Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories

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What is missing is politics. What is missing is resistance to Zionism. The characters all accept their fate. And historically the story seems accurately to catch the mood of the time. Israel’s smashing of Egypt in the 1956 Sinai war displayed once again the overwhelming military superiority of Zionism and the folly of hoping that any Arab state would liberate Palestine from its Zionist occupiers. And among the Palestinians themselves there was no coherent organisation or opposition to Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was not founded until 1964. Kanafani, Ghassan (1999). Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories. p.13. Those who have seen the filmed version of the novella, The Deceived (1972) will realize that the plot has been altered, so the three Palestinians who in the book die in silence are shown in the film beating on the walls of their hiding place as they suffocate, to attract the attention of those outside. A film similar to the novella in its denouement would have appeared glaringly incongruous at a time when the resistance movements were established. Lccn 78072967 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL17907522M Openlibrary_edition Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian journalist, fiction writer, and a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Kanafani died at the age of 36, assassinated by car bomb in Beirut, Lebanon.

This collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the The Deceived. Also in the volume are and “The Land of Sad Oranges and ” (1958), and “‘If You Were a Horse…’ and ” (1961), and “A Hand in the Grave and ” (1962), and “The Falcon and ” (1961), and “Letter from Gaza and ” (1956), and an excerpt from Umm Saad (1969). In the unsparing clarity of his writing, Kanafani offers the reader a gritty look at the agonized world of Palestine and the adjoining Middle East.Born in Acre (northern Palestine) in 1936, Ghassan Kanafani was a major spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and founding editor of its weekly magazin Al-Hadaf. His novels, short stories, and plays have been published in sixteen languages. He was killed in a car-bomb explosion in Beirut in 1972. Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani – eBook Details Nar is Jadaan's falcon. He is the best falcon in the village, and his name means "Fire." One day, Nar circles a gazelle and then perches. He refuses to eat for a week until he dies. Narratorappears in Letter from Gaza Marwan: The youngest character at only 16 years of age. He wishes to pursue his education and become a doctor but must find work in Kuwait to support his family since his father has abandoned them for his new wife and his brother has stopped sending money after getting married. Marwan is unable to afford paying fifteen dinars to the fat proprietor to be smuggled to Kuwait. In desperation, he threatens to call the police on the proprietor, causing the man to slap him. Marwan leaves the office in discouragement. On the street, Abul Khaizuran approaches Marwan and agrees to smuggle him for five dinars as long as Marwan helps him find additional men who want to be smuggled. Marwan writes a long letter to his mother and visits his father, who he does not hate for leaving his family because he believes his father still loves them. He meets with Abu Qais, Assad and Abul Khaizuran to discuss the plans for their journey to Kuwait, they come to an agreement, and he meets them the next morning. Shall I tell you the truth? I want more money, more money, much more. And I find it difficult to accumulate money honestly. Do you see this miserable being which is me? I have some money. In two years I’ll leave everything and settle down. I want to relax, to stretch out, to rest in the shade, thinking or not thinking. I don’t want to make a single movement. I’ve had more than enough exhaustion in my life. Yes indeed, more than enough.’

Men in The Sun: By Ghassan Kanafani

In the last ten years you have done nothing but wait. You have needed ten big hungry years to be convinced that you have lost your trees, your house, your youth, and your whole village. People have been making their own way during these long years, while you have been squatting like an old dog in a miserable hut. What do you think you were waiting for? urn:oclc:254974316 Republisher_date 20150731040621 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20150729030244 Scanner scribe7.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) The story dramatises a world infinitely remote from a comfortable middle class first world urban existence. Its continuing interest resides not simply in its mediation of a particular historical moment – the setting seems to be Iraq in 1958 or 1959 – or in its poetic realism, sensuously evoking a sweltering desert landscape, but in its narrative power as the expression of dispossession and abortive dreams and, more concretely, as a highly charged metaphor for Palestinian identity in the late 1950s.

His wife has lost patience with his dreams of the past and urged him to go off to Kuwait and make some money: Assad: Introduced in the novella as he is negotiating with the proprietor over the price to be smuggled into Kuwait. He has been cheated before by a smuggler who left him stranded around H4. His uncle loaned him money to travel so that he will eventually marry Nada, the Uncle's daughter but Assad doesn't want to marry her. He has had run-ins with authorities due to his political activities. Marwan is an idealist, who finds himself staying in ‘a miserable hotel at the end of the world’. He wants to become a doctor and to repair the damage caused by his father’s abandonment of his family: Abu Ibrahim is the father of the story. He wishes his son were a horse so that he could put a bullet through his brain. He loves his son but fears him. Abu Ibrahim used to be a great expert on horses and kept a notebook on pedigrees and prices. After Barq kills his wife, he moves to the city and blames himself for not adhering to superstition and killing Barq. When he suffers from acute appendicitis, he will not allow his son to operate. After undergoing anesthesia, Abu Ibrahim rambles to the surgeon about Barq and his wife. Barqappears in If You Were a HorseAbul Khaizuran approaches Marwan on the street and offers to smuggle him to Kuwait. He meets with Marwan and Assad and introduces them to Abu Qais. He agrees to smuggle the men for ten dinars each. Abul Khaizuran is an excellent lorry drive who works for Haj Rida. He intends to hide the men in the water tank on the lorry. He eventually persuades the men to agree with his plan. Before reaching the customs station at Safwan, Abul Khaizuran hides the men in the water tank. He hurries through the customs station and releases the men from their temporary prison. During the drive, he remembers and mourns losing his manhood in the war. Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in Acre in Palestine (then under the British mandate) in 1936. His father was a lawyer, and sent Ghassan to a French missionary school in Jaffa. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Kanafani and his family fled to Lebanon, but soon moved on to Damascus, Syria, to live there as Palestinian refugees. What Kanafani does in this story is dramatise the hopelessness and passivity of the mass of Palestinians in the late nineteen fifties. Ten years after being driven from their homes, their land and their country by armed Zionists, Palestinians are reduced to a miserable and impoverished existence in the refugee camps. There they long for their lost world and dream of material improvements. Their family units collapse. Marriages turn sour. Young men go off in search of a better life. But ultimately these are a people on the rubbish dump of history. In 1960 he moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he became the editor of several newspapers, all with an Arab nationalist affiliation. In Beirut,

Abul Khaizuran: The lorry driver who agrees to smuggle the three men. He tells fantastic tales of his agile driving and strong repute, but the memory that continually haunts him and remains unrevealed to any other characters is his surgical castration ten years before as a freedom fighter. He is disillusioned by the national cause and "wishes only for money". In the final chapter, he is held up by bureaucrats that tease him about a rumor involving him and a prostitute and the three men die in the tank due to this needless delay. The narrator writes a letter to his friend Mustafa, canceling his plans to join Mustafa in Sacramento, California. The narrator and Mustafa grew up together in the Shajiya quarter of Gaza and promised to follow the same path. The narrator takes care of his mother, his brother's widow and her four children. After Mustafa moves to Sacramento, the narrator receives a contract with the Ministry of Education in Kuwait. When Gaza is bombed, the narrator plans to expedite his journey to Sacramento, but first he visits his family. At his sister-in-law's request, he visits Nadia in the hospital and learns of her amputation. The narrator decides against moving to Sacramento and begs Mustafa to come home and learn what life is about. Mustafaappears in Letter from Gaza

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Marwan brings Assad to a meeting with Abul Khaizuran, who is waiting with Abu Qais. Abul Khaizuran, a fellow Palestinian, is the dodgy guide who promises to get them to Kuwait. He’s a cynic, telling Marwan that in Kuwait, ‘The first thing you will learn is: money comes first, and then morals.’ In his own pragmatic way he’s a Muslim. He’s also symbolically impotent. What others don’t know is that his genitals were blown off when the Zionists fought the Palestinians in 1948. None of the four wanted to talk anymore, not only because they were exhausted by their efforts but because each one was swallowed up in his own thoughts. The huge lorry was carrying them along the road, together with their dreams, their families, their hopes and ambitions, their misery and despair, their strength and weakness, their past and fuiture, as if it were pushing against the immense door to a new, unknown destiny, and all eyes were fixed on the door’s surface as though bound to it by invisible threads. Men In The Sun has been translated from Arabic to English by Hilary Kilpatric. I am not sure if it can be found in every library, but I was able to find it at American University’s library. The novel also inspired a film named ‘The Dupes’ directed by Tawfiq Saleh.

urn:lcp:meninsun00ghas:epub:ce9b3129-502e-4766-85a0-8fa43eabe8f8 Extramarc University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (PZ) Foldoutcount 0 Identifier meninsun00ghas Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t7dr6f719 Invoice 1213 Isbn 089410392X published the novel Men in the Sun (1962). He published extensively on literature and politics, focusing on the the Palestinian liberation movement and the refugee experience, as well as engaging in scholarly literary criticism, publishing several books about post-1948 Palestinian and Israeli literature.Performances of masculinity are central to the plot of Men in the Sun. The older male characters especially exemplify this performance as they belong to the generation that "lost Palestine''. Abu Qais is emasculated by his loss of land and the poverty he and his family endure in a refugee camp. His inability to provide for his family threatens his position as the man of the "household" and drives him to find work in Kuwait despite the risk. This shame captures the breakdown of gender structures in exile. Abul Khaizuran also performs gender as he cannot deny the rumors of his sexual escapade and reveal his impotence. In response to Abu Baqir's demands to hear the story of his encounter with a prostitute, he deflects "if Hajj told you already, why do you want me to tell it again", [4] implicitly confirming the tale. Here, Abul Khaizuran is pulled into a game of performing masculinity while the three men in his tank suffocate.