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Memories of a Land
| Article
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11680 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1994 |
1,796 Words |
| Author
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Trevor Le Gassick
Trevor Le Gassick is professor of Arabic literature in the
Department of Near East Studies at the University of Michigan.
He is the author of Major Themes in Modern Arabic Thought as
well as several translations of Arabic literature. |
ADHKURU
(I Remember)
Shakib Jahshan
Introduction by Sasson
Somekh
Jerusalem: Matbaat al-Sharq al-Arabi,
1992
Although the Palestinian-Arab literary community, both within Israel and abroad, has gained increasing international attention in recent decades, it is, of course, the hostage taking, the terrorist tactics, and the violence of the intifada that have garnered most of the news coverage relative to the Arab-Israel conflict. The public perception in the outside world has been, moreover, that the Palestinian leaders of the Arab opposition to Israel have been Muslim; the so-called Islamic fundamentalist movements, their support supposedly based in Iran, are similarly perceived as central to the opposition.
In reality, however, substantial numbers of the Palestinian intellectuals opposed to Israel and its policies are Christian. Hanan Ashrawi, the chief spokesperson for the Palestinian team negotiating with Israel over the past several years, is Christian, as are Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, the highly respected Cambridge-educated poet, novelist, and critic; Edward Said, the much-published Columbia professor of English; Antun Shammas, a novelist whose eloquent articulation of Hebrew caused a sensation in Israel and who has acquired a substantial readership in English translation; and Emile Habiby, the retired Knesset member and journalist who last year won Israel's most prestigious literary prize. These are only several of the many Christian Palestinian intellectuals who have gained international fame in recent years.
Similarly, in that most complex and prestigious field of Arabic cultural expression, poetry, the contributions made by Christian Palestinians have been substantial. Tawfiq Zayyad, for example, who has served as mayor of Nazareth, has created poems that have, to quote from Salma Jayyusi's fine anthology Modern Palestinian Literature (Columbia, 1992), "been adapted to music and have become part of the lively tradition of Palestinian songs of struggle."
Shakib Jahshan, a Christian Arab poet also of Nazareth, is of the same generation as Zayyad. Like the work of so many of the Arab intellectuals living within Israel since 1948, his poems have generally been published only in the Haifa communist-oriented journal al-Ittihad. Consequently, they have
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