LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

the production of locality in the oral palestinian poetry duelAbu ÆAmar, [as dear to us as] our eyesTo Taha I send greetingsGod preserve you, [Kafr] Manda residentsI count on the MercifulOh Ramzi, light of my eyesOh ÆAlam family, strongTo Salih al-ÆAlam, [as dear as] my eyesWhere are you now?Long live the people of Nazareth, the strongAbu Fakhri, [you are] a righteous swordWhere are the TurÆan residents the good peopleThe houses of al-Farash we greetAnd the houses of ÆAtur we greetDayr Hanna and its buildingsAnd ÆArrabah, we come to itNazareth and its peopleWelcome in ÆAylabunThe Dayr al-Asad residents and the QublanThe SaÆad family are well defendedAnd the Hammud family, my brothersWelcome, Bayt Jann.In this excerpt, which in performance lasts approximately three minutes, thepoet mentions twenty-seven Palestinian village and family names. Listing ofPalestinian villages and families is more than just a way of mentioning Palestinianproper names. Appadurai reminds us that naming is a complex and importantact: ‘The large body of literature on techniques for naming places … issubstantially literature documenting the socialization of space and time. Moreprecisely, it is a record of the spatiotemporal production of locality’ (1996: 180).To give a name to a person, object or place is to lay claim to it, to assert one’sright to do so. We name things and places which we own or which we in someway control. Once a name has been given, its repeated use becomes important.A name, like any other word, develops associations and connotations with use.In the case of place names, their continued use over time can give rise tohistorical associations embedded with special meanings for those who use them.Thus, Hittin is for Palestinians irrevocably associated with the famous victory ofSalah al-Din over the Crusaders which took place there. Dayr Yasin brings tomind the massacre of its Palestinian residents in 1948. To utter the Palestiniannames of Palestinian villages in the course of a sahrah, then, is to assert Palestinianpresence in the areas in which wedding participants live and to lay claim totheir right to reside there and make their mark on the landscape. 2To understand fully the import of the Palestinian phenomenon, it must bejuxtaposed against the Israeli policy of renaming Palestinian towns and villagesafter the creation of the state of Israel, a process known in Israel as ‘redeeming— 19 —www.taq.ir