A 28-year old parapalegic, Yonatan, is a pivotal figure in Sayed Kashua's novel, "Second Person Singular". The book examines the relationship between Arabs and Jews in Israel as well as relationships between Arabs themselves. The book also raises broader questions about the nature of personal identity: what it is and the extent to which emphasizing it may be valuable or harmful to a person or a society. Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian who lives in Israel and who has a following among both Israeli Jews and Arabs. Originally published in Hebrew in 2010, the book was translated into English in 2012 by Mitch Greenberg, the military correspondent for the "Times of Israel". The book reads lucidly and quickly in translation.
The book tells the parallel stories of two Palestinian men who live and work in Jerusalem. The first is the story of a man identified only as "the lawyer". The lawyer is a successful criminal attorney who defends Palestinians in Israeli courts. He is married to a woman named Leila, a social worker who holds advanced degrees, and the couple has two young children. Leila came from a different class of Arab society than did the lawyer, a fact emphasized during Kashua's depiction of their courtship. The marriage appears somewhat tepid as the lawyer and Leila for the most part sleep separately. The lawyer's story is recounted in the novel in the third person.
The other protagonist is a young man, 28, who tells is story in his own words. Rather late in the book, his name is given as Amir. But as the book develops, Amir develops not one identity but several. Amir is trained as a social worker but develops an interest in photography for which he shows marked ability. He comes from a small settlement town in which his mother is an outcast. His father had apparently been killed for collaborating with the Israelis.
The two stories are gerrymandered together through the figure of Yonatan. Amir gets a part-time job caring for Yonatan. And one night, the lawyer, ever seeking to improve himself, buys a used copy of Tolstoy's short novel, "The Kreutzer Sonata". A note falls out written in Arabic in his wife's handwriting that appears to be a love note to another man. Yonatan's name is written in the cover of the book. In spite of his training as a criminal lawyer which encourages skepticism and a careful weighing of evidence, the lawyer is beside himself, thinking that his wife is involved with another man and with a Jewish man at that.
There is a great deal in this book about differing groups of Arab people in Israel and their tenuous, difficult relationship to the country. The best scenes of the book describe the backgrounds of the lawyer and of Amir and their varied attempts to make something of themselves. The story of the lawyer, his insane jealousy, and of how Amir dovetails into the situation is too complex and contrived to be convincing. The story descends into something of a parable.
The characters and the author face questions about personal identity that are most provocatively addressed by two secondary figures, a young Palestinian lawyer Tarik who works with the lawyer and Ruchaleh, the mother of Yonatan. For example, in a scene early in the book, Tarik is invited to a gathering of educated Palestinians who are discussing what they see as a separate Palestinian "narrative" in Israeli schools. Tarik boldly questions his peers on why a "narrative", Zionist or Palestinian, is important at all. The lawyer fleshes out the thought with the elliptical observation: "sometimes I think a tree is a tree and a man is a man."
Although it is marred by heavy-handed plotting and by the use of coincidence, this book offers insight into Israeli Palestinians and into Jewish-Palestinian relationships in Israel. The book also invites the reader to think about the possible limitations in holding to a strong sense of personal identity. The suggestion is that people are not like trees who need their "roots" to survive and grow. Individual identities may change and may be more like one another than sometimes is supposed.
Two Arab-Israelis struggle with their insecurities in this unconvincing third novel from the Arab-Israeli writer.
He’s sitting pretty, this Arab from the villages of northern Israel; at only 32, he’s one of the top criminal-defense lawyers in Jerusalem, and an expert navigator through the thicket of Arab-Jewish relations. The unnamed lawyer also has a good marriage to Leila, a social worker; it may lack passion, but Leila makes sure the household, which includes two small children, runs like clockwork. The lawyer’s calm, measured tone changes dramatically when a note falls from the used book, a Tolstoy novella, he’s about to read. It’s in his wife’s handwriting and could be construed as erotic. The calculating lawyer turns into a raging monster of sexual jealousy. Has Tolstoy’s wife-killer leapt from the page to possess him? Or is his naïveté about matters of the heart taking its toll? (The lawyer has no experience with other women.) Disappointingly, these questions go unanswered, and their urgency ebbs as Kashua introduces another character, Amir, the protagonist of alternating sections. It’s an awkward structure, made more so by a six-year time difference. Back then Amir, also an immigrant to Jerusalem from an Arab village, was a newly minted social worker, a socially inept kid who went on a not-quite-date with his co-worker Leila, who afterwards wrote that altogether innocent note. So there’s the slender plot connection. Amir has a second job as a caregiver for Yonatan, a young Jewish man in a vegetative state. Gradually Amir assumes Yonatan’s identity. He’s alienated from his mother but finds a willing surrogate in Yonatan’s mother; together, they pull the plug on the Jew and Amir buries him in an Arab cemetery. Creepy, for sure, yet the sequence resolves nothing. By now the time periods are in sync. The lawyer has tracked down Amir, who tells him everything, and the lawyer’s marriage returns to normal; much ado about nothing, then.
Kashua fails to illuminate his characters’ troubled souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment