Anna Sussman

NEW YORK, Nov 30 2005 (IPS) — As the settlements lie in rubble, and Gazans reclaim the right to cross into Egypt and sell the first fruits and vegetables of the autumn harvest, Palestinian writers, directors and actors are reminding audiences far from the conflict that it’s not quite time to pop the champagne cork.

Suad Amiry, author of “Sharon and My Mother-in-Law”, Mohammad Bakri, star of “Private” and of his own one-man adaptation of “The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist”, and Hany Abu-Assad, director of “Paradise Now”, offer nuanced and personal interpretations of life under occupation.

Although the works focus on different aspects of the Palestinian experience, they all deal with familial and individual turmoil, adding a human dimension to an often faceless conflict.

The largely Arab-American audience at a recent performance of “The Pessoptimist” in New York were treated to an intimate narrative in which Bakri, dressed in a wrinkled grey suit, and with only a broom, a clay water jug, a tin bowl, and a trunk as props, conjured up a lifetime of loss and betrayal at the hands of the Israeli army.

The now-classic novel “The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist” was published in 1974 by the renowned author and politican Emile Habiby, and was a favourite of the late Edward Said.

Saeed is the son of a collaborator, the most despicable of personages in Palestinian society, who becomes one himself. Yet Bakri, whose comic delivery and vulnerability are reminiscent of the Italian actor Roberto Benigni in “Life is Beautiful”, portrays him as a sympathetic character.

In one scene, he arouses the audience’s laughter imitating his wife pleading with their son in an exaggerated falsetto; seconds later, the audience is moved to tears as it becomes clear his only son will commit suicide rather than surrender to the Israelis, as Saeed watches helplessly.

While the play’s script closely follows the plot of the book, Bakri has sprinkled Palestinian folk songs throughout the performance, which are sung in call-and-response. As dozens of people chanted softly about the lost villages of their forebears, the pain of dispossession became palpable.

In the film “Private”, which opened this month in New York City, Bakri plays another victim of circumstance, only this time, he is a man of principles. When the Israeli army takes over his family’s home, Bakri refuses to leave, forcing his family to endure the humiliation of restricted movement, unable to go into their own bedrooms, locked into a single room at night.

Saverio Costanzo,the Italian director, was inspired by the true story of a school principal whose house has been occupied since 1992. In the film, the father, Mohammad, clashes with his daughter Mariam, who wants to “fight fire with fire”.

Mohammad steadfastly advocates peaceful resistance, insisting that by remaining in the house, they are fighting. He tries to seduce his anxious, depressed wife, who despises living alongside the soldiers, while helicopters whir above the house. His small daughter awakes one night and begs to use the bathroom, but can’t; they are locked in for the evening.

“The idea underlying the film was to make the Westerners identify with the Palestinian history,” Costanzo has said. “We focused on emotions which have no nationality but the whole world is their home.”

“Paradise Now” also examines the way universal feelings like guilt, shame, anger and love can become motives for suicide bombers. News reports often treat suicide bombings as isolated acts carried out by religious madmen, or wayward young men who have been manipulated by fundamentalist rhetoric. Hany Abu-Assad, the director and co- screenwriter, aimed to demolish these stereotypes, and provide a context by which their actions might be understood.

“The bombers could be anybody, because when you are living under occupation, you feel weak and cowardly. It is the most horrible feeling, this impotence, and you want to change impotency into courage. You think, maybe I can cause damage, and maybe this damage can make a difference,” Abu-Assad told IPS.

“I wanted to recreate the sense of claustrophobia in Nablus. We shot it there, and it’s a city under siege. When you don’t leave a city, you become paranoid, under pressure, and you start to become unhealthy. While we were filming, I even accused a crew member of being a traitor,” said Abu-Assad, himself not immune to the effects of living in what amounts to a war zone.

The film’s power lies not in its dramatic moments, but in the details which bring the characters into the realm of the believable. When Khaled is taping his farewell martyr video, he interrupts the heroic monologue to tip his mother off on where to get cheaper water filters.

Said hops into a taxi and listens to the driver spouting rumours of Israel’s attempt to poison Palestinian water sources with a chemical that kills sperm, with subsequent bragging about his own virility. The incidents are minor, and in the fatalist context of the movie, provide much-appreciated comic relief, but they represent larger issues that loom over everyday life: access to and control over water sources, the demographic war that Israel is quite obviously losing.

Suad Amiry, in the memoir “Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries”, which has been translated into 15 languages (Hebrew, but not Arabic, among them), treats the demographic question with her characteristic sense of humour.

“During curfew days, houses gradually metamorphosed into nothing but kitchens and bedrooms. Excessive eating, screaming at one another, and producing babies were the only three possible activities. No wonder the Israelis are totally obsessed with demographics,” she writes.

A visit to friends during a brief lifting of the curfew becomes a race against time to accept the hospitality of their friends, who are bombarding them with pastries and tea, and still make it home before the curfew is re-imposed.

“We quickly swallowed the cake, gulped the hot tea and with burning tongues and full mouths, bid them farewell.”

This quotidian activity is laden with details that illustrate how the insidious Israeli presence winds its way even into lighthearted get- togethers.

In a telephone interview from Washington, where she was promoting her book last week, Amiry explained why she thought it was so successful.

“People love it because it takes them into my house. I wrote it as emails to friends. The reader is welcomed into my life, into my neighborhood.”

Punctuated as it is by hilarious encounters with obnoxious Israeli officers and showdowns between Amiry and her mother-in-law over what size plate the elder woman must use for her lunch, the book inevitably inspires anger at the endless manifestations of injustice, both large and small, that mark the Palestinian experience.

“Knowledge of injustice,” says Amiry, “is important, but it doesn’t translate automatically into fairness in the world.” Yet she recalls warmly how a 13-year-old Israeli boy named Adam emailed her to tell her that after reading her book, he has decided never to join the army.

So that makes one less Israeli soldier patrolling the territories, but what does it mean for Palestine’s future?

“The Gaza withdrawal is good for the people who live in Gaza,” says Amiry. “But there is a very heavy price for people in the West Bank.”

Although the peace process seems to have picked up momentum, “pessoptimism” still reigns in this conflict-ridden region.