LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

gender and the palestinian narrative of returnThe map preceding the translation could as easily appear in a geographytextbook of the period. The view is aerial and there are careful shadings todistinguish the Mediterranean Sea from the land it borders, Israel drawn to itspre-1967 boundaries. The map encourages the reader to think of the imaginarynarrative in reference to the geopolitical reality it graphically elaborates. Thiswould not be an exceptional reading; since its publication, Men in the Sun hasheld meaning for its readers because of its artful representation of the social,political and historical crisis of a nation. Nevertheless, the incongruous relationof the map to a story it purports to tell, but does not quite, helps pose thequestion of how the narrative inside the fictional tale and the national narrativebeyond it relate. It reminds us with its forthright claim to reality how powerfullya dominant extra-literary narrative (loosely termed political reality) can shapethe terms of literary interpretation. In order to read an old work in a new way,readers must therefore return not only to the narrative inside it, but to theexisting maps outside it.The plot of Men in the Sun is relatively simple. It is set in 1958, ten years afterthe establishment of the state of Israel. Economically and socially dislocated inthe wake of national dispossession, three Palestinian men decide to go toKuwait where they hope they will find work. Strangers to one another at theoutset, Abu Qais, Assad and Marwan find their way independently to Basra,where the novel begins (with flashbacks telling us how each arrived there). InBasra they begin their search for a driver who will take them the last part oftheir trip by illegally smuggling them over the Iraq–Kuwait border. They meetthrough their search. Within a few days they jointly decide to travel with AbulKhaizuran, who is not a professional smuggler but a fellow Palestinian whodrives a truck that transports water, and who has been detained in Basra fortruck repairs. When Abul Khaizuran learns that Marwan, Assad and Abu Qaisare looking for a way to Kuwait, he offers them his services for less money thana professional smuggler.Abul Khaizuran has few compunctions about profiting from the desperationof his fellow Palestinians. He is a cynical and disillusioned man, traumatised byhis surgical castration following his injury fighting in the 1948 war. The memoryhaunts him, and he relates it to himself in a compulsively reiterated internalmonologue about how he lost his country and his manhood in one blow: ‘Whatgood did patriotism do you? You spend your life in an adventure, and now youare incapable of sleeping with a woman! Let the dead bury their dead. I onlywant more money now, more money’ (Kanafani 1995/1994: 47/131). 3 His firststrategy for making extra money is to use his truck when its water tank is emptyas a vehicle to smuggle Palestinians over the Iraq–Kuwait border.The scheme he offers Abu Qais, Assad and Marwan in exchange for his cutratedeal is dangerous. At both of the two border checkpoints, they will have to— 51 —www.taq.ir