Two memories: Darwish and Shehadeh recount their days under siege

Abstract

In the 2002 siege of Ramallah, a man asks one of the Israeli soldiers storming his house, “Do you consider me a human being?” The quotation is from Raja Shehadeh’s When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, a book consisting of diary entries of a month long siege. The work details the anguish, disruption, and terror faced by Ramallah’s inhabitants during the siege and the implications this had on both Israelis and Palestinians. In 1987, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish published Memory for Forgetfulness, documenting the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut. The book records the daily struggles of those caught in the fire, and recalls earlier memories of the homeland through the poet’s unique style of poetry and prose. The pervading question in both works is who is human. Drawing on Agamben and Butler, I argue how these texts provide a counter-narrative to the dominant history as they resist the Homo Sacer status.

Keywords:

• Palestine
• homo sacer
• memoirs
• siege
• Mahmoud Darwish
• Raja Shehadeh

Notes

1. Darwish says he “had a complex about [his] mother hating [him] because she was always punishing [him] and holding [him] responsible for any trouble at home or in the neighborhood” (Baydun 1991: 61; Al-Nabulsi 1987: 196). He relates that “A feeling grew within me that my mother hated me … I only realised that it was not true when I entered prison for the first time, at the age of 16. My mother visited me in prison, brought me coffee, hugged me and kissed me. Then I knew that my mother did not hate me” (Hamzah 165).

2. Saloul argues: “Whereas the first generations of post-Nakba Palestinians have memories and experiences of the originating event of al-Nakba, second and third generations of post-Nakba Palestinians, although they have not experienced this originating moment (1948), are still “inside” the event itself living the catastrophe on a daily basis as mankoub subjects whose lands as much as lives are being persistently violated under Israeli occupation and in exile” (13).

3. Nur Masalha writes, “In 1950 the internally displaced Palestinians in Israel were considered as ‘Present Absentees’ (nifkadim nokhahin) under the Absentees’ Property Law … Acquiring the paradoxical title of ‘present absentees,’ the internally displaced had their property and homes taken by the state, making them refugees within their own country” (146).

4. Please refer to “Staging memoirs” by Cantarow in Journal of Palestine Studies 34: 4 (Summer 2005): 121–122.