaad who is running from an Uncle who wants him to marry, and Marwan who wants to make money to send to his mother.
After each man gets into a quarrel with the man running the smuggling business they each meet Abul Khaizuran, who promises that he can get them to Kuwait. Abul Khaizuran will hide the three men in his water tank lorry. Since he works for a prestigious man no guards ever stop to search his truck.
Inside the lorry is complete darkness and oppressive heat, though the travelers only hide in the lorry when they reach the checkpoints. At the last checkpoint Abul Khaizuran has to go inside the office and get signatures in order to move into Kuwait.
While in terms of plot this is a simple story the motivations of the men and the complicated nature of Abul Khaizuran give it depth and complexity. One quote that stood out to me was, “the huge lorry was carrying them along the road, together with their dreams, their families, their hopes and ambitions, their misery and despair, their strength and weakness, their past and future, as if it were pushing against the immense door to a new, unknown destiny, and all eyes were fixed on the door’s surface as though bound to it by invisible threads”.
Unfortunately none of the men make it to their destination. As Abul Khaizuran buries the men he thinks, “why didn’t they bang on the walls of the tank”? This short story encompasses the plight of refugees and all of the forces working against them.
There were many other stories, but one that stood out to me was “Letters from Gaza”. In this story a man returns to Gaza from a trip to Kuwait, only to find that his young niece is in the hospital after being injured in a bombing. In a letter to his friend in the U.S.A. that he was planning to leave home and join, he describes their city and breaks the news that he cannot leave Gaza and his family.
He visits his niece and to make her feel better describes the treats he has brought her from Kuwait, though they don't really exist. He tells her of the red pants she wanted so badly, but it does not cheer her up like he expected it to. It is then revealed that she lost one of her legs in the bombing.
He tells his friend that he can never leave, but that his friend should return so that they can fight together. As he walks out of the hospital he sees Gaza in a new light, “everything in this Gaza throbbed with sadness, which was not confined to weeping. It was a challenge; more than that, it was something like reclamation of the amputated leg”!
Overall I enjoyed Kanafani’s writing and would like to read more of his work. These short stories gave me insight into the plight of the Palestinian people, but also insight into their solidarity with each other and the love they have for their country.
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