illusion-of-return.md (11031B)
1 +++ 2 title = "The Novel of Palestinian Disillusionment" 3 date = 2024-11-01T17:25:51-07:00 4 [extra] 5 book = "The Illusion of Return" 6 author = "Samir El-Youssef" 7 finished = 2024-10-23 8 rating = "★★★☆☆" 9 +++ 10 11 **Author's Note:** I write everything in a conversational tone, so I 12 doubt anybody reading this will notice much difference, but this review 13 was originally a presentation. It is one of two I will give in Russell 14 Berman's wonderful [Zionism and the Novel]. It was first written in [iA 15 Presenter]. The title I have given the review here on the website was 16 taken from our syllabus. 17 18 ## Let's begin 19 ~~Alright close your laptops and let's do this for real.~~ To get you up 20 to speed, let me tell you succinctly everything you need to know about 21 the book. 22 23 Let us start with the fact that it's semi-autobiographical. Though it is 24 a novel, and elements are fictionalized, the life of our protagonist 25 broadly echoes the trajectory of our author. 26 27 Which is a great intro to our 28 29 ## Brief List of Characters 30 31 Beginning with our Author-Protagonist. He's Palestinian, born in 32 Lebanon, and lives in London. He has no name! We do know a lot about him 33 though. 34 35 Ali has the same origin story, lives in the US, and is drug buddies with 36 the protagonist. Ali is the closest of the bunch to the protagonist, 37 because the other two basically thought that the protagonist wasn't 38 mentally up to snuff. 39 40 Maher has the same origin story as well. He is also a Communist. 41 42 George is a Lebanese Christian, still in Lebanon as far as we know, and 43 a big fan of abstract philosophy (specifically Heidegger). He is the only non-Palestinian of the bunch. 44 45 ## That's the Gang Of Four 46 In the prologue, we witness the protagonist approaching the fifteenth 47 anniversary of his departure from Lebanon. He gets a call from Ali, who 48 has a layover in London on his way from the US back to Lebanon, and he 49 wants to say hello. This throws the protagonist into a whirlpool of 50 emotions, as he had pretty much severed contact with his past up until 51 this point. 52 53 The real meat of the novel is narrated to us in a series of flashbacks 54 to the last night the gang of four spent together, revealing 55 progressively more and more about their overlapping lives and 56 relationships. 57 58 Finally, in the prologue, we get to witness the discussion between the 59 protagonist and Ali in the Heathrow Airport and a little bit of the 60 latter's perspective on things. 61 62 And, before we address the fun socio-political commentary of the novel, 63 we can take a small more-mundane dive into one of the big questions of 64 the course: 65 66 ## Is The Personal Political? 67 El-Youssef answers clearly that, whether we like it or not: yes. 68 69 The stories in this book are deeply tragic. 70 71 Our protagonist had a sister named Amina. Amina was physically abused by 72 her other brother Kamal, and ends up killing herself. The protagonist is 73 haunted by her memory, and his family refuses to even say her name. 74 75 Obviously, this is deeply tragic. It also exists in a political context! 76 Amina shoots herself after Kamal sees her kissing a man and threatens to 77 kill her himself for dishonoring the family. The freedom of women in 78 society—regretfully, a political issue. The man Amina was kissing was a 79 fellow member of a Palestinian resistance movement. Her family found her 80 membership in that deeply troublesome, primarily because of their 81 uniform of military fatigues. After her suicide, the movement covers up 82 the cause of her death and honors her for dying in the fight against 83 "the Zionist enemy." All deeply political! 84 85 Ali's had a brother Sameh. Sameh was gay, and because of this a faction 86 of Palestinian militants forced him into working for them as some form 87 of punishment/conversion therapy (obviously political). Sameh is 88 eventually caught smuggling arms into Israel and shot. The IDF traced 89 his dead body and the van he was driving back to Ali in Lebanon, and 90 force Ali to become an informant. Super political! And of course, very 91 personally tragic! Ali and his brother are made pawns and stripped of 92 their agency. When his brother is eventually killed, Ali experiences a 93 mix of emotions—he is devastated, but also grateful because of the shame 94 that Sameh's sexuality brought upon him. Super horrible! 95 96 You'll also note that unlike the other three, Maher's intro didn't have 97 a note about what he's currently up to. That's because, on the night at 98 the cafe that we witness, Maher is kidnapped and murdered. He is 99 kidnapped and murdered in part for political reasons—he's a 100 communist—but also for the personal implications that political fact has 101 created—his assailant is the bereaved son of a man who's factory was 102 destroyed at the hands of a communist revolutionary Maher helped 103 radicalize. 104 105 George hides his personal struggles, for political reasons. His family 106 lives together, but he reveals to the protagonist on their walk home 107 from the cafe that his parents have been divorced since he was a child. 108 He has struggled with love for his whole life, having grown up in an 109 ice-cold household. But he can never reveal any of this, or stir up any 110 great troubles or emotions, because of his precarious position in the 111 community: a Christian amongst Muslims, a Lebanese amongst Palestinians, 112 a third party caught in a Judeo-Islamic war. Not seeking to anger any 113 dangerous people with guns, he lives a life disconnected from his 114 personal struggles. 115 116 In this book, and in real life, the personal world has profound 117 political implications and vice versa. 118 119 And now for the fun part. 120 121 ## Palestinianism 122 I made up this word, and its going to live on the screen while we talk 123 about what El-Youssef wants us to learn and believe. Because this book 124 is a commentary on the Palestinian right of return. There's significant 125 and explicit commentary on it within the book—the protagonist wrote 126 (sort of) a thesis on the subject—including this lovely nod to the 127 audience: 128 129 > "'It's a one-way journey!' he told me," said Ali, "'As for those who 130 > claim to return to a place where they never were,' said Bruno, 'they 131 > are simply confusing the symbolic and metaphorical with the possible 132 > and actual.'.... [T]here is no such thing as the right of return... I 133 > shall write [this] as an essay or a story, which I could call *The 134 > Illusion of Return*. 135 136 Now, last year, in a wonderful course that I do not really recommend 137 anybody take because it's quite boring and not that wonderful called 138 [HISTORY81B: Making the Modern Middle East][HISTORY81B], I read a book 139 called [*The War of Return*]. Unlike the course, this I highly 140 recommend. It was written by two prominent Israeli leftists and contains 141 an in-depth history that is largely unknown, and records some important 142 oddities related to the right of return and the issue of Palestinian 143 refugees. 144 145 History in 1948 must be judged within its context, and not against 146 modernity. Much was different back then, and population exchange and 147 territorial partition were viewed as legitimate ways of solving ethnic 148 conflicts in ways that they are perhaps not any longer. We can see this 149 happening all over the world and at a much larger scale than in the 150 Levant, such as in Greece and Turkey or India and Pakistan. So the 151 illegitimacy—or even unique nature—of the circumstances surrounding 152 Israel's founding and the birth of the Palestinian refugee issue is 153 suspect from that perspective. 154 155 And beyond that, Palestinian refugees have been treated radically 156 differently from any other class of people. They are in fact not 157 governed by the UN committee that deals with refugees, but by their own 158 UNRWA—which you have likely heard about in the news recently. (As an 159 aside, it's not incorrect to say "their own" in that sentence, as the 160 vast majority of UNRWA employees since its inception have been 161 Palestinians). They are hereditary where no other refugee group is, 162 creating 5 million refugees from an initial displacement of around 700K. 163 Their status is not surrendered when they gain citizenship to their new 164 host countries, leading to Jordan's population being majority (~70%) 165 Palestinian refugees. The entire population of the West Bank and Gaza 166 have been considered refugees since 1948, despite living in territories 167 allocated for their own future state. The "refugee camps" that most of 168 them live in—and into which three of our four main characters were 169 born—look far from the camps of the standard Western imagination, but 170 are in fact fully built-out neighborhoods attached to or themselves 171 forming major cities (see: Beirut and Jenin, respectively). 172 173 Furthermore, attempts to resolve the refugee issue by traditional 174 means—resettlement, economic empowerment, and rehabilitation, as seen 175 elsewhere (including some of the UN's most successful projects, such as 176 the reconstruction of Korea)—have been intentionally shuttered. Please 177 see these two quotes: 178 179 > The refugee issue, claim Schwartz and Wilf, is cynically manufactured 180 > and perpetuated by Arab leaders. 181 182 > And let's face it... the Arab countries are not the most hospitable 183 > places, especially for Palestinians. 184 185 This first quote is actually from [a book report][*The War of Return*] I 186 wrote on *The War of Return*, and the latter from El-Youssef in *The 187 Illusion of Return*. 188 189 The issue of Palestine can be resolved. States can be formed, and given 190 borders. But the right of return—this is crazy important, and something 191 I realized in reading *The War of Return*—does not refer to the ability 192 of Palestinians to immigrate to the future territory of a Palestinian 193 state (presumably in the contemporary West Bank and Gaza) but rather to 194 the whole territory that once comprised the British Mandate, including 195 the modern State of Israel! 196 197 This is the issue of Palestinians, not Palestine. And the broader Arab 198 world does not want to resolve it. Because resolving it means closure. 199 It means continuing forward in time. It means that Jews will have 200 sovereignty over a slice of the Middle East. 201 202 Our protagonist begins many things throughout the book, but never 203 finishes them. He also struggles with time and presence, doubting 204 whether the past really happened at all. His parents left Palestine for 205 Lebanon, and he left Lebanon for London—but try as he might he cannot 206 truly move on. The world around him forces this anti-closure upon him, a 207 relic of his past—Palestinian-Lebanese Ali—literally showing up on his 208 doorstep as he arrives at his anniversary of emigration. 209 210 But he is wise enough to know that you cannot undo the past. 211 212 Which! Brings us to: 213 214 ## The Jewish Question 215 Though not the one you're familiar with. El-Youssef doesn't believe in 216 return. The Jewish question I pose to you all now is thus: how can we 217 reconcile this position with the reality of Israel—a return that worked? 218 What, if anything, makes the case of the Jews different? 219 220 [Zionism and the Novel]: https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=COMPLIT37Q 221 [iA Presenter]: https://ia.net/presenter 222 [HISTORY81B]: https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=HISTORY81B 223 [*The War of Return*]: @/reading/war-of-return/index.md