Buried in the deepest recesses of memory: a queen or a slave? The vision of Ghassan Kanafani and Emile Habibi of the City of Haifa.

• Author: Attar, Samar
• Position: City overview

WHAT IS A CITY?

ARABIC AND WESTERN DICTIONARIES define the 'city' as a place which is associated with civilization, civil rights, law and justice. The American Heritage Dictionary, for instance, refers to the city as "a center of population, commerce and culture; a town of significant size and importante", (1) The Oxford English Dictionary adds the concept of the "celestial, of heavenly city" and emphasizes the derivatives of the word, such as civil, civilian and civilization. (2) Similarly, Arabic dictionaries give details about the meanings of the city "madinah" which is derived from the root "madana" and "tamaddana"; i.e., to become civilized. Ibn Manzur (1232- 1311), for instance, in his classical dictionary, Lisan al-'Arab (3) refers to both temporal and spiritual cities. Madinah, he observes, is the city of the prophet Muhammad. II is the place of sophistication and worldly pleasure. But a new meaning is added. The slave-girl, we are told, is described as madinah which means possessed, or owned. Other dictionaries, such as Muhit al-Muhit (4) by the 19th century scholar Butrus al-Bustani (1867-1870) repeats those definitions in different ways by giving prominence to certain meanings over others. But regardless whether the dictionary is Arabic, of English, the word "city" means a specific geographical place in which people live together, presumably protected under the law. Unlike nomads, who roam the earth and are not subject to any law, city people settle in one place and are governed by "just laws."

Charles Molesworth quotes Cicero's characterization of cities "as societies of men founded upon respect for laws, which we call cities." Molesworth urges us also to think of the city as a stage "where staging itself occurs. If ... the city is the place where everything is both available and vanishing, then we can also see it as the stage in which all prosceniums are unfolding and disappearing." (5) Jane Augustine argues that the city is not only a geographical place; it "takes on the mixed qualities and functions of a human character ... [it] becomes less a topos and more organic and seemingly capable of choice. It becomes quasi human." (6) Paul Theroux presents a new definition of the city by borrowing C.P. Cavafy's argument to assure us that "the city is something within us, sometimes a 'black ruins' and sometimes representing human hope of failure. 'The city is a cage ... and no ship exists to take you from yourself.'" (7)

After these quick and often contradictory definitions, we ask in bewilderment: What is a city? Is it a real geographical place, of an imagined entity? Is it a castle where people are protected from their enemies, or is it a helpless slave that changes hands? Is it a place where one lives under just laws and enjoys oneself? Of is it a black dungeon where one lives enslaved and persecuted? What is it, paradise, or Hell? A symbol of perfection, or corruption? Is it a stage where everything appears and disappears? Do we see it with our own eyes? of does it have a hidden face? If it is feminine does it play a limited role, such as that of a goddess, a holy mother, of a whore? What is the relationship between the city and the person who portrays it?

I have chosen the city of Haifa, because the Palestinian cities in general are very complicated. Most of them are mentioned in the Scriptures, claimed by various parties and presented with different histories. No one disputes that Paris is a French city, or London an English one. But cities such as Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, or Jerusalem are presented in Western encyclopedias, travel, or scholarly books as Israeli cities. Men living in the West have dreamt about them. Then their dream became reality. Consequently these cities acquired a new history, a new population and at times new names in the twentieth century.

My purpose in this paper is to examine the notion of the city of Haifa in two novels: Ghassan Kanafani's Returning to Haifa (1969) and Emile Habibi's Saraya Bint al-Ghoul (1992) and with references to Habibi's short story "Um al-Rubabika" or "The Mother of Junk," (1967). The city is seen through the eyes of two of her sons: One was forced to leave her during the brutal onslaught of the terrorist Jewish organization Haganah along with the British troops in April 1948; the other stayed behind, witnessed both her destruction and reconstruction and later became a spokesman for a minority and a second-class citizen in his own country. Haifa was mapped, and re-mapped through the memories of both absent and present sons. The first one revisited after June 1967, but only for-a day and during similar circumstances to the ones that forced him to leave her. His city, now, was totally claimed by foreigners from around the world. His infant child, left behind at a moment of disaster in 1948, was adopted by a Jewish Polish family that took over his own house. The second one who stayed behind after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 became a witness to the daily violence directed against his own people and the large scale urban development projects which were meant to change the historical monuments and character of his city.

Although the narrative is essentially Palestinian, the memories of the absent and the present sons are quite different in texture and tone. Kanafani's absent narrator uses a realistic style, recalls historical events and confronts issues, such as self examination and responsibility. Habibi's present protagonist avoids direct and realistic style. He employs a popular myth in order to unmask the history of the disaster that has befallen his city and to assert the rights of his own people. But no matter how the city is reconstructed through memory, Haifa emerges as a mixture of queen and slave. Its inhabitants, whether they left, of stayed, have been deeply injured; nevertheless their identity is strengthened as Palestinians even when their city had been reconfigured and reconstructed for the narrative of other foreign people.

GHASSAN KANAFANI'S HAIFA

In Returning to Haifa, Kanafani depicts the city during two decisive moments in its history. (8) The first is on Wednesday, 21 April 1948, when the British authorities collaborated with the terrorist Jewish organization, the Haganah, in forcing the Palestinian inhabitants of Haifa to leave their city on board of British crafts to other shores. Palestine at the time was still under the British mandate. The expulsion of the Arab population took place less than a month before the proclamation of the establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian soil. Thus the Arab history of Haifa that goes back more than one thousand and three hundred years was wiped out. The second moment described by Kanafani is 30 June 1967 after the expansion of the Jewish state in less than twenty years whereby the whole of Palestine was now occupied in addition to parts of Egypt and Syria. These two decisive and frozen moments in time are linked to the story of Said S. and his wife who were forced to leave their city, their house and their five months-old baby in it on Wednesday 21 April 1948 during the chaos that enveloped Halla. (9) The couple who took refuge in Ramallah for twenty years have become now under Israeli occupation in 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza. At the end of June they were allowed for the first time to visit Halla for a day.

The city of Haifa as it is depicted in Kanafani's novel is a topography, a place on the map, a stage where violent events took place in the twentieth century. It has specific geographical features: the mountain, the steep stairways that go down to the sea, the endless orchards, and the narrow alleys. These features remained the same as Said S. had known them in the past. But the memory brings now new information about names, people, and events. As the protagonist drives north with his wife across Marj Ibn 'Amer then ascends the coastal highway towards the southern entry of Haifa he hears the sea and feels the blazing sun in June. The names of the streets as they used to be in 1948 come back to him. Palestinians from the past appear in his imagination. The Khuri family, for instance, looms large. They used to own a building south of Stanton Road near Kings Street. In that building, and on the day the inhabitants were forced to leave the city, there were resistance fighters who most likely were killed. Said's house was in a rural setting on al-Jalil mountain, at the bottom of a hill in a district called Halisa. His wife, Safiyya, is originally from the country. They had a baby called Khaldun. In their living room a picture of Jerusalem and a Damascene carpet decorated the walls. Everything seems confused in the protagonist's mind. But suddenly the past explodes in front of his eyes. April 1948 becomes very vivid.

We do not know what Said did for a living in 1948, nor do we know anything about his social background. What we know is that he once owned a green car, a 1946 Ford model and a house. This means he is not a peasant, of a poor city dweller. On 21 April 1948 British soldiers forced him along with his wife and a large number of Palestinians to evacuate Haifa, put them on board small British crafts and took them to Acre. The Jews were in control of the high hills connected to Herzl Street. The commercial center located between al Halisa and Allenby Road was their military backbone. Said was turning at the end of King Faysal Street going towards the harbor in order to take the road to al-Nasnas valley when he suddenly encountered armed soldiers and heard an explosion followed by shooting from the Carmel hills. Arab districts were shelled. Shops began to close. People were trying desperately to go back to their bornes. But they were forbidden by the British who were due to leave the city in three weeks. In a surrealistic scene Kanafani described how Said was trying In vain to take different routes to his borne, and how his wife was...