- Ghassān Kanafānī (1936 – 1972, Palestine / Israel) – ʿĀʾid ilā Ḥayfā (1969, Returning to Haifa & Other Stories, 2000) describes the story of a couple, Saʿid and Ṣafiyyah, who returns to Haifa after the 1967 defeat (see 1967 al-Naksah) in search of their son who they lost during the 1948 Nakbah (see 1948 al-Nakbah). They find the city completely alien to their memory and their lost son Khaldūn adopted and raised by an Israeli family. Khaldūn, who serves in the Israeli army and is now named Duv, renounces his Palestinian parents (reference) (also in C: Cities: 1948 Palestine: Haifa).
- Muḥammad Barghūṭi – Raʾaytu Rām Allāh (1977, English trans. I Saw Ramallah, 2000, 2003 and 2004). In this memoir that is also part essay and part poem, the poet / author Barghūṭi describes his return to Palestine after years of forced exile after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank in 1967. He interweaves the changes he sees have taken place in Ramallah and Deir Ghassanah, the village he spent his early childhood in, with his life outside of Palestine through (reference).
- Rabīʿ al-Madḥūn (1945-, Palestine) – al-Sayyida min Tel-Abīb (2009, English trans. The Lady from Tel Aviv, 2014) and Maṣāʾr: Kūnshirtū al-Hūlūkaūst wa al-Nakbah (2015, English trans. Fractured Destinies: A Novel, 2018).
In al-Sayyida min Tel-Abīb, Dana, a Jewish actress living in London, travels to Tel Aviv and is seated in the plane next to Walīd. Their conversation covers issues of identity, cultural memory, and shared humanity. After arrival the novel follows Walīd’s journey into Gaza after crossing several checkpoints. After 40 years of absence Walīd, is shocked to see its changes: destroyed villages, villages whose name has become Hebrew, Israeli settlements, and increased Islamic conservatism (reference) (also in I: Israel and Palestine: West Bank and Gaza).
Maṣāʾr is written in four parts each representing a concerto movement dealing with the topics of the holocaust, the Palestinian exile in 1948 (the Nakbah), and the Palestinian right to return. It follows the story of the half Palestinian / half Armenian Ivāna who, with her British husband, left Acre for England during the Nakbah. After her death the novel portrays Ivāna’s daughter, Jūliyya and her Palestinian husband Walīd, who travel to Acre to fulfill her mother’s dying wish: returning to her childhood home. The novel won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016 (also in 1948 al-Nakbah).
- Ibrāhīm Naṣrallah (1954-, Jordan / Palestine) – Shurfat al-Ḥadhayān (‘Balcony of Delirium’, 2006). This novel tackles the paradox of how “the particularities and the complex inter-relationships of the many times, locations, and moments of a Palestinian nation can be narrated as a comprehensive national experience” (reference). By using multiple narratives styles and (inter) textual forms to tell the story of its protagonist, an almost middle-aged man who returns to an unnamed city from work in the Gulf where he had been living and sending remittances to his wife and children, the novel reflects the scatterdness of the Palestinian community (reference).
- Sayed Kashua (1975-, Israel / Palestine) – Aqob Aḥar Shiynwyim (2017, English trans. Track Changes, 2020). Written in Hebrew, this novel centers Saeed, a ghostwriter mostly writing for elderly Israelis who lives in Illinois. Saeed receives news that his father who he hasn’t spoken to in fourteen years is on his deathbed (reference). He embarks on a journey back to his home in Tira, Israel, leaving his family in the USA. But upon arrival he feels more displaced and alienated from his family than ever. By his father’s hospital bed, he remembers buried traumas of family clashes and thinks of his own strained relationship with his children (see also in F: Children and Family Life: Parent and Child: Father and Child).
- Walīd al-Shurfā (1973-, Palestine) – Wārith al-Shawāhid (‘The heir of the tombstones’, 2017). The Palestinian al-Wāhid recalls how during the June 1967 war his father and grandfather were evicted from their village Ain Hawd, when the Israelis claimed it and turned it into Ain Hood. Learning of his father’s death, Al-Wāhid returns to his old family house, but is not allowed to enter by the artist that currently living there. The hero then visits a nearby café, but when he sees the old sign belonging to his grandfather’s house in the toilet, he removes it, resulting into a fight with the police and him accidently killing one of them.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Sumaya Alhaj Mohammad and Dania Meryan. 2019. “Ghassan Kanafani’s ‘Returning to Haifa’: tracing memory beyond the rubble”, Race & Class 61(3): 65-77, p. 67
- Anna Bernard. 2014. Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine. Liverpool University Press: Liverpool, p. 67
- ʿĀdil al-Asṭah. 2017. “Adab al-ʿĀʾidīn/ al-Zāʾrīn: Ṣurat al-Yahūd Rabʿī al-Madhūn: al-Sayyidah min Til Abīb.” www.al-ayyam.ps, 9 November 2017 https://www.al-ayyam.ps/ar_page.php?id=f8b3506y260781318Yf8b3506 (last accessed 19 November 2021)
- Nora Parr. 2015. “Unbounded Space: Inter-textual Palestine in Ibrāhīm Naṣrallāh’s Balcony of Delirium.” MEL 18(1): 41-61, p. 44, 45
- Priyanka Lindgren. 2020. “‘Track Changes’ by Sayed Kashua.” World Literature Today 94(4): 4, p. 4