{"id":15503,"date":"2017-09-18T07:37:05","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T11:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15503"},"modified":"2017-09-18T07:37:05","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T11:37:05","slug":"35-years-later-memory-and-violence-in-literary-sabras-and-shatilas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/35-years-later-memory-and-violence-in-literary-sabras-and-shatilas\/","title":{"rendered":"35 Years Later: Memory and Violence in Literary Sabras and\u00a0Shatilas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dia al-Azzawi\u2019s iconic \u201cSabra and Shatila Massacre,\u201d about which you can read more on Jadaliyya<\/em><\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0via\u00a0MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0 & the always excellent Arabi Literature (in English):\u00a0on<\/em> 0<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s now been thirty-five years since the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon\u2019s Palestinian refugee camps. It is a site to which literature returns and returns; still attempting, if not to make sense, to make connections, to reformulate the questions. As every year, ArabLit revisits:<\/i><\/p>\n

Most of the literary representations of the massacres in two Palestinian refugee camps\u00a0don\u2019t aim\u00a0to hold a mirror to the three days of horror, which took place in 1982, between September 16 and 18.<\/p>\n

Particularly more recently, such as in Ezzedine Choukri Fishere\u2019s Embrace at Brooklyn Bridge<\/em>\u00a0(now in translation by John Peate, 2017),\u00a0<\/em>literature\u00a0places this terrifying slaughter\u00a0into a context of other moments. In\u00a0Embrace,\u00a0<\/em>for instance, Sabra and Shatila rub up against the September 2001 attacks in New York City.<\/p>\n

All the massacres are less-explored by non-Arab Anglophone writers, despite arguments that the US bears some responsibility.<\/a>\u00a0However last month saw the release of a new novel by Canadian journalist Linden MacIntyre,\u00a0The Only Caf\u00e9<\/a>, which focuses on the massacre and how people put their lives back together.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0works below begin with portraits of the moment and move into questions of how we understand it, how it was and has been exploited, how it changed in our memories, and how it changed and changes our understandings of self.<\/p>\n

A few from the many:<\/p>\n

Jean Genet\u2019s\u00a0\u201cQuatre heures \u00e0 Chatila\u201d (\u201cFour Hours in Shatila<\/a>\u201d)<\/strong>. Genet was among the first outsiders to witness the immediate aftermath of the massacres, and he wrote about this experience. \u201cSometimes a dead child blocked the streets: they were so small, so narrow, and the dead so numerous. The smell is probably familiar to old people; it didn\u2019t bother me. But there were so many flies. If I lifted the handkerchief or the Arab newspaper placed over a head, I disturbed them. Infuriated by my action, they swarmed onto the back of my hand and tried to feed there.\u201d Translated by Daniel R. Dupecher and Martha Perrigaud.<\/em>\u00a01983.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jean Said Makdisi\u2019s\u00a0Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir. <\/em><\/strong>The events of Sabra and Shatila are refracted through Makdisi\u2019s personal memories; the events will continue to reappear in memoirs, seen through different experiences and imaginations. 1991<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Bahaa Taher\u2019s\u00a0Love in Exile,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab. <\/em><\/strong>A novel about living in exile, including how one processes news while in exile.\u00a0<\/em>1995.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I ran to turn on the television. The soap opera Dallas was on. I left the television on and turned on the radio. I turned the dial to the different stations, but there were no newscasts. There were music and songs everywhere. But while I was turning the dial quickly and incessantly, the soap opera on television was interrupted. A female announcer with an expressionless face came on: \u201cWe\u2019ve just received a special report from Beirut. We advise sensitive and seriously ill people not to watch this report.\u201d\u00a0(Translated by\u00a0Farouk Abdel Wahab.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Elias Khoury\u2019s\u00a0Gate of the Sun,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Humphrey Davies.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Khoury, here as elsewhere, is obsessed with the intersection of memory and violence, and how they change one another.\u00a0Dunya, a mutilated girl who survived\u00a0the Sabra and Shatila quicklime pits, recites her memory of the events to \u201cserve\u201d the Palestinian cause as a \u201cfund-raising tool.\u201d Her memory is stripped of any real meaning, either for her or for others, as she moves from\u00a0meetings to\u00a0TV shows to repeat what she saw \u2014 or now remembers that she saw \u2014 during those two days.<\/p>\n

There is also a group of French artists who come to Shatila because they want to stage Quatre heures \u00e0 Chatila.<\/em>\u00a0(Translated by Humphrey Davies.)\u00a0<\/em>1998.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Radwa Ashour\u2019s\u00a0Spectres,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Barbara Romaine.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>This is also a memory of the memory \u2014 as now the memories are not reflected directly onto the page, but appear through other memories. Ashour\u2019s co-protagonist, Radwa Ashour,\u00a0remembers how she was not following the news about Sabra and Shatila as events unfolded, because\u00a0she was in transit between Budapest and Cairo. In one of the narrative\u2019s more emotional moments, she tells of her frustration at not having been attentive to the news, despite her acknowledgement that this attention would not have changed the outcome.<\/p>\n

Yet attention means that you are involved in the event, that the person who has been killed is yours and that you belong to him. Then again, no\u2014not altogether. \u2026 Perhaps it is similar to what my mother-in-law felt every time she thought of her son Mounif\u2026 She tries to remember what it was she was doing at 11 o\u2019clock on Monday night. Was she asleep? How could she have been asleep? The idea nearly drives her mad, sleep becomes a guilty act, and the fact that she doesn\u2019t know doesn\u2019t mitigate, but rather intensifies the guilt.\u00a0(Translated by Barbara Romaine.)\u00a0<\/i>1998.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mai Masri\u2019s\u00a0Children of Shatila.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Masri gives a camera to two children in Shatila to ask questions and explore lives. As noted below, the film is available on YouTube<\/a>.\u00a01998.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adania Shibli\u2019s\u00a0Touch,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Paula Haydar.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>In this disorienting novella, told through the lens of an eight-year-old girl, the narrator\u00a0must come to grips with these strange words: \u201cSabra\u201d and \u201cShatila.\u201d Shibli herself was eight when the massacres happened.<\/p>\n

The girl tried to understand the meaning of the words\u00a0Sabra<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Shatila<\/em>. Maybe they were one word. The word\u00a0Palestine<\/em>\u00a0was unclear, expect that it was forbidden. The color of the green board resembled that color of cactus.(Translated by Paula Haydar)\u00a0<\/em>2003.<\/b><\/p>\n

Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s\u00a0In the Presence of Absence,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Sinan Antoon. <\/em><\/strong>The massacres still haunted Darwish\u2019s writing, as he remembered them through the lens of Genet\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n

You will know from radio stations that the night of Sabra and Shatila was all lit up so that the killers could peer into the eyes of their victims and not miss a moment of ecstasy on the slaughtering table. You will read what Jean Genet wrote:<\/p>\n

What partying, what feasting went on there as death seemed to take part in the pranks of soldiers drunk on wine, on hatred, and probably drunk on the joy of entertaining the Israeli army, which was listening, looking, giving<\/em>\u00a0encouragement, egging them on. I did not see the Israeli army listening and watching. I saw what it did. Killers had carried out the operation, but<\/em>\u00a0numerous torture squads were probably the ones who split skulls, slashed thighs, cut off arms, hands and fingers, and dragged the dying and disabled by ropes, men and women who were still alive. A barbaric party had taken place there: rage, drunkenness, dancing, singing, curses, laments, moans, in honor of the voyeurs who were laughing as they sat on the top floor of the Akka hospital.<\/em><\/p>\n

You cannot cross the threshold of pain nor reach the source of the nightmare\u00a0to bear witness to your body being chopped up nor peer into the eyes of your killer, whom you know very well. You cannot speak to anyone, because the world is empty of the living and filled with the dead who bid farewell yesterday to their brothers and protectors who sailed on Greek-built ships of Trojan symbolism. The victims did not finish any of their tasks: they did not finish their dinner, prayers, or nightmares.\u00a0(Trans. Sinan Antoon)\u00a0<\/em>2006.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also, Darwish\u2019s much earlier poem, \u201cSabra and Shatila<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rawi Hage\u2019s\u00a0De Niro\u2019s Game. <\/em><\/strong>Here, Hage explores the mind of George,\u00a0one of the Sabra and Shatila killers. Hany Ali Abdelfattah writes about \u201cNational Trauma and the \u2018Uncanny\u2019 in Hage\u2019s Novel De Niro\u2019s Game<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026it was all like a movie. All like a movie. Dead people everywhere. Do you still want to hear? Do you want to hear more? More? He shouted at me, here, drink! He cranked his gun and put it in my face.\u201d\u00a02006.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ari Folman\u2019s\u00a0Waltz with Bashir.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>A Hebrew-language engagement with Sabra and Shatila that Palestinian-British author Mischa Hiller, who wrote a novel about the massacre, says \u201cleft too much unsaid.\u201d<\/a>\u00a02008.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mischa Hiller\u2019s Sabra Zoo<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>(read an extract)<\/a>. Palestinian-British novelist Mischa Hiller told an interviewer<\/a>that he was living in Beirut when the massacre happened and he carried it with him until he wrote the book.\u00a02010.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Radwa Ashour\u2019s Tantoureya,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Kay Heikkinen.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>This is Ashour\u2019s big Palestinian epic. In it, Ruqayya narrates her personal history and a history of Palestinians and Palestinian refugees. But she cannot write about this. In a cry not to exploit the moment any further:<\/p>\n

Stretch out a sheet as you saw them doing, to cover what you saw throughout the years, and the day of the smell and the flies. \/ Leave the page blank, Ruqayya. (Translated by Kay Heikkinen.)<\/em>\u00a02010.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Najwan Darwish\u2019s \u201cThe Nightmares Bus to Sabra and Shatila<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From a version translated by Marilyn Hacker and Antoine Jockey:<\/p>\n

I slept in my parents\u2019 house and I was dreaming about her house. When I awoke
\nI saw my brothers
\nHung
\nFrom the roof of the Church of the Resurrection
\nOut of compassion, the Lord said: this is my own suffering.
\nI mustered up the hanged men\u2019s pride and said: in my opinion, it\u2019s ours.<\/p>\n

Pain illuminates everything and I love it more than my nightmares.<\/p>\n

Ezzedine Choukri Fishere\u2019s\u00a0Embrace at Brooklyn Bridge,<\/em>\u00a0translated by John Peate.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>This novel is told through the eyes of a wide range of Arab and Arab-American characters, including Daoud, a survivor of Lebanon\u2019s Sabra and Shatila massacres who is filled with a sharp anger that he directs at Americans. While the hard-edged certainty of Daoud\u2019s beliefs makes him slightly ridiculous, his portrait isn\u2019t caricature. Indeed, Daoud is perhaps the most fully rounded 9\/11 supporter to appear in fiction in English.\u00a02011.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jana Elhassan\u2019s\u00a0Floor 99,<\/em>\u00a0translated by Michelle Hartman.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>The novel\u00a0sits between the 1982 massacre and\u00a0New York in 2000. Majd, one of the central characters, bears a scar from the massacre. In New York, he falls in love with a woman whose family are right-wingers who were involved in the massacre. 2014.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also watch:<\/strong><\/p>\n