These Papers are Intended to Mislead: Soldiers and Freedom Fighters in Mubārak Rabī`’s Comrades in Arms  …  and the Moon

Abstract

This article addresses the misleading nature of the rewrite of the October 1973 Arab–Israeli war as portrayed in Moroccan Mubārak Rabī´’s 1976 novel Rifqat al-Silāḥ  …  wa-l-Qamar (Comrades in Arms … and the Moon). Papers partially burned by a retreating Moroccan officer lure the ‘enemy’ into attacking a fortified position, thus leading to an Arab victory. The fantastical nature of the war narrative informs a different reading of the novel, focused on Rabī´’s critique of and scepticism toward the possibility of unity among Arabs that such a victory would require. Rabī´’s critique centres on the distinction between jundī, regular soldier, and fidā’ī, freedom fighter; he explores Arab culture's relation to the two archetypes and redraws the fidā’ī in order to provide a broader and more progressive understanding of the goals and behaviour of those who desire radical change.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Rabī´, Rifqat al-Silāḥ, 105–106. Further references to this book are given after quotations in the text.

2. Starkey and Meisami, Routledge Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, 643.

3. Campbell, Labyrinths, Intellectuals and the Revolution, 107–134.

4. Al-Madīnī, ‘The Maghrib’, 198.

5. Ibid., 195.

6. Allen, ‘Mature Arabic Novel', 209.

7. Many of the letters home Rabī` includes are written by Abd al-Salām to his father Maymūn before the former's death; most of the rest are written by the other characters to ‘Abd al-Salām's wife, expressing their deep regard for him and his noble death in battle.

8. Laḥmidāni, al-Riwāya al-Maghribiya wa-Ru'yat al-Wāqi al-Ijtimā`iy, 230–231.

9. Allen, Arabic Novel, 65.

10. The text often shifts him back and forth in rank between mulāzim, ‘lieutenant’, and `aqīd, ‘captain’.

11. A reference to an event that led one of the soldiers to join the army.

12. This battle is not the skirmish about which ‘Ubāhā was debriefed, but rather the second and much larger battle.

13. The action takes place during Ramadan, as did the actual 1973 war.

14. Benūna's protagonist Leila is driven to upend her entire life by what only midway through the narrative becomes clear is the shock of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. Every other character in the novel simply goes about their business, apparently unaffected by the war and the plight of the Palestinians, which makes Leila seem hysterical or depressed to them and makes them seem like aliens to her. All of Fire and Choice takes place in Morocco. See Campbell, Labyrinths, Intellectuals and the Revolution, 142–159.

15. Laḥmidāni, al-Riwāya al-Maghribiya wa-Ru'yat al-Wāqi al-Ijtimā`iy, 234.

16. Asher and Hammel, Duel for the Golan, 143. English-language sources on the war tend to over-represent the Israeli perspective.

17. El Shazly, Crossing of Suez, 278.

18. Caddick-Adams, ‘Golan Heights, battles of’, 365.

19. Rabinovich, Yom Kippur War, 193.

20. Dunstan, Yom Kippur War 1973 (1), 178–180.

21. Moreover, the war's strategic goals and its termination are equally absent from the text. The end of the novel strongly implies that the phantom feint that led to the soldiers over-running the enemy was the key to victory, but what was the nature of this victory? Were the Israelis driven into the sea? Were they forced to retreat to the 1967 borders, or to the 1948 borders, or to accept the right of return of Palestinian refugees? We simply are not told, leaving us to wonder whether we are therefore being encouraged to read the novel at the surface level of its plot.

22. Themselves all junūd.

23. Nobody in 1976, or 1973 or even 1967, who wanted to actually win a war would have engaged in trench warfare; this reinforces the fantastical nature of the victory of the united Arab army. Even a cursory examination of the actual Arab/Israeli wars demonstrates that mobility and speed were the keys to victory. The trench situation is only possible because the Moroccans were entirely peripheral to the war.

24. Rabī´'s text does not address the political disunity that characterized and still characterizes the Arab world and that led to the Moroccan brigades being treated as separate entities on both the Syrian and Egyptian fronts in the actual 1973 war. There is no mention of the national governments in this novel: not their collective egos nor the egos of their leaders, which are and have been one of the primary obstacles to unity.