Democratic Palestine : 33 (ص 27)
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- Democratic Palestine : 33 (ص 27)
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which clearly illustrates the frustration of the Arab individual
who, before the defeat, had believed that he was advancing
towards a new society, based on Arab unity and social pro-
gress. The defeat came and took away all dreams and illusions.
The atmosphere of defeat is also present in The Dreary Time
by the Syrian novelist, Hayder Hayder, which depicts the
alienation of the Arab individual after the defeat - this aliena-
tion which would freeze his will and enable the defeat to con-
tinue. The June defeat not only defeated the political regimes
or some of them, but it forced every Arab to live with his own
defeat.
Something similar is found in A Thousand and Two Nights
by the Syrian novelist, Hani Al Rahib, and in both Six Days
and The Return of the Bird to the Sea by another Syrian
novelist, Halim Barakat who lives in the US. These novels do
not present a mere description of battle and defeat, but bring
forth a comprehensive critique of the totality of the social
phenomena which gave birth to it, including political
despotism, marginalization of the masses, backward mentality
and the absence of both individual and collective social
responsibility.
While revolving around the June defeat, its causes and ef-
fects, the Arab novel became a political novel par excellence,
because its basic subject is accusation of the existing
authorities, considering them the basic factor responsible for
the destitution of the Arab reality, which is manifest on many
levels. The role of these authorities is destroying the collective
social will and reducing the whole society to a political elite,
unable to realize its existence unless it negates the whole socie-
ty. Thus, the question of despotism is the principal subject
which has governed the Arab novel for the last twenty years.
One of the most important novels dealing with repression is
the masterpiece of Jamal Al Ghaitani, Al Zaini Barakat,
which revived the Arab literary heritage to reconstruct a cur-
rent subject and present an image of the typical despot. There
is also August Star by Sunallah Ibrahim, which condemns
every authority that converts man into a mute, muscular force;
as well as Allaz by the Algerian novelist, Al Tahir Wattar,
which exposes the relationship between bloody terror and the
ideology of religious fanaticism; and the Egyptian novel, An
Eye with a Metal Lid, by Sharif Hatatah, which depicts the
forms whereby man is destroyed in prison, whether under a
monarchy or republican rule.
Perhaps the novel which approaches total documentation,
very close to an autobiography of every Arab political
prisoner, is East of the Mediterranean by A. Munif, which
presents the horrible image of the slow death of the political
prisoner who is, if not dead within the prison walls, chased
after being released by the security service to guarantee his real
or allegorical death. The predominance of repression does not
allow the Arab novelist to make much distinction between the
small prison surrounded by high walls and equipped with its
hangmen and instruments of torture, and the huge prison
which is the whole society or homeland. In such writing, the
Arab novelists do not defend the right of man to a free life to
the same extent that they expose the destructive results of
Democratic Palestine, June 89
repression which converts society into terrified human atoms,
seeking individual salvation and viewing the terms of
homeland, community, society, etc., as something foggy, with
no sense. While building authority, repression thereby under-
mines the very base of society.
Coming close to the daily life, to the reasons which have
produced and reproduced defeat, the Arab novel has observed
the sweeping social transformations in the Arab world during
the past twenty years, characterized by defeat in the struggle
against Israel, civil war in Lebanon, the disintegration of the
political parties of rationalism and democracy, and essentially
by the rise of the petrodollar, especially the Saudi one. This
latter factor has not only bolstered the forces of reaction and
obscurantism, but has succeeded in some Arab countries,
through massive financial input, in restructuring the class and
social framework. In other words, it has managed in some
countries to produce a sociopolitical and cultural balance
which would have been impossible without the lever of
petrodollars.
One of the most significant novels to have provided an ac-
count of the social changes is The Epidemic by H. Rahib,
which is one of the most important Arab novels in recent years.
It depicts the tragic course of the Arab dream of liberation
from its predominantly romantic and freely innocent beginn-
ing, up to a society of lust, greed, extreme egoism, etc. A
course that begins with complete innocence ends, after the at-
tainment of power, in comprehensive sin. Power was a dream,
being a way to realize freedom and justice; the same power has,
after seizing it, become an instrument for repressing both
freedom and Justice, very close to complete sin or an epidemic
ready to destroy man.
There is also The Distant Echo by Fuad Tekerli, which
describes the social transformations in Iraq in the sixties,
which brought the Baath Party to power and constituted the
beginning of the historical defeat of the communists. In this
novel, we do not read the destiny of certain individuals but that
of a society where the new is defeated by the old. Then there is
Disintegration, a novel by the Algerian author, Rashed Bou
Jadra, that deals with the reasons which deprived the Algerian
Communist Party of its expected historical role, due to its in-
ability to grasp the national specificity. Feast for the Seaweed,
by H. Hayder, is a similar work; it depicts the tragic end of the
revolutionary forces in Iraq and Algeria.
The June defeat is shown in the Arab novel as the beginning
of a whole series of defeats. After the defeat of the Arab
military, the defeat grows to include all the positive human
values, as if the Israeli victory were a victory for all that is
obscurant and inhuman in the Arab world. Death is therefore
the natural end of every person who defends noble human
values. The ordinary civil servant in The Pains of Mr.
Maarouf, by Ghaeb Tuma Fereman, moves towards death.
The Iraqi revolutionary dies in exile in Feast for the Seaweed.
The same fate befalls the ordinary man in Distant Echo. The
artist in The Tragedy of Dimitrio, by Hanna Mina from Syria,
perishes because the cult of quantity and money leaves no
room for either art or the artist. A similar destiny awaits the
individual who dreams of the revolution at a time of social
disintegration in The Epidemic by H. Rahib.
Individual as well as collective death remains the primary >»
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- Democratic Palestine : 33
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- يونيو ١٩٨٩
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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