A hand full of stars
A hand full of stars is a 1987 novel by Rafik Schami . In the form of a diary, the story of a Damascus baker boy is told who is on the way to realizing his dream of becoming a journalist . In addition to the usual problems of growing up such as detachment from the parental home and sexual emancipation , censorship in Syria is also discussed. The novel can be assigned to youth literature and immigrant literature . Shami also used some of the protagonists in Narrator of the Night .
action
A baker's boy from a poor district in Damascus starts at the age of fourteen to keep a diary in which he writes down his experiences and expresses his opinions.
The anonymous first-person narrator likes to go to school and gets good grades. With his friends Mahmud and Josef he founds a gang called Die Schwarze Hand , which wants to fight against the injustice in his city: against the secret service man from the neighborhood, against a fraudulent grocer and against child labor . Because of internal quarrels, it breaks up again very soon.
A pretty girl named Nadia lives in his neighborhood , whom he has grown to love. He is also a talented young poet . He sends his poems to a publisher who then even has them printed.
One day, at his father's decision, he is taken from school against his will and forced to work in his father's bakery . Also, for some inexplicable reason, Nadia doesn't talk to him anymore. So he comes to the decision to run away. But his close friend Salim asks him to wait a while longer. The boy followed this advice and ended up staying in Damascus. The misunderstanding with Nadia clears up and his life takes a positive course again.
The baker boy had the idea of delivering the bread from his father's bakery to the houses himself in order to win new customers. At this company he met Mariam, with whom he could talk about a lot. He also met an older journalist named Habib through Mariam, whom he then told that he would also like to become a journalist. Over time, the two become close friends and Habib teaches him the most important writing techniques he needs for journalistic work. Together they found an anonymous newspaper in which they report on the injustice in the country and criticize the government. They stuff strips of paper with articles and jokes into socks and sell them cheaply so that they circulate without anyone suspecting that they wrote the texts.
For a while the “Sockenzeitung” ran well. When Uncle Salim dies and Habib is arrested because the Syrian government has found out that he was the editor of the newspaper, the now seventeen-year-old continues the project with his friends Mahmud and Nadia to demonstrate to the government that the truth cannot get out of hand leaves.
main characters
First-person narrator
The first-person narrator is 14 years old at the beginning of his notes (later 17) and lives in Damascus / Syria. His name is not mentioned in the whole book. He belongs to the Christian minority, but is more interested in social and political issues than religious issues. In his diary he writes down his feelings and love for the neighbor girl Nadia. Through his various activities, he got to know many people who influenced his future career: As a student, his teacher brought him into contact with a publisher who published his poems. He works as a baker's boy in his father's bakery and gets to know Mariam and Habib by delivering bread. Both support him in his plan to become a journalist. Habib becomes his most important role model. Later he helps out in a bookstore and can thus establish contacts with publishers. His best friends are Josef, Mahmud and Uncle Salim. The first-person narrator is a friendly boy. He smokes cigarettes , but his other qualities are positive: he is brave, smart, a good poet, independent and, as long as he goes to school, best of his class. He repeatedly had difficulties with his father, who forced him to work in the bakery, but ultimately received his recognition for his poetic successes.
Uncle Salim
Salim is 75 years old (later 78) and lives in the same house as the protagonist. He gives him the idea to write a diary. Although he is a Christian, he is skeptical about religion on many issues . One of his favorite pastimes is storytelling, where he interweaves the truth and the fictional so ingeniously that nobody notices. But Uncle Salim can't read. He can cast a spell over anyone with his stories. He reports on the many adventures he has experienced as a coachman . In earlier times he had to flee to the mountains to avoid military service. He supports the idea of the “Sockenzeitung”. When the first-person narrator tries to run away from home, it is Uncle Salim who moves him to set himself a deadline and try another six months to get closer to the dream of working as a journalist. Salim is a widower and has a daughter and a son in America who are only mentioned in the novel. He dies towards the end of the story.
Habib
He works as a journalist and is 52 years old. Habib teaches the inquisitive first-person narrator the most important journalistic techniques so that he comes closer to his dream of becoming a journalist. He says little about himself. Because of his views and activities critical of the regime, he is repeatedly arrested by the Syrian secret service . He is very courageous and stands up for his ideals to the end, which is why he is not only a journalist, but also a character role model for the first-person narrator. He has a love affair with his neighbor Mariam, although she is married. His wife was shot years ago when they were on the run for political reasons. Your picture is still in his apartment.
Nadia
Nadia is the friend of the first-person narrator, she is a year younger than him. Her strict father works as a secret agent for the frequently changing Syrian governments. This makes the couple's meetings more difficult. Nadia's family is wealthy because of her father's job. She and the first-person narrator meet secretly during lunch break in Habib's apartment, where they have their first sexual experience together.
Mahmud
Mahmud is the narrator's best friend. He is 15 years old and lives in the same house as him. Mahmud writes funny, socially critical plays . A radio station broadcasts one of its tracks, but under a false name. He helps with the sock newspaper.
father
The protagonist's father is a baker. His name and age are not mentioned in the book. He has his own bakery in which the protagonist has to work during the course of the book. He takes him from school because the first-person narrator is supposed to take over the bakery. As the book progresses, the relationship between the two improves.
Joseph
Josef is a friend of the first-person narrator. He also lives in the neighborhood. He is a founding member and namesake of the Black Hand . Later he wants to join the military, and so the relationship with the first-person narrator deteriorates.
Mariam
The first-person narrator comes into contact with her because he is delivering bread from her father's bakery. She is Habib's neighbor and lover and introduces the first-person narrator and Habib to each other.
The madman of Damascus
He is a thin man who the first-person narrator often runs into and who has been roaming the streets of Damascus for years. He always carries a bird, a sparrow, on his shoulder, with which he also likes to make jokes, e.g. B. balances him on his stick, which he always carries with him. When he comes to a door, people bring him a plate of rice or vegetables, but he never takes anything because he's too proud for that. He is a brilliant person, and the mother of the narrator thinks that he is a saint, because if his little sparrow rises in one direction, the man lures the bird until it comes back, and according to the mother only Solomon can talk to birds. This is also confirmed in one of Uncle Salim's stories.
In addition, he does not speak often, although he speaks many languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Kurdish, Assyrian). This becomes clear when he writes down a story for the first-person narrator in the various languages, which he then translates with the help of the foreigners who have settled in Damascus . Everyone involved in the translation process believes that the author of this text is not crazy, but rather genius.
The story is about a bird with plumage that shimmers in all colors. But people only pay attention to one color and overlook the rest of the colors. This is to make the diversity of Damascus and life clear to the reader. The man also has to endure a lot, e.g. For example, he is once imprisoned on the pretext that his bird is carrying a small camera. Presumably he went crazy because of the (political) circumstances. His fellow human beings have only one-sided contact with him, his only caregiver is the sparrow. How the man will go on is unknown. You only learn that he is being picked up from the ambulance because of a faint attack.
Mr. Katib
He is the Arabic teacher for the first-person narrator at the school. Mr. Katib is older, but is very much appreciated by his students because he lets them write freely, among other things. With him they learn to love the language. He encourages the first-person narrator to send his poems to a publisher. He's very proud of the first-person narrator and wants him to stay at school.
Approaches to an interpretation
The main theme of the novel is storytelling and writing: Much of the boy's upbringing takes place through uncle Salim's exemplary stories; he expresses his love and other thoughts in poetry; and he works against social injustice as a journalist. A dominant level of meaning is thus autoreflectivity , in which writing communicates about itself. Writing, as demonstrated here, should observe and register one's environment, keep one's eyes open (the poem about the tree), but also get involved and help change one's environment.
In his book A Hand Full of Stars, Rafik Schami tells from the perspective of a poor baker's boy about life in Damascus and the problems associated with it. The first-person narrator has to fight hard to achieve his dream of writing (of poems and journalistic texts). From the boy's point of view, the reader is shown social inequalities as well as political ones. The life situations of different people with different religions, professions and backgrounds are brought closer to the reader. There is the boy's father, who makes his way as a baker and for whom working in the bakery is more important than a good education. There is old Uncle Salim, who, despite poor circumstances, has not lost sight of the beautiful and who captivates everyone with his stories. There is Habib, who is fighting as a journalist against the Syrian government and who ultimately pays for this fight with his life. Nadia, the daughter of a secret agent, has to defend herself against the influential father in order to be with the boy she loves. The relationship between father and son, as well as the development of love, are sensitively illuminated.
The diary form helps create closeness and an opportunity for identification between the reader and the first-person narrator. Because things are only written in a diary that relentlessly honestly report about the writer's fears, feelings and views. The boy's view of this variety of topics is direct and sincere. And that is precisely why this book should not only be read and understood as a book for young people. Although from the perspective of a young person, A Hand of Stars is a book that shows adults, young people and children what it means to stand up for something and to fight for justice and truth - in Syria and around the world.
Rafik Schami himself demands that the so-called migrant literature should neither receive a pity bonus when interpreted , nor should it be handled with iron tongs. Instead, he is looking for “hands that are not afraid to touch”.
Others
The novel was the focus of the campaigns Eine Stadt. A book. 2012 in Vienna and a book for the city in 2015 in Cologne.
literature
- Rafik Schami: A hand full of stars. Weinheim 1993, ISBN 3-423-11973-X
- Gina Weinkauff: Multiculturalism as a topic in children's and youth literature (KJL). In: Günther Lage (Hrsg.): Pocket book of children's and youth literature. Baltmannsweiler 2000 (Volume 2), pp. 766-783.
- Rafik Schami: A literature between minority and majority. In: Irmgard Ackermann, Harald Weinrich (Hrsg.): Not only German literature. To determine the position of foreigner literature . Munich 1986, pp. 55-59.