Der Roman, der hier vorgestellt wird, ist von einer US-Bürgerin und Palästinenserin geschrieben worden, die als Flüchtlingskind von Palästinensern als Waise in unterschiedlichen Betreuungssituationen aufwuchs, bis ihr mit 13 Jahren eine Sozialisation als US-Bürgerin ermöglicht wurde, die ihr eine erfolgreiche Karriere als Journalistin und Schriftstellerin ermöglichte. Mit 30 Jahren hat sie Palästina ihre Ursprünge kennen zu lernen versucht und ist darüber zur Aktivistin für eine Gleichberechtigung der Palästinenser geworden. Man erwarte also keine ausgewogene Darstellung des Nahostkonflikts.
Durch das, was gegenwärtig im Gazastreifen geschieht und das, was sich anbahnt, ist er von erschreckender Aktualität geworden.
Doch anders als viele gegenwärtige Publikationen verbreitet die Verfasserin keine Hassbotschaft, sondern versucht, beide Perspektiven: aus palästinensischer und aus israelischer Sicht zu zeigen. Da das gegenwärtig von beiden Seiten kaum noch versucht wird, stelle ich hier ihren Versuch vor. Nicht weil ich ihre Perspektive übernehmen wollte, sondern um auf die Ernsthaftigkeit des Versuchs aufmerksam zu machen. Der Nahostkonflikt, der sich anders als der Nord-Süd-Konflikt nicht in eine multipolare Konstellation wandeln wird, wurde wiederholt, wenn sich eine Lösung anbahnte, künstlich wieder belebt, zuletzt durch den Überfall mit Geiselnahme durch die Hamas im Oktober 2023. Am Schicksalhaftesten wohl durch den Mord an Rabin, der das Oslo-Abkommen vorangetrieben hatte, durch einen israelischen Nationalisten.
Angesichts der Vorgeschichte des Konflikts scheint er so gut wie unlösbar. Dass eine denkbare Lösung durch einen Israeli vereitelt wurde, hat Züge einer klassischen Tragödie.
Zu dem ursprünglich geplanten Titel der Buches The Scar of David
die Erläuterung einer KI mit Kommentar von mir.
Mehr zum Nahostkonflikt: in der Wikipedia, in diesem Blog, aus aktueller Perspektive und in Fontanefans Schnipsel
Susan Abulhawa
Prelude (2000)
AMAL WANTED A CLOSER look into the soldier’s eyes, but the muzzle
of his automatic rifle, pressed against her forehead, would not allow it. Still,
she was close enough to see that he wore contacts. She imagined the soldier
leaning into a mirror to insert the lenses in his eyes before getting dressed to
kill. Strange, she thought, the things you think about in the district between
life and death.
She wondered if officials might express regret for the “accidental”
killing of her, an American citizen. [...]
I. El Nakba (the catastrophe)
1 The Harvest (1941)
IN A DISTANT TIME, before history marched over the hills and shattered
present and future, before wind grabbed the land at one corner and shook it
of its name and character, before Amal was born, a small village east of
Haifa lived quietly on figs and olives, open frontiers and sunshine.
It was still dark, only the babies sleeping, when the villagers of Ein Hod
prepared to perform the morning salat, the first of five daily prayers. [...]
Kapitel 4 S. 28ff.
As They Left
1947–1948
[...] Less than a day passed before Israeli soldiers reentered the village. The
same men who had received the offering of food now marched through,
pointing guns at the people who had fed them. Hasan, Darweesh, and other
men were ordered to dig a mass grave for thirty fresh corpses. The village
men were able to identify all but two of them. Hasan somberly wrote the
names of his fallen friends and countrymen on the sleeve of his dishdashe
as he hollowed the earth in such shock that he was unable to grieve. Al
Fatiha. Dust to dust . . .
Stunned—is this a dream?—their nerves cracking, children crying, the
villagers were tractable.
“Gather the valuables. Assemble by the eastern water well. Move! This
is only temporary. Go to the well,” ordered a voice from a loudspeaker like
a hidden god, distributing destinies. The sky still infinite. The sun
unforgiving. Dalia put the gold in the chest pocket of her thobe and
gathered the valuables as told, Ismael on the left hip, Yousef in the right
hand.
“Mama, I want Baba to carry me,” Yousef pleaded.
“Go, habibi. Allah be with us all.” Dalia released his little hand and the
boy jumped on his father. Allah be with us all.
The area around the well teemed with faces, all creased and twisted with
alarm. But for the fright, Yehya thought they could have been gathered to
prepare for the harvest. The harvest, he thought.
“Now what?” Haj Salem wondered.
Darweesh and his pregnant wife were the last to arrive. He approached
stooped, one foot after the other, leading his heartbroken mare, Fatooma.
Ganoosh, Darweesh’s delight and Fatooma’s lifelong companion, the horse
that once had broken Dalia’s ankle, had been killed in the fighting and it
had taken much persuasion to pull Fatooma away from the massive carcass
of her mate.
Now what? [...]
II. El Naksa (the disaster)
Kapitel 8: As Big as the Ocean and All Its Fishes 1960–1963
I SPENT MUCH TIME IN my youth trying to imagine Mama as Dalia, the
Bedouin who once stole a horse, who bred roses and whose steps jingled.
The mother I knew was a stout woman, imposing and severe, who soldiered
all day at cleaning, cooking, baking, and embroidering thobes. Several
times each week, she was called to deliver a baby. As with everything else
she did, she performed midwifery with cool efficiency and detached nerve.
I was eight years old when Mama first let me help her deliver a baby. [...]
Kapitel 9: June in the Kitchen Hole1967
Die Erzählerin ist Amal, die Tochter Hanans,
sie hat den Krieg in einem Loch in ihrer Küche im Lager überlebt.
Das
Loch war mit einem Platte zugedeckt und hatte ursprünglich dazu
gedient. Die Waffen, die ihr Vater dort versteckt hatte, unauffindbar
zu machen. Jetzt hat sie zusammen mit Huda und einem Baby, was ihnen
anvertraut worden war, dort gelegen und hat in der Dunkelheit nur die
Geräusche gehört, die von dem Angriff der Israelis für sie zu
hören waren. Gesehen hat sie mal die Beine von israelischen
Soldaten. Als sie etwas aus dem Loch heraus kommen, werden sie von
einer jordanischen Nonne entdeckt, und ihnen wird behelfsmäßig
geholfen. Sie werden nach Bethlehem in die Geburtskirche Isas
gebracht, wo sie in eine Badewanne steigen dürfen.
„The
church where Master Esa was born had been shelled and still
smelled
of fire. Inside, hundreds of children, most of them orphaned by the
war,
sat on the floor. No one spoke much, as if to speak was to affirm
reality.
To remain silent was to accommodate the possibility that it all was
merely
a nightmare. The silence reached up to the cathedral ceiling and
cluttered
there, echoing sadness and unseen mayhem, as if too many souls
were
rising at once. We were existing somewhere between life and death,
with
neither accepting us fully.
Sister
Marianne arrived, carrying an urn of water.
“Follow
me, dears. You’ll need to bathe together to save water,” she
instructed
us as Huda and I walked behind her to the washroom. The good
nun
poured the water and left us. We were so bewildered that we got into
the
metal tub with our filthy garments. The warm water traveled over my
body
like a loving embrace, whispering a promise of safety.
Huda
and I disrobed in the tub and sat across from one another.
Browned
water separated us, but our legs rested together. Face to face, we
stared
at one another’s thoughts, seeing each other’s terror and knowing
that
we
had crossed some unmarked boundary beyond which there could be no
return.
The world we knew was gone. Somehow we knew that. We cried
silently
and moved into each other’s small arms.
We
lay that way, in the quiet of a foreboding for which we knew no
words.
I looked at my toes protruding from the water. Chipped red polish. It
had
been only one week since we had passed around the nail polish, giddy
over
something that had made us feel older. Now, in that bathtub inside
the
church
where Master Esa was born, Huda’s nails and mine still bore the
chipped
red remnants of that day. I calculated one week as the distance
between
girlish vanity and hell.
Slowly,
I let my body slide, pulling my head beneath the water. There, in
that
silent world, like the stillness I had heard after the blast that had
torn
the
kitchen and killed Aisha, I had an odd desire to be a fish.
I
could live inside water’s soothing world, where screams and gunfire
were
not heard and death was not smelled.“ [...]
Kapitel 10 S.74 ff.
Forty Days Later 1967
LOOKING OUT THE BROKEN window in our devastated camp, the sun
was still hidden from view, but the sky was already ablaze with the purples
and oranges that announce its coming. Amazingly, the cocks had survived,
keeping to their regimen of crowing, unaware of the portentous shadow that
hung over us. As always, I was up before dawn. Sunrise belonged to Baba
and me, when he would read to me as the world around us slept. It had been
forty days since the war had ended and Sister Marianne had returned us to
Jenin and I had found Mama with a broken mind. Baba and my brother
Yousef were still missing.
Soon, the melody of the adan came through the air, into our makeshift
homes, to call the faithful to prayer. Decades later, after a life in exile, that
unmistakable cadence of the Arab soul would summon a calm certainty in
my heart that I had made the right decision to return to Jenin.
Although it was still dangerous to venture outside, little Samer, our fiveyear-
old neighbor, was running through the refugee camp yelling
incoherently, his high-pitched voice slashing the stillness of “curfew,”
which was now a fact of our lives.
I guessed that the poor child was reliving the terror of recent events. It
would not have been surprising, for lately most of the young ones wailed in
their sleep.
“They’re naked,” Samer panted, struggling to order his thoughts. “They
need clothes. They told me.”
Little Samer sounded hysterical and people began to stir. Exhausted and
bewildered eyes peered from windows. Old women cracked their
improvised doors for a look.
“What’s going on?” called a voice down the alleyway.
“Are we at war again?” asked another. In these moments of confusion,
despair, and anticipation, the rumor pulsed like a wave of hope through the
living dead.
People began to shout, “Allaho akbar!”
Faces appeared at the windows of every shack and more cries were
heard as excitement surged through the camp. From a window opening
blackened by fire came a euphoric note: “The Arab armies are coming to
liberate us!” But the people remained hesitant, for we could see Israeli
soldiers perched on their lookout posts. Arrogant conquerors, they.
Murderers and thieves. I hated them as much as I hated the sea of white
cloth fluttering over our homes—signs of our humiliating surrender.
But as quickly as the euphoria rose, so it fell when Samer began to make
sense.
“Enough! There is no more war. The boy says our sons are alive,” came
a man’s voice, quieting the war songs. It was Haj Salem. He survived! I
wondered where he had taken refuge.
Haj Salem had seen it all. That’s what he used to tell us youngsters. (S.75)
III. The Scar of David (S.86ff.)
Kapitel 11, S.87 ff.
A Secret, Like a Butterfly 1967
WATCHING DAVID, HIS BROAD shoulders bent over the dinner table,
Jolanta could scarcely comprehend how much time had passed since the
first day Moshe had brought him to her, a frightened, wounded little bundle.
She thought of that beautiful creature, now a man kissing her cheek and
saying, “I love you, too, Ma!” He was so small in her arms then; she would
hold him to suckle at her dry breasts when no one was around.
She had doted and fussed over him. Made him dress in too many clothes
in the winter, something he had tolerated until the age of seven, when he
had realized he could refuse to wear what she picked for him. She had
adored even his defiance and could barely conceal a smile when he would
assert his independence.
She always worried and he always said, “Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll be fine.”
When he had his first sleepover at the age of eight, she worried that he
would feel homesick and she made him promise to call no matter what time
of night. During his first weekend camping trip when he was ten, the list of
her worries had been so long that even she couldn’t remember it now. She
worried that he had not eaten enough breakfast before school, that he would
hurt himself playing football, that a girl would break his heart. She worried
when he went to his first party, where she knew there would be alcohol.
And when everything seemed fine she worried that there was something he
was keeping from her that she should be worrying about.
She worried that someday he would find out that he was not really her
son. Jolanta worried most of all the year David turned eighteen.
She did not want her boy to join the army. But she had no choice, nor
did her son. Israel was a tiny haven for Jews in a world that had built death
camps for them in other places. Every Jew had a national and moral duty to
serve. So in June 1967, when his country went to war, David already had
served in the Israeli army for one year.
The army sent him north to the Golan. He was strong, ready to serve his
country. Ready to fight.
He was part of the battalion that was supposed to provoke the Syrians
into retaliation so Israel could take the Golan Heights. General Moshe
Dayan instructed them to send tractors to plow in an area of little use, in a
demilitarized zone, knowing ahead of time that the Syrians would shoot. If
they didn’t start shooting, David’s unit was told to advance the tractors until
the Syrians were provoked into shooting. They used artillery and later the
air force became involved. But on the last day, when Israel attacked the
USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean Sea, David was sent home because of an
injury to his hand.
He had been wounded by friendly fire that had burned his right palm.
Jolanta’s heart sank when she learned that her son had been injured, and she
could find no peace until David returned home.
She threw her arms around him. “My boy! Let me see your hand.”
“It’s okay, Ma. They fixed it all up.”
She inspected him to be sure, unable to thank God enough for her son’s
safety. “Are you hungry?” Jolanta was delighted to watch David eat the
kreplach she had made.
My heart won’t survive if anything happens to him. Somewhere in the corner
of her love, the secret lay in wait. She had not intended to keep the truth from David.
Since the day he arrived in July 1948, everything she was or had been had converged
to make her simply David’s mother. How he had come to be her son
remained unsaid, a harmless butterfly in a field of love.
Now, seeing his bandaged hand, she could not bear the possibility of
losing her son. Jolanta had no control over his serving in the army, but she
could keep the truth hidden. He’s my son, that’s the only truth he needs, she
decided, caging the butterfly. (S.87/88)
