2025-07-06

Sayed Kashua - Wikipedia

Sayed Kashua - Wikipedia

사예드 카슈아(סייד קשוע ) (1975년 출생)은 이스라엘 티라에서 태어난 팔레스타인 작가이자 저널리스트로, 히브리어와 영어로 된 그의 책과 해학적 칼럼으로 유명하다.

이스라엘 티라에서 팔레스타인 이슬람계 아랍인 부모 사이에서 태어났다. 1990년에 그는 예루살렘의 명문 기숙 학교인 이스라엘 예술 과학 아카데미에 입학했다.[1] 예루살렘 히브리 대학교에서 사회학과 철학을 공부했다.

문학 쪽으로의 노출은 14세 때 이스라엘 예술 과학 아카데미에서 시작되었다. 호밀밭의 파수꾼을 읽은 후 그는 책에 대한 열정을 발견하고 주로 유대 국가의 아랍 이야기에 대해 글을 쓰기 시작했다. 더 평등한 이스라엘을 만드는 것을 목표로 글을 썼다.[2] 그의 첫 번째 소설인 춤추는 아랍인 (Dancing Arabs, 2002)은 엘리트 유대인 기숙학교에 다니는 무명의 아랍-이스라엘인과 적응하기 위해 아랍인과 유대인의 정체성 사이를 암호 교환하는 이야기를 들려준다.[3] 종종 비극적 코미디 장르로 포장되는 이러한 반자전적 주제인 정체성과 중간성은 카슈아의 글의 특징이 되었다. 수년에 걸쳐 그의 소설은 청중과의 친숙함을 조성하고 실생활에서 이러한 정체성에 대한 인식을 전복시키기 위해 고정관념적인 캐릭터(유대인과 아랍인 이스라엘의 풍자 만화)를 자주 사용한다.[4]


Sayed Kashua

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sayed Kashua
سيد قشوع
Born1975 (age 49–50)
Tira, Israel
NationalityIsraeli
Alma materHebrew University of Jerusalem
Washington University in St. Louis
Occupation(s)author and journalist
Employer(s)University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Washington University in St. Louis

Sayed Kashua (Arabic: سيد قشوع, Hebrew: סייד קשוע; born 1975) is an author and journalist. He is a Palestinian citizen of Israel,[1] born in Tira, Israel. He is known for his books and humorous columns in Hebrew and English.

Early life

[edit]

Kashua was born in Tira in the Triangle region of Israel to Palestinian Muslim-Arab parents. In 1990, he was accepted to a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem – Israel Arts and Science Academy.[2] He studied sociology and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Kashua was a resident of Beit Safafa before moving to a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem with his wife and children.[3]

Kashua became a journalist, columnist and screenwriter, especially of TV series. In 2002 he published his first novel, Dancing Arabs.[4]

His Haaretz column of July 4, 2014 was titled "Why Sayed Kashua is Leaving Jerusalem and Never Coming Back: Everything people had told him since he was a teenager is coming true. Jewish–Arab co-existence has failed."[5] It was published at a volatile time in the country's intergroup relations, involving the kidnapping/murders of Jewish students in the West Bank and an Arab youth in East Jerusalem, though prior to the July 8 outbreak of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. His declaration elicited numerous responses in the Israeli press from colleagues and readers who were concerned by the issues he raises. Kashua's concern for his family and despair at the Jewish-Israeli community's continued rejection of Arab-Israelis despite his 25 years of writing motivated his move to the United States. In his Haaretz newspaper column, he wrote that "I'd lost my small war" and that he saw no hope of a world for his children where Arab- and Jewish-Israelis could coexist.[5]

Academic career

[edit]

Kashua accepted teaching positions in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and Chicago, moving there with his wife and three children for the 2014/15 academic year. Kashua began teaching at the University of Illinois through the Israeli Studies Project, a sponsorship program for Israeli writers and scholars run by Illinois and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.[6] He served as a visiting clinical professor from 2014 to 2018.[7] He participated in the Creative Writing program's bilingualism workshop at the University of Chicago,[8] and was a clinical professor in the Israel Studies program.[9][7]

In the summer of 2018, Kashua and his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, for Kashua to enroll in the PhD program of Comparative Literature in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis,[10] and also taught Hebrew for the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages & Cultures.[11]

Literary career

[edit]

Kashua's exposure to literature began at the Israel Arts and Science Academy when he was 14 years old. After reading The Catcher in the Rye, he discovered a passion for books and began writing himself, primarily about the Arabic narrative in a Jewish country. Kashua wrote with the goal of creating a more equal Israel.[12] His first novel, Dancing Arabs (2002), tells the story of a nameless Arab-Israeli attending an elite Jewish boarding school and code-switching between Arab and Jewish identities in an attempt to fit in.[13] These semi-autobiographical themes of identity and in-betweenness, often packaged in the tragic comedy genre, became hallmarks of Kashua's writing. Throughout the years, Kashua's fiction often uses stereotypical characters – caricatures of Jewish- and Arab-Israelis – to both foster familiarity with his audience and subvert the perception of these identities in real life.[14]

From the beginning of his career as a writer, Kashua wrote exclusively in Hebrew, although he had grown up speaking exclusively Arabic. This was an intentional choice on his part in reaction to the poor representation of Palestinian characters in Hebrew books at his school library.[15] Kashua wanted to "tell the Israelis ... the Palestinian story",[12] and he does this by using "humor, sarcasm, and absurdity to appeal to readers and utilizes popular media such as television and journalism".[16]

His primary vehicle of communication was a personal weekly column in Hebrew for Haaretz[17] and a local Jerusalem weekly, Ha'Ir. In a humorous, tongue-in-cheek style,[18] his column embedded political and social commentaries about problems faced by Arab-Israelis into anecdotes about parenting and day-to-day life.[5] In one such piece, Kashua pondered one's ability to truly integrate into a new culture while recounting mundane yet familiarly realistic conversations between family members.[19] He uses the perspective of his children to highlight the absurdity of social norms, such as his daughter's sad confession that she knows she will "always be an Arab" to the rest of Israeli society.[5] By writing in Hebrew for a mainstream news platform, Kashua exposed a Jewish-Israeli audience to the Arab-Israeli experience.[citation needed]

In his Haaretz article announcing his move to the United States, Kashua anticipated having to switch again to writing in English "about a far-off land in which children are shot, slaughtered, buried and burned", although "the readers will probably think I am a fantasy writer". He did not think Hebrew speakers would care to read his work for much longer.[5] While he has begun to publish in English, beginning two weeks later with an article for The Observer about his leaving Israel,[12] he continued his Haaretz column. He also wrote his most recent novel, Track Changes, in Hebrew; an English translation was published in 2020.[10]

Kashua ended his Haaretz column in November 2017, announcing his hiatus in a final column entitled "Sayed Kashua Bids Adieu: The Perils of Being an Arab-Israeli Writer”. It detailed his view of the role of a Palestinian writer and his hopes for Israel's future.[20] Today, Kashua continues to publish opinion pieces through various platforms, including The Guardian,[21] The New Yorker,[22] and The New York Times.[1]

Media career

[edit]

Television

[edit]

Avoda Aravit (2007), or in English, Arab Labor, is a satirical sitcom written by Kashua and aired on Israel's Channel 2. A large part of the dialogue is in Arabic with Hebrew subtitles. The show is about a young Arab couple, Amjad (Norman Issa) and Bushra (Clara Khoury), and their young daughter, who live in an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Amjad is a journalist working for a Hebrew newspaper (much like Haaretz) who desperately seeks to assimilate into the prevailing Israeli Jewish cultural milieu with mixed and hilarious results.[2] The show holds a mirror up to the racism and ignorance on both sides of the ethnic divide and has been compared with the All in the Family series in the United States. The show received overwhelmingly positive reviews, winning awards for Best Comedy, Best Lead Actor in a Comedy, Best Lead Actress in a Comedy, Best Director, and Best Screenplay at the 2013 Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards.[23]

In the auto-fictional drama The Writer [he] (2015), the character Kateb draws on his own experiences for his depiction of the turbulent daily life of a young Arab and his family living in Israel. However, the more successful his satirical TV series becomes, the more Kateb feels alienated from his alter ego.[24]

Madrasa (2023) is a comic series taking place at an Arabic-Hebrew bilingual school in Jerusalem.[25]

Film

[edit]
  • Dancing Arabs (2014)
  • A film adaptation of Kashua's second novel, Let It Be Morning, was slated to begin production in early 2017.[26] The film was completed and released in 2022. The screenplay was written and the film was directed by Eran Kolirin. Most of the cast are Palestinian and the film is mostly in Arabic.

Reception

[edit]

Praise

[edit]

Kashua is highly acclaimed internationally, often praised for his frankness and "striking satire".[27] Reviews of Native, his 2016 collection of personal essays, commend the universality of his human message and its artful presentation through comedy.[28] The winner of many international awards, Kashua has been lauded as the "greatest living Hebrew writer".[29]

Criticism

[edit]

Critics of Kashua accuse him of hypocrisy and cynicism. One article in The Jerusalem Post lambasted him for being unappreciative of the freedoms offered to Arabs in Israel.[30] Track Changes has been criticized as "rambling" and "self-pity[ing]".[31] His choice to write exclusively in Hebrew has also garnered him criticism, estranging him from Israeli Arabs who see the Arabic language as the primary means with which to preserve their Arabic identity; Kashua lamented in an interview that he is no longer welcome in his hometown of Tira.[32] The content of Kashua's Haaretz column has also led to controversy. In one such instance, after director Maysaloun Hamoud became victim to threats and verbal abuse, Kashua issued an apology column for his column criticizing the director's film and emphasized the importance of engaging with thought-provoking material and standing with the filmmakers to "silence the violence".[33]

Published works

[edit]

Documentaries

[edit]

A 2009 documentary film (directed and written by Dorit Zimbalist, produced by Barak Heymann and Dorit Zimbalist), Sayed Kashua — Forever Scared, documents the upheavals and events that changed Kashua's life over a period of seven years.[35][36]

Awards and recognition

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Jump up to:a b Kashua, Sayed (July 30, 2018). "Opinion | Israel Doesn't Want to Be My State". The New York Times. Retrieved February 4, 2019.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b Kershner, Isabel (January 7, 2008). "Straddling Cultures, Irreverently, in Life and Art". The New York Times. Israel. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
  3. ^ "Sayed Kashua". Atlantic Books. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  4. ^ Kashua, Sayed (2002). ערבים רוקדים [Dancing Arabs]. Keter Publishing House [he].
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Kashua, Sayed (July 4, 2014). "Why Sayed Kashua is leaving Jerusalem and never coming back". Haaretz. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  6. ^ "Israel Studies Project". Jewish Culture and Society at Illinois. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  7. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Sayed Kashua". Program in Jewish Culture & Society. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  8. ^ "Sayed Kashua". Gray Center. University of Chicago. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014.
  9. ^ "Israel Studies Project". Program in Jewish Culture & Society. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017.
  10. ^ Jump up to:a b "Book Launch: Sayed Kashua's 'Track Changes'". Jewish Culture and Society at Illinois. April 25, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  11. ^ "Negotiating Israeli and Palestinian Identity: A conversation with author and journalist Sayed Kashua". Diversity & Inclusion. Washington University in Saint Louis. Archived from the original on February 9, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  12. ^ Jump up to:a b c Kashua, Sayed (July 19, 2014). "Why I have to leave Israel". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  13. ^ "Dancing Arabs". Grove Atlantic.
  14. ^ Mendelson-Maoz, Adia; Steir-Livny, Liat (2011). "The Jewish Works of Sayed Kashua: Subversive or Subordinate?". Israel Studies Review. 26 (1): 107–129. doi:10.3167/isr.2011.260111. ISSN 2159-0370. JSTOR 41804748.
  15. ^ "Sayed Kashua on drawing inspiration from his Israeli-Palestinian life". CBC Radio. January 22, 2016. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  16. ^ Scott, Emily Tobia (May 7, 2019). Israeli-Arab authors claiming Hebrew identity : the case of Anton Shammas and Sayed Kashua (M.A. thesis). The University of Texas at Austin. doi:10.26153/tsw/3302.
  17. ^ "Sayed Kashua". Haaretz.
  18. ^ Kashua, Sayed (June 29, 2013). "An open letter from the piece of shrapnel in the rear end of an IDF soldier". Haaretz.
  19. ^ Kashua, Sayed (December 4, 2015). "How Sayed Kashua Found Himself Identifying With a Dead Bird". Haaretz. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  20. ^ Kashua, Sayed (November 17, 2017). "The Perils of Being an Israeli-Arab Writer". Haaretz. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  21. ^ "Sayed Kashua". The Guardian. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  22. ^ "Sayed Kashua". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  23. ^ Steinberg, Jessica (January 13, 2013). "'Arab Labor' TV show sweeps local awards". The Times of Israel. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  24. ^ "Keshet International's the Writer Chosen as One of Six Premium Dramas to Make the Berlinale Special Selection 2016". Keshet International. January 22, 2016. Archived from the original on March 25, 2016.
  25. ^ "Madrasa (Episodic Spotlight)". San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 43. Jewish Film Institute.
  26. ^ Goodfellow, Melanie (July 8, 2016). "Eran Kolirin to adapt Kashua's 'Let It Be Morning'". Screen Daily. Retrieved June 6, 2024.
  27. ^ Jump up to:a b "Dancing Arabs". The Deborah Harris. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  28. ^ Kirsch, Adam (February 7, 2016). "Why Sayed Kashua Is Every 'Ha'aretz' Reader's Favorite Ex-Israeli Arab". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  29. ^ Kamin, Debra (June 2013). "The Greatest Living Hebrew Writer Is Arab". The Tower. No. 3. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  30. ^ Miller, Abraham H. (August 9, 2018). "Sayed Kashua's hypocrisy regarding Israel's Nationality Law". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  31. ^ "Track Changes (Review)". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  32. ^ Alperin, Michele (April 21, 2014). "Israeli Arab describes a life 'in between'". New Jersey Jewish News. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  33. ^ Kashua, Sayed (January 23, 2017). "Sayed Kashua's Apology to Palestinian Filmmaker". Haaretz. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  34. ^ "Cameroon: A trilingual shortlist for the Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2017". camer.be. March 6, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  35. ^ "Sayed Kashua – Forever Scared". Heymann Brothers Films. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
  36. ^ "Sayed Kashua – Forever Scared". Ruth Diskin Films. Retrieved November 5, 2014.
  37. ^ "Sayed Kashua". The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Archived from the original on January 27, 2013.
  38. ^ Jump up to:a b "Sayed Kashua". The Lion House Agency. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  39. ^ "Sayed Kashua- Forever Scared". Jewish Film Institute. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  40. ^ "Award winners". www.jff.org.il. Archived from the original on November 23, 2013.
  41. ^ פרס ברנשטיין לסייד קשוע [The Bernstein Prize to Sayed Kashua]. Israel Hayom (in Hebrew). July 19, 2011. p. 31.
[edit]

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Dancing Arabs (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the film adaptation of this book initially released under the same title as the book, see A Borrowed Identity.
Dancing Arabs
First edition (Hebrew)
AuthorSayed Kashua
Original titleערבים רוקדים / Aravim Rokdim
TranslatorMiriam Shlesinger
LanguageHebrew
Published
Publication placeIsrael
Pages
  • 224
ISBN0802141269

Dancing Arabs (Hebrew: ערבים רוקדים, romanized: aravim rokdim) is the 2002 debut novel of Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua. The work is considered semi-autobiographical, as it draws much on Kashua's real experiences growing up as a Palestinian citizen of Israel. He is also a screenwriter and columnist, publishing most of his work in Hebrew.

The novel tells the story of a Palestinian Israeli teenager from Tira who is admitted to an elite school in Jerusalem. The novel explores his lifelong struggle between his pride in his Palestinian identity and the desire to be a part of Israeli society.[1]

Plot summary

[edit]

The novel opens with the narrator’s childhood in the Israeli Arab city of Tira. The beginning of the novel is characterized by the narrator being mostly unaware of what goes on around him due to his young age. At the beginning of the novel, he is especially close to his grandmother, who charges him with making sure to inform the rest of his family about her secret stash of items to be buried with her upon her death. This causes him to look through the stash, finding an old newspaper clipping about his father. This newspaper clipping reveals that his father was held under administrative detention and questioned by Shin Bet for 2 years in connection to a bombing in a university cafeteria. Upon release, the narrator’s father continued to be an ardent supporter of Palestinian liberation as well as communist causes, echoing the sympathies of many in Tira. The father, who often physically hits the narrator and his siblings, continuously attempts to instill a sense of national pride in his children, chiding them for not understanding what the Palestinian Liberation Organization is as well as reminding them of their grandfather who died a shahid during the war of 1948. During this same period, the oblivious narrator and his siblings witness a news report of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, which they incorporate into their childhood games due to a lack of understanding of the events. At the same time, their father is one of the only people in the city who refuses to sell his land, as he believes that the people of the village should continue to hold on to what is rightfully theirs.

As the narrator transitions into middle school, he is abruptly hospitalized after a large fall. Subsequently, he undergoes a large change in his personality. He goes from a disruptive and ill-mannered child to a well-behaved one who excels in all of his classes. Even so, he and his classmates are often struck by teachers in school and are often exposed to unhygienic and unproductive learning conditions. It is during this time in his life that his school participates in a Seeds of Peace program. This is the first time the narrator meets an Israeli Jew, as he is paired up with another boy his age over the course of the program. He ends up being convinced that the Jewish boy loves him due to the boy’s insistence on partnering with him and only him. It is also during this time in his life that the narrator begins to prove his intelligence, as he solves a city-wide trivia competition and tests into an elite boarding school in Jerusalem. Although he is still fairly unaware of the state of his poor living conditions in Tira, his grandmother pointedly tells him that “maybe it’s good you’re going away” as this chapter of his life comes to a close.

As the narrator begins his high school career at the Jewish-majority boarding school, he has a difficult time. His roommates and classmates make fun of him for his distinctly different music taste, bedsheets, and dinner manners. However, he finds comfort in moving in with Adel, a student one year older than him who is the only other Arab student at his school. He invites Adel home, and on the way they get harassed by local Jewish kids and stopped at a checkpoint by Jewish soldiers. This causes the narrator to break down crying, vowing to himself that he would better assimilate into Jewish culture and never be recognized as an Arab again. He thus begins a rapid transformation, quickly buying himself clothes popular in the Jewish parts of Israel, learning Western songs, and generally distancing himself from his Arab family and friends. He even becomes integrated enough into his new community to be given an Uzi by his teacher. It is while he is carrying this gun on a field trip with his new class that he runs into his old class from Tira. He ignores his former classmates and refuses to acknowledge to his new Jewish friends that he knows the other Arab students. He also refuses to go home during the following school break due to his belief that his parents don’t treat him right. Instead, he goes to his Jewish friend's Passover Seder, where gets mistaken by his friend’s relative for being Jewish instead of Arab.

During his final two years of high school, he falls in love with the Jewish girl Naomi with whom he has a rocky relationship. Naomi’s father was killed serving in the Israel Defense Forces, and the narrator’s refusal to stand for the memorial siren on Yom HaZikaron causes their relationship to begin with a rough start. Nonetheless, they both confess to loving each other and begin dating until the final few days before their high school graduation. At that point, Naomi’s mother refuses to allow her daughter to date an Arab man, so Naomi breaks up with the narrator. During these final stages of the relationship, however, the narrator becomes overworked and overwhelmed, becoming dependent on pills that counteract hypertension. After he and Naomi break up, he takes 10 of these pills at once and overdoses, resulting in him being checked into the hospital and almost failing his finals.

After barely scraping through his last year of high school, the narrator enrolls in Hebrew University. There he lives as a “settler”—a type of student who lives in the dorms of the university without being eligible for university housing. During his time there, he meets another Arab student, Samia, whom he quickly begins to date. He never graduates from Hebrew University, instead ending up working as a bartender at a dive bar.

Four years after the narrator and Samia meet, he suddenly wakes up and decides to marry her. At his urging they go back to Tira and get married on the spot, resulting in the narrator’s father getting angered by the narrator not marrying in a more traditional manner. The father forces him to go through another long, expansive ceremony with extended family present. Quickly, though, the narrator comes to realize that he only loves Samia when he is in Tira. When they live their regular lives in Jerusalem he feels trapped in a loveless marriage that he would leave if not for their first child. Samia even tells him that he should find a lover, but the narrator feels like that would be impossible to do since the Arab community would judge him for his actions. Nevertheless, he does end up cheating on her with an unspecified Jewish woman, after which he shows intense remorse and lapses back into thinking of himself as an Arab man who can go on and accomplish great things in the name of his people. This episode does not last long though, as he soon reverts back to his hatred of his Arab identity. He finds a kindred soul for this hatred in Shadia, a fellow Israeli-Arab bartender who hates her identity and other Arabs just like the narrator. Unlike him, however, she is always on the move and no longer has a place that she can call home.

The novel then takes a turn to describe the narrator’s father and his job in the Israeli government’s ID office in Tira, a position he got because of his political support of a collaborator for Tira’s mayor. It first becomes a source of intense shame for his father, since he is seen as working for the government that is hated by the people of Tira. However, his ability to access old documents from the era of the British Mandate of Palestine due to this position makes him a hero, as he begins to uncover the forgotten birthdays of everyone in town to allow them to properly celebrate.

At around this same time, the people of Tira lose faith in the cause of Palestinian liberation as the Russians lose the Cold War. The narrator’s father relegates his communist books to a distant, top shelf in his library. Adel breaks up with his Russian girlfriend and instead turns to Islam, which is becoming a larger driving force for many characters in the novel. Adel attempts to get the narrator to become a true believer, taking him to Mecca to see the Kaaba. The narrator, however, does not find this trip convincing. He returns to Israel to his wife giving birth, so he has to rush her to the hospital. On the way, he is recognized multiple times as an Arab, both by soldiers who stop him at a checkpoint and also by other Arabs with whom he ends up speaking in Arabic. He blames his wife for these incidents and is deeply ashamed of this recognition of his Arab identity.

The narrator then returns to a changed Tira amid another war. This Tira is a far richer one, where the money from Jewish tourists who pass through the area is vital to the local economy. Now, the Land Day demonstrations which were prominent in the narrator’s childhood have become muted, as they would scare off the Jewish tourists that the town depends on. The narrator’s father has given up completely on the cause of Palestinian freedom, stating that he believes that the Al-Aqsa Mosque should be blown up as vengeance for the apathy of the wider Arab world towards the Palestinians. Additionally, when the first male grandchild in the new generation of the narrator’s family is born, he gets a Jewish name instead of a Russian or Arab one since it would save him problems in the future.

The narrator wakes up one morning while staying in Tira to his grandmother throwing up in the bathroom. She begins to cry, and states to him that she isn’t crying because she fears death, but because she always thought she would be buried on her own land. She then reminds the narrator about his promise to tell the rest of the family about her secret stash of items to be buried with. The novel closes with him and his grandmother crying in each others’ arms.

Characters

[edit]
  • The Narrator: The unnamed protagonist of the novel, the narrator is an Israeli Arab from Tira who grapples with his Arab identity in a predominantly Jewish society. His experiences and struggles to find an identity and place for himself in Israeli society, drawn from Kashua’s own, are the core of the story.
  • The Narrator's Father: A Palestinian activist who was jailed for 2 years by Shin Bet for a possible connection to a university cafeteria bombing. He begins the novel as an ardent supporter of Communist and Pan-Arab causes, which he tries to impress upon the narrator. However, by the end of the novel he becomes disillusioned with these causes and gives up on his activism.
  • The Narrator's Grandmother: A central figure in the narrator's early life, his grandmother maintains a strong connection to traditional values and serves as a source of emotional support for the narrator.
  • Naomi: A Jewish girl whom the narrator falls in love with during his time at the Jewish boarding school. Their relationship faces societal pressures and internal conflicts due to the cultural divide between them.
  • Adel: Another Arab student at the Jewish boarding school whom the narrator befriends before he fits in with Jewish students. Unlike the narrator, he turns to Islam later in the novel as a solution to his issues of integrating into wider Israeli society.
  • Samia: the narrator’s wife, an Arab student at Hebrew University whom the narrator marries. Ultimately, he ends up feeling trapped to her in a loveless marriage. Their relationship highlights the narrator’s struggle with the expectations of his Arab culture and his often contradictory feelings surrounding it.
  • Shadia: A woman whom the narrator meets while he works at a bar in Jerusalem and shares his rejection of his Arab identity. Their relationship reflects the narrator's ongoing struggle with his Arab identity and serves as a reflection on the narrator’s privilege to have a home back in Tira to return to.

Themes

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Assimilation

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Throughout the novel, there is a pervasive struggle between the narrator’s sense of identity as an Arab citizen of Israel and his desire to blend into the Jewish-dominated spaces that he spends most of the novel inhabiting.[2] This intense desire is born out of his inability to navigate life outside of Tira normally as an Arab, as he is continuously ostracized and singled out by both civilians and the state of Israel itself during his childhood and adulthood.[3] The narrator thus rejects the idea that he can exist as an Arab at all in Jewish spaces. Subsequently, he spends most of the novel attempting to hide his Arab identity and promote the idea that he is Jewish. The select instances in which this mask falls, including when his wife gives birth to their daughter, are moments of profound embarrassment for the narrator whose life view is built around denying his self-identity to be able to access Jewish spaces.

This struggle is mirrored more widely in the cultural assimilation of the city of Tira. The narrator’s childhood experiences are characterized by an underdeveloped and traditional Tira filled with overwhelming hatred for the Jewish state. This Tira, represented by several characters like the narrator’s grandmother and father, believes that the people of Tira should hold on to their land and resist Jewish rule. Several instances of major protests against the state, including one against a visit by Meir Kahane, occurred during this early part of the narrator’s childhood. However, by the end of the novel, several details pointed out by the narrator indicate that Tira is slowly assimilating into the wider Jewish-dominated culture of Israel. The wealth brought by the Jewish tourists has transformed the once-poor Tira. It has provided opportunities for the people of the city, which has led to a larger cultural impact of the liberal Jewish society onto the city, but also the sale of much of the land once owned by the Israeli-Arabs of the city. His youngest sibling’s wall at the end of the novel, which includes many references to Western and Israeli culture right alongside pictures of Keffiyehs, indicates a Tira that is beginning to assimilate just like the narrator.[3]

Critique of Israeli Narratives

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Kashua purposefully writes through the lens of the Israeli-Jewish gaze throughout the novel. This is seen not only in the fact that the novel itself is written in Hebrew, which is notably not Kashua's first language, but also in the basic tropes and sub-plots of the novel.

The novel has many parallels to the narratives of the Jewish Diaspora. There is a heavy usage in the novel of diasporic tropes, like that of the love between Naomi, who came from the majority population in a more liberal society, and the narrator, who came from a closed-off minority community. Their inability to continue their love across the cultural divide is a callback to the narrative of a Diaspora Jew falling in love with a gentile girl when their relationship could never be. Additionally, the pointed use of the word “assimilation” to describe the narrator’s cultural transformation in the novel is yet another parallel to the experiences of Jews in the diaspora. This is true especially of European Jewry, who often worked to hide their Jewish identity in favor of assuming that of their host culture.[4]

The novel also has multiple parallels with the narratives of the Zionist movement and Israeli cultural tropes.  As the narrator leaves Tira behind, he increasingly parallels several tropes associated with the Zionist movement’s depiction of Israeli-born Jews, also called Sabras. He is bent on learning Hebrew to be able to read Hebrew newspapers, begins to carry the iconically Israeli Uzi gun, and dreams of being a pilot. Additionally, his grandfather’s death as a martyr in 1948 and the resulting myth that anemones grow on where he fell strongly echoes Zionist imagery. Specifically, it evokes the famous Zionist poem “Behold, here our bodies lie” by the poet Chaim Gouri dedicated to those who died in the Israeli War of Independence.[4]

Kashua uses these narratives and tropes from the Zionist movement and the Jewish Diaspora to critique the Israeli-Jewish gaze. The same stories and tropes in which an Israeli-Jewish reader would expect to see a Jew as the protagonist instead have an Arab starring in the main role. This creates tension between the out-of-place narrator and the protagonist the reader expects him to be. This tension arises purely due to the fact that the narrator is Palestinian and doesn't fit the mold of Jewishness that Israeli culture deems to fit those kinds of stories. Thus, Kashua highlights the dangers of accepting Israelization for Israeli-Arabs as he critiques Israeli mainstream narratives that don't leave any space for Israeli-Arab stories.[4]

Adaptation

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The novel was adapted as a film, A Borrowed Identity (2014), directed by Eran Riklis. Kashua wrote the screenplay.[5]

Reception

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The book’s English translation was positively received, with several news outlets and book reviews publishing positive reviews of the novel. Most reviews focused on praising the gritty realism of the novel, with The New York Times stating that:

As a portrait of a young man's drift into emotional no man's land, this novel has the feel of grim truth.[6]

And Kirkus Reviews, a book reviewing magazine, stating that:

Life, at [the] novel’s end, remains seedy, undirected, filled with sorrow, failure, and regret. Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his story rings out on every page with a compelling sense of human truth.[7]

References

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  1. ^ Harman, Danna (8 July 2014). "Sayed Kashua: A 'Dancing Arab,' Caught Between Two Worlds". Haaretz. Retrieved 17 September 2015. (subscription required)
  2. ^ ICSSR Doctoral Fellow, Dept. English, Bharathiar University; Soman, Neha (2020-10-17). "Hegemony, Exclusion and Equivocal Identities: Reflections on Israel's Arab Minority in Sayed Kashua's Dancing Arabs". Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. 12 (5). doi:10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s33n2.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b Shihade, Magid (2005). "Review of Dancing Arabs". Arab Studies Quarterly. 27 (1/2): 89–92. ISSN 0271-3519. JSTOR 41859012.
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b c Mendelson-Maoz, Adia; Steir-Livny, Liat (2011). "The Jewish Works of Sayed Kashua: Subversive or Subordinate?". Israel Studies Review. 26 (1): 107–129. doi:10.3167/isr.2011.260111. ISSN 2159-0370. JSTOR 41804748.
  5. ^ Anderman, Nirit (2011-02-14). "Eran Riklis to direct film of Sayed Kashua's first book". Haaretz. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  6. ^ Wilson, Charles (2004-05-16). "Books in Brief: Fiction & Poetry". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
  7. ^ Kirkus Reviews (2004-02-01). "DANCING ARABS". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 2024-05-05.



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