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An insider's view of the Intifada Small Dreams: 14 short stories from Palestine Nassar Ibrahim and Majed Nassar Beit Sahour, Palestine, 2003 Pp. 133 IN THIS short story collection, two residents of Beit Sahour present vivid and sometimes startling glimpses of life under occupation in times of Intifada, both the first and second one. Their tales run the gamut of human behaviour and 
emotion from the joy of small successes, the loneliness and
frustration of exile, and the cruelty of the occupation, to courage,
cowardice, love, tragedy and, last but not least, humour. The honesty,
sensitivity and subtle irony with which the authors portray the
Palestinian situation make their stories extraordinary and memorable.
Nassar Ibrahim is a writer and activist at the Alternative Information Centre and a regular contributor to its magazine, News From Within. Majed Nassar is a medical doctor and director of the Beit Sahour Medical Centre. Both authors are husbands and fathers; they dedicated this book to their wives and children. Neither is shy about presenting aspects of their personal and family lives in their writing; many of the stories are based on real events or have autobiographical overtones, lending them added authenticity and impact. Both authors also draw on their chosen professions for their subject matter, as well as focusing on themes and situations that could happen to anyone, anywhere in Palestine. All the stories are concrete and tangible; yet, a few of them could have happened anywhere, anytime in human history. Drawings of Naji Al Ali were selected to illustrate this volume, and many of the stories approximate the late cartoonist's ability to reflect the viewpoint of the common man — the poor and the powerless who nonetheless maintain their dignity in the face of injustice. Point of view is indeed crucial to the authors' literary presentation. In a novel approach reminiscent of American cartoonist Gary Larsen, who depicts human society as animals might see it, Nassar tells the story of a dairy farm sponsored by a popular committee during the first Intifada from the cows' viewpoint. While initially dismayed at being rounded up by persons who are obviously not real farmers, the cows come to enjoy producing milk for appreciative Palestinian children — only to discover that they are wanted by the occupation army for threatening the Israeli milk company's monopoly. Nassar employs a heavy dose of irony to illustrate how the most normal, innocent activities can be considered dangerous to the occupation. In another story, Nassar takes us into the Ansar detention camp to follow in detail the experience of political prisoners, their efforts to organise their daily lives and, above all, to obtain and hold on to a forbidden radio — their ear to the outside world. In “The Friend of the Butterfly”, Ibrahim weaves a heart-rending story steeped in suspense by skilfully alternating between two quite opposite points of view. A boy heading home from school in Aida Refugee Camp is distracted into following a beautiful butterfly, leading him towards an Israeli observation tower where, unbeknownst to him, a soldier is following him in his rifle sight. The boy's innocent fascination with the butterfly is juxtaposed with the soldier's morbid fascination with his weapon and indoctrinated fear of all that moves, culminating in a tragic outcome. Some of Ibrahim's stories have a distinctly universal flavour. In “The Assassination of a Dog”, a proud, wild dog is chained, then provoked into battle and finally killed by a thoughtless shepherd for no particular reason. This story could be symbolic of the occupation's treatment of Palestinians; it could be suggestive of the oppression exercised by any tyrannical regime; it could also be a parable exposing the pointlessness of man's cruelty to man, or of humankind's destruction of nature. These stories, like the ten others in the book, deserve to be widely read, as much for their literary value as for the precious insider's view they convey of the Palestinian experience with all its hopes, dreams, frustrations, tragedies and resilience in the face of adversity. Sally Bland Monday, September 29, 2003 |