Democratic Palestine : 40 (ص 30)
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- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 40 (ص 30)
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The Peasant and the Land
in the Literature of Ghassan Kanafani
This is a translation of an essay written by Dr. Faisal Darraj on
the occasion of the eighteenth anniversary of the martyrdom of
Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian author, member of the PFLP’s
Politbureau and founding editor of its weekly magazine, Al Hadaf.
Ghassan Kanafani made an immeasurable contribution to both the
Palestinian revolution and Arabic literature before his life was cut
short on July 8, 1972, when Zionist agents booby-trapped his car
outside his home in Beirut.
When Ghassan Kanafani wrote his
famous study about the 1936 revolt in
Palestine, he did not hide his affection
for the peasant masses who were great
in terms of their simplicity and readi-
ness to struggle and sacrifice. Their
simple consciousness did not allow
them to pose many questions, rather it
was as if it urged them to wage the
battle without speculations of any sort.
Also for this reason they were bound
to a leadership that knew little about
their lives, and did not appreciate their
courage and sacrifices. That leader-
ship, as Kanafani stated, was commit-
ted to leading, not to fighting. It was
motivated by selfishness, assigning the
right to lead to the haves and martyr-
dom to the have-nots, after depriving
them of the right to make decisions.
Reading history gave Kanafani
knowledge of the peasants and their
patriotic role. It also made him feel
the bond between the peasant and the
land; for the peasant is adept in the
language of the seasons, and can read
in the book of the land without
stumbling as fluently as any studious
pupil reads his texts. In Kanafani’s
novel The Lover, we find a portrait of
such a peasant, who is exalted to a
mythical level. He walks on smoldering
embers with confidence, speaking to
the wind, seeking impunity in nature,
hiding in the foothills and the valleys,
chased by the British army that is
unable to catch him simply because he
is the symbol of the land; and it is
quite impossible to arrest the land.
The intimate relationship between
the peasant and the land makes their
separation tragic, because land, being
much more than just property, is a
mirror, an identity and a belonging.
Kanafani describes this in his short
story Until We Return. Here land is
not a mere landscape or a geographical
space; it is a living being. The fields
30
are full of stories and fables, and abun-
dant with details that constitute his life
and history; for land is a mirror of the
human being, in as much as the human
is a mirror of the land. He recognizes
its details as he does the minutia of his
own life.
In his collection of short stories
entitled Of Men and Rifles, Kanafani
writes about a peasant «who knows
every stone and every tree,» if not the
history of every tree, for the trees and
the stones are an appendage of him.
While they remain silent in his
absence, he, on the other hand, dies if
he is separated from them. His mem-
ory is the mirror of the land, while the
land is the substance of his memory. If
human memory is the sum of a per-
son’s character and if it determines his
behavior, the peasant’s disposition and
demeanor can only be corporeal
through his relationship with the land
which he ploughed and _ nurtured.
Thus, tending the land conceives the
peasant’s character and determines his
scope.
When the peasant leaves his land,
he carries a part of it with him. This
linkage of the human being and the
iand is symbolized by the planting of
grapevines by Kanafani’s character Um
Sa’ad wherever she goes. This sym-
bolic relationship makes the poor
Palestinian in Men in the Sun dream of
a house surrounded by grapevines. His
recollection of the olive and orange
trees is what motivates him to make
the fateful journey to Kuwait. The
peasant lives the land, and when he
leaves he recreates it or carries it in his
memory, dreaming relentlessly of
returning. In this framework, land
appears as a noble being that is
superior to other beings. It is the sym-
bol of stability and continuity, and it
provides security and a life of dignity.
Expressing the relationship bet-
ween herself and the grapevine, Um
Sa’ad says, «it does not need much
water,» because the plant, the marvel-
ous offspring of the land, derives its
water from the moisture between the
land and air. Thus the plant appears as
a secret which cannot be revealed.
Land is the profile of the human;
therefore defending the land is, in
essencé, defending the human. The
peasant who becomes a commando
does not carry a gun out of love for
fighting or for the sake of privileges,
but in order to restore that lost part of
himself. This made Um Sa’ad speak
about two kinds of camps: the first
symbolizes humiliation, submissiveness
and exile, while the second camp is
that of the commando, deriving its
beauty and integrity from the intimacy
between the Palestinian and the land
from which he was exiled. In Kana-
fani’s story Of Men and Rifles, the
episode does not evolve around the
rifle as an object of beauty, but rather
around the love of a human for the
land. This is essentially the longing for
justice and dignity, since land is a pre-
condition for an upright life, free
from alienation and exploitation.
In addition to the political form
which delineates Kanafani’s works, in
their essence they deal with positive
human values such as dignity, justice
and freedom. His novels and short
stories defend noble values. Indicative
of these values is the extensive role of
the peasant and his relationship with
the land, particularly his struggle and
sacrifice.
The peasant’s circumstances elicit
sympathy and respect. He lives a hard
yet simple life, struggling against
Democratic Palestine, July-August 1990 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 40
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