Torn Body, One Soul: A Collection of Palestinian Short Fiction

By Jamal Assadi

In Torn Body, One Soul, four Palestinian writerssons and daughters of a Palestinian people torn aparttell their own tales of their predicament, estrangement, and marginalization, their expectations and visions in a new, magnified voice, first to their people, then to their nation, and to a wider English-speaking public.

The seventh book in a series of volumes on Palestinian authors, this collection of short stories, translated and edited by Jamal Assadi, contains works of writers hailing from different regions in Palestine and abroad. Through their stories, authors Gharib Asqalani, Huzama Habayeb, Akram Haniyya, and Mahmoud Shukair depict a faithful picture of the various aspects of life in both Palestine and the Diaspora. Their narratives defy taboos, battle oppression, break open locked gates, and speak their truth.

Ranging from grave to light and humorous to sensual and remarkable, the stories in Torn Body, One Soul come from a diverse core of perspective, gender, and geographic location but provide insight into and a fragrance of a different civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475964721

Jamal Assadi

Jamal Assadi earned a PhD in English from the University of Newcastle. He chairs the Department of English at the College of Sakhnin and is a lecturer at An-Najah National University, Nablus. In addition to numerous articles in professional journals, Assadi has written several books.

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Copyright © 2012 by Jamal Assadi.

Cover Image by Salim Makhuli

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-6464-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6473-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6472-1 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922738

iUniverse rev. date: 11/29/2012

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One   Gharib Asqalani

A Crescent Cuddling a Star

Singing for a Full Moon….

Between Mutiny and Compliance

The Journey of the Male Ants

The Waves’ Deer

Waiting at the Heads of Absence

Part Two   Huzāma Habāyeb

A Narration that Triggers Warmth

Where… My Darling?

A Real Dream… Except a Little

A Strange, Clean… Body

The Distant Apples

Part Three   Akram Haniyya

Quiet Colors

The Defeat of Shāter Hasan

The Decision

The Sparrow’s Secrets

Part Four   Mahmoud Shukair

Brigitte Bardot’s Dog

Moratinos’ Eyes

Naomi Campbell’s Stride

Ronaldo’s Seat

Shakira’s Photo

Endnotes

To my children and wife

J.A.

Acknowledgments

For permission to use copyrighted material, I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to Gharib Asqalani, Huzama Habayeb, Akram Haniyya and Mahmoud Shukair. For permission to use copyright painting, I would like to thank the family of Salim Makhuli.

I highly appreciate the comments of my friends, Mr. Simon Jacobs, Dr. Martha Moody, Dr. Michael Hegeman and Mr. Iain Hollingshead.

My special thanks goes to my colleagues the Department of Arabic, Sakhnin, for their help in reading the selected stories.

And finally I thank my wife and children for their support and help.

Introduction

Torn Body One Soul is the seventh in a series of volumes on Palestinian writers. Compared with its antecedents, this present volume is a collection of short fiction by a group of Palestinian writers hailing from different regions, in Palestine as well as abroad. These writers, not necessarily representatives of the Palestinian narrative tradition, are Gharib Asqalani, Huzama Habayeb, Akram Haniyya, and Mahmoud Shukair. Asqalani, who was born in 1947 in Asqalan (now Ashkelon), is from the Gaza Strip; as such, he has lived through the major events and catastrophes the Palestinians have undergone: the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, Gaza’s occupation by Israel, the two intifadas, the emergence of the Palestinian Authority, and the Gaza War, known as Operation Cast Lead in Israel and as "the Battle of al-Furqan" in Gaza, during the winter of 2008-2009. Habayeb is a Palestinian woman who was born in Kuwait and presently lives there, in the Diaspora. Haniyya, from Ramallah, West Bank, is a political activist who has undergone the tough life experienced by the circle of those close to the Palestinian leadership; he was jailed in Israeli prisons, expelled to Algeria, and returned to the West Bank alongside the Palestinian leadership in the wake of Oslo Accords in 1993. Finally, Shukair is from Jerusalem, possession of which is sought by the Palestinian Authority as well as Israel.

The point of this collection, therefore, is to give these raging writers, sons and daughters of a Palestinian people torn apart, the opportunity to tell their own tales—the tales of their predicament, estrangement, and marginalization, their expectations and visions—in a new, magnified voice, first to their people, then to their nation, and eventually to a wider public who speak English.

These stories, arranged alphabetically by author, depict a faithful picture of the various aspects of life among Palestinian societies, in both Palestine and the Diaspora. Readers of this volume will come upon grave tales interwoven with light and humorous pieces, stories of sensual and divine love mixed with tales of the remarkable and the political.

Still, what really gives these Palestinian writers their unique aroma is that they manage to defy taboos, battle oppression, break open locked gates, and speak their truth. Each story comes from a diverse core in terms of perspective, gender and geographic location. There are very short stories alongside long ones. Each character is electrifying, inspirational and enthralling. Language is for the most part articulate and style is exceptionally fluid, gallant and glamorous. Casual readers of this volume will take pleasure in the fragrance of a different civilization, whilst academics concerned with Arabic literature will have the chance to walk unique trails of scholastic interpretation and analysis.

Jamal Assadi

The College of Sakhnin for Teacher Education

November 2012

Part One

Gharib Asqalani

(1947-)

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Asqalani, novelist, essayist, poet and short story writer, was born in Al-Majdal, Asqalan, Palestine on April 4, 1947.¹ He got his first degree in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Alexandria in 1969 and a diploma in higher studies in Islamic Studies from Cairo in 1983. He worked as an agricultural engineer, a high school teacher and the general executive of literary creativity in the ministry of Education, the Palestinian Authority.

He has received a few awards: in 1967 he was awarded the Short Story Prize from the University of Bethlehem and in 1992 he obtained a similar award from the Union of Palestinian writers. He has written nine novels and six collections of short stories many of which were translated into foreign languages.

A Crescent Cuddling a Star

What went wrong with us so that we left the house we’d built and returned to the earth to chew life the same as people did? Why were we taken by tales and driven to trace the steps of people leaving life to cross the tunnel of decay, believing wrongly that what they breathed was life?

Why did we keep the balcony waiting?

Ascend, oh mistress of dream. It is bread there, indeed; it is gratification there.

There is no thirst there for the soul who drinks from the spirit of the beloved until full. And this fullness is a flood that never dries. So ascend before tears appear in your eyes, before the eyeball calms and vision becomes blurred.

The ether, my mistress, is a state recognized by none but the lovers who experience two pulses in one soul. Passion for them is al-hulol, and al-hulol means that one lives in the other.² Have you ever tried al-hulol? There is no distinctness there, for whiteness is a feature of the ether.

Have you experienced flight while I act as your shade? I have, with you as my shade. It is like the original figure and its reflection in the mirror; have you ever stood in front of the mirror and seen me emerge in your image? Because I saw you in the mirror, and my image was lost for the authentic image, the reflection that was you.

Have you, my mistress, known the soul’s secret?

And have you recognized the secret of the real and its reflection when passion dominates us and we expose it? And do people recognize how we conduct our ceremonies at home? Or do people recognize how we pop out of the balcony constructed in the ether’s cheek?

Indeed they are fragments that cannot distinguish it, for life on earth is stolen by the noise of lust that guides people to lunacy. Yet, my mistress, when we come to the site of performance, we go through the paramount moments of lunacy. As I told you once, lunacy lies in running away, and for me running away signifies that I run from you to you, or to send you a bird of craving that precedes my arrival. And running away is to run away from me, to grab you and press you to my chest, where you become a lantern illuminating my darkness.

While running away, have you ever spotted a man walking with a lantern lit inside him? He who sees him does not recognize that this man carries a woman impossible to him, yet obedient on earth and available in the ether. So has my lantern realized that living on earth is frivolity?

Now I can hear the noise of panting in the arteries of your soul. I see you rising from a deceptive nap. So wake up, and leave behind your people’s folly. Remove the garments of masks and be like truth, naked. Mount the back of my folly and lead me there. Sit on the balcony like a star for now I cross time towards you. The desire for al-hulol calls in me. I race time before the moon reaches heaven’s face and sees me as I transform into a crescent embracing the star that is you.

Does the moon mock us? Or does he bless us both in folly and al-hulol?

You are the one that urges me to disclose my secrets.

You cut the heart in me until it beats bleeding. You suckle from my passion until intoxication, and you flood with the ecstasy of it. You transcend the culmination. Then, like a fearful deer, you run away.

I am not a hunter!!

How can I chase myself in you? But, indeed, you run away while I remain with my defeats, gasping my regrets.

If I lose you, I am lost.

And if I find you, I am misled.

Thus, I am the sufferer in both cases. I have nothing but my heart to mount. I unfold two wings and fly like a sphinx towards Allah’s Face, through the face of the moon, where I see a woman napping on her cushion, dreaming. I land near the balcony of her eyes, fold my wings and set fire to my soul’s lantern. I drown with the hymns of passion repeating in space. You see me being transformed into a crescent. I close my eyes for a moment and the woman becomes a star in the lap of the crescent.

Have you found out, my princess, how the ceremony of crossing was inserted in you?

How can I be ready for attendance while a hoarse sound sways playfully through my ears?

Hello! How are you, my friend?

I am preparing for torture mixed with joy.

Don’t evade the answer. How do you spend the days here?

The day here is the ceremony of escape.

Escape to dreams?

During escape I hear the moon talking with the sky’s stars about creatures living on earth practicing the game of passion. A virgin star dominated by passion asks coyly, Is passion on earth similar to that of space dwellers?

The moon looks at Allah’s Face then presses the star to his chest, opening her eyes to the light of the facts. The soul does not realize the meaning of passion if besieged by the body. Besides, creatures on earth are captives of their desires.

A star familiar with the fundamentals of passion asks, What is the attitude of our master, the moon, about a crescent cuddling a star in the ether?

The ether shelters the lovers’ souls.

Then they are sky dwellers who landed there.

Don’t be mistaken, oh, star! The sky dwellers do not land. Rather, they are two souls from earth who were released from the body’s captivity. They ran from the inferno of lust.

Suddenly the rope of air was cut. The clock passed away and she brought me here in astonishment. The air returned. Your wavering voice returned to ask, We were caught up by time before we started. What are you doing, my friend?

I’m writing a chapter of a star’s life. It lives in the crescent’s lap.

You laugh, although you desire it. You conceitedly conceal the shudder that just then crossed your voice. You play tricks because you are a riotous woman, and you cause torture.

How funny! You hang me on the rope of air and yet you engage in love.

The strength of the rope connecting us is faltering. I drown in silence, wallowing over the matter of a mutinous woman who has run away from me.

The narrator said that the woman troubled her companion with a question: What is the situation when the star sits on the lap of a crescent?

The crescent decorated itself with it as if an earring. He said, The star becomes a bird of yearning and it wishes…

Teach me how time is formed, my companion!

Open your palms in the air and pray!

Suddenly a flock of birds landed, all with white wheat in their beaks. They started to dance around a prince. They dispersed the wheat, which became bread. Suddenly, a great rain fell and flowed into a spring. The spring became a river on whose banks grew orchards of roses.

The narrator stopped to take comfort among the gaps between words. He sips coffee and reads surprise in the eyes of his listeners.

The woman chanted with a moan, Where are you? Did you return to land, and leave me hung on the rope of air?

The narrator has fallen asleep. He sought some comfort!

Don’t cause trouble with me. Remember I am the woman of this tale.

It is the journey, my companion, which ends before it starts. The kernel has raged its fill, so shut all the windows and live in your trampled body! Don’t wake your soul. Beware! Don’t release it into the paths, frost will dominate it. Torture will scratch it and the frivolous will bleed it. The city is a market for slaves and a bed for lustful women. The trade of the frivolous secures abundant earnings from the exchange of money with women’s bodies. They do not believe that the soul has a space different from the one they live in. They do not enter the areas of the self filled with panting and the yearning of waiting. They simply come to the world, and leave without victory. Beware, my companion! And resort to rest at the rage of core’s collapse. Retain what you can of the shuddering passion. Like the monks of temples, content yourself with a slice of bread donated by the loving white wheat. Retain the thirst of meeting. Search in the dream and be a woman or a city.

My companion chanted, I am a woman and a city. How can you see me when my paths and extensions are in your own eyes?

The narrator emerged from his silence and prepared himself. He wiped the arch on the string of