novelists-from-palestine

"All attempts to bring writers and artists, even feminists, from both sides together have failed. And why? Because the Israelis feel superior, rather than equal to us. That is one reason. The other is that they don't feel connected to the Third World in any way. They are connected with the first or the Western world. And third, they are deeply racist. So I ask myself, how can a person grow up in such an atmosphere without being infected? It isn't easy to deal with them...The truth is that there is a complete divide between us and them, geographically, politically, and culturally. The only Israelis we Palestinians have any contact with are the soldiers. That is the reality."

"I usually start by choosing the plot. According to that plot, I choose my characters. When I choose my characters, it becomes easy to follow them wherever they go and live with them or be them. I do not choose characters if I am not familiar with their backgrounds. I select them from real life. If they are historical characters, I study their biographies very well and then let my imagination take care of the details. This is the game of writing fiction."

"(Who are some of the writers you enjoy reading and re-reading?) SK: Dostoevsky and Simone De Beauvoir. Since I was a young teenager, I started reading them and I never stopped...Those two writers affected me deeply. But this is not the whole truth. The truth, the real truth, is that the writer, any writer, is made by all the readings she or he makes. We are influenced not just by one or two or ten writers. We are influenced by everything we read. Whether we are aware of this fact or not makes no difference. We read, we devour. We digest what we read and grow. Just like food. Without food we never grow. Without reading we never write."

"On the whole, the situation for Palestinian women today is just as it was. There have been no real changes, though there are of course more educated women, more female doctors, university lecturers, artists, and writers. But they come from the elite classes and live in a completely different world from the masses. The truth is that the Islamist movement has had a great influence on the masses over the past 30 years, and has robbed women of many of the few small victories that we had achieved. So what do we need? First and foremost, we need better political leadership, a leadership that takes women seriously and introduces laws that entail that women are treated as equals. Personally, I am working for liberation and human rights for all. Despite the many setbacks, I still believe that I have had a certain influence. I was the first feminist in the Arab world to write about women's issues in a literary form. I have had some influence on educated women, but I have not had much influence on men-and it is men who dominate society here, at all levels."

"(What are the greatest obstacles to equality for women?) There are many, many obstacles in our way. The Israeli occupation, naturally. Our own traditional leadership. Poverty and illiteracy. There is also a dangerous lack of real communication and friendship with the Western world. The West views us with suspicion and we are suspicious of them. I think that communication between different cultures is essential to development. I myself have studied in the West, I have lived and worked there and can, with my hand on my heart, say that I have no exaggerated dreams about Western culture. But I am absolutely convinced that the Western world has a lot to teach us. I only wish that you were not so biased, as then the world would be a better place. At least for us!"

"Israelis are always minor characters in my books. Why? Because in reality we only come into contact with soldiers and other representatives of the occupation. We have minimal contact with Israeli civilians. How can I write about somebody or something I don't really know? Despite my best intentions and feelings for them as fellow human beings, I can't capture them as full-rounded figures. After all, what is literature? It reflects life, society, and the people who live there. Not in the same way that a photograph does, of course, since the author's personal feelings and opinions will be blended in. An author also strives to transcend reality and make it more beautiful and valuable. You could say that I have one obligation in my writing and that is to reflect the lives of people living under the occupation. My literature is highly political, as our lives are dominated by politics. But it is not dry or rigid, as you might easily imagine. My characters are full of life. They are flesh and blood. You can feel them, smell them, and touch them."

"Our culture does not mean that much to me. It is not sacred. I am very critical of it. It has to change. We cannot develop unless we are strong enough to face our own weakness, head on. And Islam, well, Islam is a part of our culture."

"(As a feminist author, do you feel that you have a special responsibility?) Well, the fact that I am a feminist author with a feminist vision of the world does of course make my literature very critical-and the criticism is targeted at both my own society and Israel. I can see that both societies are oppressive in different ways. The reality in which I find myself at any given time is extremely complex and that means that it is very difficult for me to write without watching every step I make. I cannot allow myself the luxury that other writers may have elsewhere; I cannot just rattle off something for no other reason than to satisfy my own feelings and dreams. I really feel that I represent my people, despite my critical views on our culture and many of its beliefs and values. So yes, I do feel a responsibility to change some of those beliefs and values. My position means that I am constantly in conflict with our traditional leaders, not just political, but also religious and social leaders.""

"I’m open to where life leads me."

"There was a certain period of time a person could either be inside or outside of Palestine. But now our being is always mingled with so many places at the same time."

"In the last twenty years, the separation between Palestinians and Israelis has become much more severe than before. You feel the inequality. You feel the privileges—it’s how the state works in a racist system, how certain groups are privileged over others. The question why it should be like this comes up at an early age—to a child, the situation is just incomprehensible. You are surprised—how could this be? Is there something wrong with me?"

"Differences between people are used to commit injustice—that was an early lesson about racism."

"If you are listening, it becomes so natural that you care, and you create a connection of care toward others that is not limited to the borders of the nation-state"

"People may gain from literature what they cannot get from their own lives. It’s not escapism but rather a kind of openness."

"this landscape has an alliance with language; they exist together and actually can haunt you, despite any attempt at their erasure."

"I always ask myself what kind of terrible things I could commit. This is a question for any human being."

"I am for polyphony: there can be many, many different languages. Considering all these current divisions between ethnicities and religions, it’s madness to have a state, and I really don’t understand the joy in forcing people together."

"I only write fiction in Arabic because this language is a witch—an amazing, funny, crazy, generous, and forgiving witch. It has allowed me everything. It is the space of the most intimate freedom I have ever experienced in my life."

"Once my engagement with any text as a writer finishes, and it's finally published or appears in book form, I never return to it as a reader. I do not know why the idea of reading my own published texts repulses me, but I know that reading books written by others is a lifeline."

"Linguistic erasure on maps is where you first experience the betrayal of language; the erasure of Palestine from the map continues today. Your linguistic consciousness from an early age is built on reading these omissions. This is something I think I’ve been concerned with since the first text I wrote."

"to “think about” Palestine is already a position of privilege that I would not like to engage with. My concern with Palestine is a personal one, not a literary one. It forms my literature; but my literature is never about Palestine. It is rather within and from Palestine as a condition of injustice; of the normalization of pain and degradation."

"It is within such structures that I feel a grand narrative can exist, like a dictatorship—solid, like the worst tyrant."

"I’m not striving for abstraction, but precision—where the words that want to be in the text can find their place in it."

"I’m fascinated by what borders try to prevent, and why. And sometimes by how their meaning and the perception of them shifts from one situation to another."

"As one lives in a place that seems like a punishment for a crime they didn’t commit, it raises harsh questions in relation to simple ideas like justice, or it’s absence, at an early age...maybe the realization of the repeated injustice that one cannot escape in the context of Palestine was the first force to push me early on into literature."

"Femininity to me is about the opposition to power and order in the sadistic fashion."

"I always find a place with words to create parallel possibilities where dehumanization thrives. However, in real life, you need to neutralize all your emotions and become numb, but then writing neutralizes that neutralization. Other people don’t have words for their rescue. But something else, a walk, a pavement, a tree, a stone, endless minor objects that turn into the place where they practice their humanity, a place where oppression cannot reach or destroy."

"The oppressor wants first to destroy your wish to live, and then you neutralize it by acting as if this is normal. But then you keep a secret hidden zone that the oppressor finds so minor that they wouldn’t bother to destroy."

"When I published my first novel, I was not so clear about what I feel or believe. Through the years, more than 40 years, I developed as a writer, as a feminist, and as a deeply politicized and humanized person. Thanks to my patience and will. Through the years I learned and learned, and I am still learning."

"I think that readers of novels usually read for enjoyment and a little inspiration and knowledge. Readers of novels, I think, are not skeptical like those who read works of social sciences or history. They already know that what they are reading is fiction despite the fact that, at times, that fiction might have elements of truth in it. Even when that fiction is realistic, they know that the reality they are reading is not 100% real. It is a reality that is seen through the eyes of the novelist or created by the novelist. And this is what I consider bliss because it gives me, and gives other novelists, an open space where we can play with reality, or have fun with reality, or ignore reality altogether."

"I was nothing and became something. Others can learn from that, especially women. Is it worth trying? I think it is."

"I am a committed writer or maybe I am an obsessed writer. I am obsessed by occupation because I live it. I witness the atrocities of occupation. I witness and live through those atrocities and still am living them. My characters represent what I experience, what I feel, what I think and believe. My characters, in a way, are me. I am them, whether in this novel or the previous ones or after."

"Three cities run in my veins: Jerusalem, which I consider to be the place of my soul’s identity and existence; Jericho, the city that colors my heart and my passion; and Hebron, which I believe is the source of my creative imagination and my personal archive of popular folk tales, like those about Al-Shater Hassan."

"If you look for them, you can find hero’s everywhere, in ordinary people."

"I’m interested in finding the relation between war and the human being. The beauty of the small pleasures in life, subtle things."

"My project is to rewrite the palestinian history through the eyes of women."

"(about Fadwa Tuqan) one of the most important poets of Palestine. She wrote a book that is like the bible of the palestinian feminist movement. When she was 12 years old a boy threw flowers on her. Her brother saw it, and it was a big crisis for her family. They told her ”You will stay in the house until you die.” Her brother Ibrahim Toquan was one of the best poets in Palestine at the time. He didn’t let her out of the house, but he taught her to write. After 20 years of house arrest she left the house. She was a rebel, and she established the poetry of love and loneliness in Palestine."

"I believe the image is what can unite the world."

"[T]hinking, thinking and thinking. My heart not feeling that which my mind thought, nor my mind ceasing to dominate my soul, and every thought like a hard block of lumber."