Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

My feelings about this book grew from a subsoil: the long-term suffering of a people, part of them displaced and all under threat of eviction from their own land of Palestine. The almost-certainty of a second catastrophe, of their expulsion from their country, their homeland given over to ‘settlers’, is the novel’s theme. Further, it seems to be the nation’s destiny, at this moment in time. Kattam uses the fortunes of one family to depict the historical events through which we are now living; they are atypical as aristocrats, Christian, landed, formerly wealthy, in possession of a fine house that has been added-to by generations, overlooking woodland and distant villages. In the family’s demise, signified by the nightly encroachment by those who finally will come in number to occupy an estate which, as foreigners, they can only see in terms of property. And yet they will never truly possess it.

If we must be cockroaches, then so we shall be: innumerable and eradicable. We’ll slip into the gaps and crevices of their lives, and they will always know, deep down, that we’re here.

Throughout the story the physical setting – pasturelands of the West Bank, the streets of Bethlehem at cold, clear midnight, is a place of adoration, and one that must be defended. Ancestrally, while some have chosen submission to alcohol or to illicit affairs, others have chosen to fight, and be bold about their loves.

The story is narrated by Faysal. Having left Palestine as a child for a boarding-school upbringing in Europe, he now returns to a deserted, crumbling estate, easy prey to settlers. The long-dead figures from the past are there, only as portraits on the wall. One of them however has returned corporeally, though nevertheless a ghost. She is his grandmother Narwal, who brings with her, besides the family’s history and his duty towards it, her extravagant middle-eastern cookery. For while the traditions have succumbed to poor health, early death or other dissolution, both she and her younger son Ayub have been fighters for the cause, and separate to their military spells, have resolved to combat oppression by living life to the fullest.

This seems at first to be a sad tale of alienation, division and retreat. Faysal has wished for his own annihilation, along with that of his people. He should return to his adopted European home, as he is urged to do by his lover. Already he has implicated himself with the settlers through a chance, fatal shooting. They will undoubtedly return. He is in the grip of the house, the former palace, and the deep past – and identity – that it contains. In that memory, of the ‘scared little kid’ that he was, was also the child who resisted, and the charred remains of the buildings that, as a little boy he left, are testament to that.

The novel, for me, was about the attempted eradication of a people, their memory and therefore their past, by the great forces of colonialism. Naturally a pessimist, I do not see any immediate outcome to the struggle in Palestine. To have hope, though, is a different thing. This I share with Faysal, in the end brought to resistance by the strength of the noble traditions that have formed him.

The miracle is that the light is in us forever.