Democratic Palestine : 45 (ص 36)
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- Democratic Palestine : 45 (ص 36)
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abandoning his personal aspirations for the sake of a greater
and nobler cause.
What concerns us here, however, is that in both cases, the
male’s attitude was not so positive from the beginning —
indeed, it was negative — and that, more significantly, the
positive change is brought about by a female’s influence.
Nadia’s «sisterless leg» and the «big tear» in the eye of the
hero’s wife in «Till...» do the whole job, symbolically.
The same thing can be said of «The Land...». It is the
women who first see the organic connection between Jaffa and
the oranges, who first conceive the immensity of their disaster
and who, automatically and unwittingly, trigger a
corresponding sentiment in the heart of the hero.
In fact, these are not the only works of Kanafani where this
peculiar moral «mechanism» determines the whole action,
underlies the hero’s moral choice and, quite often, defines the
theme(s). It is uncertain whether he himself was aware of this
mechanism, but whether or not he intended it, it is at work ina
considerable number of his works, including the ones we are
examining now. Its presence does not so much reflect a certain
feminist belief held by the writer as it, indeed, mirrors a
cornerstone of human life, namely, the crucial, though often
subtle, moral force exerted by females on the behaviour of all
members of the community, especially the males.
Again, it is uncertain (and unimportant to us) whether the
writer was conscious of this peculiar force: the artist, whether
we think of him as one who reflects or reconstructs reality, or
even as one who creates a reality of its own, need not be
conscious of all the subtle laws that govern the reality he is
dealing with. It is well known, for instance, that Shakespeare is
rich in «psychology,» but few would contend that he was aware
of the various and complex psychological laws governing the
behaviour of his characters.
But so far we have not explained what we mean by the
peculiar moral force we ascribed to the woman in the previous
paragraphs. To do so, we have (first) to consider the
particularity of the female condition, and (second) to examine
the way this particularity is manifested in the works in hand.
Let us take the first point. Most people now recognize not
only the sacrifice and extraordinary responsibility that are
inherent in the woman’s condition, especially at the
reproductive level, but also her crucial role in determining the
psychological, emotional and sexual lives of her children. It is
wrongly assumed, however, that her role decreases as they grow
up. True, their biological and emotional dependence on her
does decrease; yet she continues to influence the males around
her at a higher plane of experience — morally. The point is that
while her biological and psychological effect on her children,
especially during the early phases of their existence, is easily
accessible to empirical observation and analysis, her
tremendous and equally crucial, moral effect on the adult,
especially the male adult, seems to defy the empirical approach
which dominates the science today. Thus, the point we are
dealing with here seems to fall within the province, not of
science, but of moral philosophy, which conceives of the
methods used by scientists as useful and necessary, but by no
means adequate for analyzing and obtaining a comprehensive
understanding of experience in its entirety, rather than in bits
and pieces. Yet, it must be asked here: What has all this to do
with Kanafani’s stories?
This question brings us to the second point. It has been
shown that in each of the stories, the male’s positive response to
experience — such as the hero’s decision to remain in Gaza — is
stimulated by a female’s positive initiative. Likewise, the
male’s sudden realization of the immensity of his loss in «The
Land...», which is symbolized by his crying over the oranges, is
triggered by the women’s action, The key question to be asked
here is: is it mere coincidence that it is the women, rather than
the man, who first see the oranges, which epitomize their
homeland, their Paradise Lost? If so, why do they, rather than
he, go and buy them, although he could do so more easily as
they were sitting «amongst the luggage» behind, whereas he
was sitting «beside the driver» in front? Apart from
convenience, the customary thing in our culture is that, in such
a situation, it is the man who undertakes the purchasing. Far
from being a «realism gap,» Kanafani’s reversal of roles, while
giving the female the chance to exert her peculiar moral force
on the male, is essentially his way, as an artist, of saying that
convenience and custom, which determine what the female
ought or ought not to do at the social level, are irrelevant to an
experience whose focus is a value greater than convention, such
as patriotism. A major philosophical implication of this is that
the female’s power increases as we move from lower to higher
planes of experience.
Again, when he initially decides to leave his orchard, the
hero of «Till...» suddenly changes his mind upon seeing that
powerful tear in his wife’s eyes. Her eye, which secretes tears at
the lowest (physical) level of experience, is here a source of
moral radiation at the highest. Similarly, Nadia’s «sisterless
leg,» though a physical handicap for her, is yet a generator of
moral power for her uncle.
The woman’s moral force
It is interesting to note that, in all these stories, the female’s
amazing ability to influence the male’s moral behaviour has
nothing to do with her/his strength or weakness, nor is it due to
any social prestige. Let us read again this quotation from
«Till...»:
He pulled his wife by the hand and set off, but before he reached the gate
of his field, he drew close to her and was stunned by a big tear in one of her
wide eyes...(emphasis added)
A little later we come to know that this tear stimulated the
greatest moral choice in all his life. Notice Kanafani’s shrewd
use of the verb pulled to signify the male’s tendency to impose
his will on the female, to have the upper hand in «doing
things.» Immediately after, however, we read:
Democratic Palestine, August 1991 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 45
- تاريخ
- أغسطس ١٩٩١
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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