Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories

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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. It’s a story of human suffering and tragedy that climaxes in a different sort of suffering and tragedy. It’s also a narrative where not a lot happens; the action is as much internal as external. Dreaming and remembering preoccupy the four central characters; none of them can escape the burden of the past. In transition between the past and the future, their situation is one of stagnation, frustration and inertia. Men in the Sun is a narrative which, in its slow pacing, enacts the entrapment of its characters. When they do at last get on the road to Kuwait they are fated never to reach their destination. Action and movement lead only to entrapment and death. As it’s a story difficult to get hold of in Britain, I shall describe it in some detail. 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 19 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. 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 was originally published in 1962. In the novella, the Palestinians die in silence. [8]

He would send every penny he earned to his mother, and overwhelm her and his brothers and sisters with gifts till he made the mud hut into a paradise on earth and his father bite his nails with regret.’ 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.’ Ball, Anna (2012-11-27). Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-09866-0. 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 GazaJadaan is a Bedouin guard at the New Construction Company. He pays others to clean the bathrooms instead of doing it himself, inciting Mubarak's indignation. According to Mubarak, he fell in love with a red-haired woman during a gazelle hunt, but since she would not marry him, he divorced his wife and fled from his village. He goes to the New Construction Company because he wants to sit quietly and die peacefully. Narappears in The Falcon

Men in the Sun has been filmed as al-Makhdu'un ( The Deceived or The Dupes), by Egyptian director Tawfiq Saleh. [7] 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. 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.

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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.

Abu Qais: The first of the three Palestinian men migrating to Kuwait introduced. Abu Qais is the oldest character who has memory of the 1948 Nakba, often reminiscing on the ten olive trees he once had in Palestine. He is uneducated and characterized as easily frustrated and helpless. Abu Qais is pushed to find work in Kuwait when he is shamed by his younger friend, Saad, and his wife, Umm Qais to provide a better life for his children. 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. The ending of the 1972 film was altered to show the three Palestinians beating on the walls of their hiding place as they suffocate. This ending was intended to reflect the political reality at a time when resistance movements had been established in the wake of the 1967 war. The dialogue, gently comic, is ominous: ‘Ha! The climate will be like the next world inside there.’

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. 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: 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. Ghassan Kanafani was the spokesperson for the Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine. Kanafani was born in April 1936 in Acre, which is located in northern Palestine. In 1948 his family was displaced by Zionist forces and fled to Damascus, Syria. Kanafani was only twelve when his family was displaced. Growing up, he worked at a printing press, and distributed newspapers. At night, he studied and obtained an intermediate school certificate in 1953, which led him to work as an art teacher in UNRWA schools in Damascus. Three years later he moved to Kuwait where his sister was living to work as a gym and art teacher. In 1960, Kanafani left Kuwait for Beirut where he worked for the magazine al-Hurriyya. Throughout his lifetime, Kanafani has worked for many newspapers including al-Muharrir, al-Anwar, and al-Hadaf, the movement’s magazine.

Abul 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. urn:oclc:254974316 Republisher_date 20150731040621 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20150729030244 Scanner scribe7.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) Shafiqa invites the mother to come and live with them but she refuses. Marwan recalls visiting his father and his new wife: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 Abdallah is the name that Jadaan calls all of the civil engineers but specifically the narrator. He is from a different class from the guards. Abdallah hears Mubarak's story about Jadaan and the red-haired woman. He then ignores Mubarak's request to file a complaint against Jadaan. Abdallah approaches Jadaad about gazelle hunting and hears the story of Nar. Jadaanappears in The Falcon Assad, on the other hand, represents the middle generation of Palestinians who are enthusiastic and politically engaged, yet naive and ineffective at bringing about change. Assad fl ed the refugee camps because the police are looking to arrest him for his political activities. As he negotiates with the smuggler in the second chapter, Assad remembers how he was cheated during his first attempt at crossing into Kuwait. He also recounts how his uncle gave him the money to pay the smuggler, but only so he can return to the refugee camps rich and marry his cousin.