The prickly pear
The prickly pear ( Arabic الصبار, DMG aṣ-ṣabbār ) is a novel by the Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh . The Arabic edition appeared in 1976.
content
The book takes place in the years after the Six Day War in the Israeli occupied West Bank . The young Palestinian Usama is returning to his family, the al-Karmi , in Nablus after a long stay in the Gulf States . As soon as he crosses the border, he painfully realizes that this is no longer the country he imagined in his dreams and childhood memories. His mother trusts God to solve problems and does not want to know anything about resistance. His uncle, the patriarch of the family and one of the local notables , is sick. He has lost his orange plantations due to a labor shortage, but dreams of past Arab greatness and holds press conferences at which he reads political statements. He has three children: his son Adel works secretly in Israel and enables the family to survive. His daughter Nuwar is in love with a captured fighter, but her father wants to marry her off to a young doctor. His second son Basil, who is temporarily imprisoned, makes Nuwar's love public to prevent their marriage. Usama has received a military order to attack buses carrying workers from the occupied territories to Israel. He dies while doing the job. Eventually, the Israeli military discovered an arsenal in the basement of the al-Karmi s and blew up their house.
The 1980 novel The Sunflower continues the storyline of the book; Adel, Usama's cousin, is one of the characters.
Style and reception
Reviewers described Khalifeh's style as terse, hectic, and fast-paced. Almost all chapters are short and characterized by a quick succession of images, feelings and actions. Even lyrical passages do not allow any longer lingering, only a few detailed inner monologues interrupt the restlessness. Khalifeh makes intensive use of the Arabic diglossia , with which she illustrates social differences and different levels of communication. The written language is used for narration and intellectual communication, the colloquial language is used, often in stages, for everyday communication. In this way, the author succeeds in bringing Koran quotes and hearty gutter language, learned discussions and popular wisdom to collide. Their use of curses and expletives has also been criticized.
The Arabic title of the book, aṣ-ṣabbār , means "prickly pear", the homonymous word ṣabbār means "patient as an angel". In the serial novel The Sunflower , a poem by the Palestinian author Fadwa Tuqan is quoted, in which it says: They grew up in the deserted forest of the night, in the shade of the bitter prickly pear . The book published in 1976 brought Khalifeh the breakthrough and made her known internationally. German editions appeared in 1983, 1990 and 2002.
The book was also translated into Hebrew ; in the Palestinian Territories, only the Hebrew translation was initially allowed, the Arabic original was forbidden.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Unionsverlag, Sahar Khalifa , information on the person
- ↑ a b c d Hartmut Fähndrich , afterword, in: Sahar Khalifa, Der Feigenkaktus, Unionsverlag, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3293 0004 36 , pp. 228-235
