For those of us who live in Tel Aviv, it's easy to forget that our city is actually called Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Tel Aviv is a young city, established in 1909 just outside of Jaffa; it is the first city built by Jews since ancient times. It grew so fast that eventually it swallowed up Jaffa - which is old, and quaint. (Tel Aviv is young, it is dynamic, it is exciting - but it is not quaint). Jaffa has a beautiful, gentrified - and expensive - area of renovated Ottoman-era homes overlooking the sea; it has that lovely refurbished square near the clock tower where we go to listen to outdoor concerts; it has an endlessly fascinating flea market; it has a few good restaurants and some excellent places to eat hummous. It also has an impoverished inner city, a very high level of street violence, a thriving drug trade and a large minority Arab population that lives with high unemployment and a lot of social problems.
What is it like to be an educated, westernized Israeli Arab who speaks fluent Hebrew, living in Jaffa? To be a product of a socially conservative environment but live side-by-side with a liberal one? How does it feel to know everything about the majority's culture, yet not feel accepted by it - and also not quite a part of one's own culture? What is the emotional price one pays for straddling two worlds?
These are questions we liberal Tel Avivians don't think about too often. We are aware of the social problems in Jaffa, but we do not talk about them. Few of us have Arab friends, and fewer still speak Arabic - beyond a few words that have been incorporated into Hebrew as slang. There are many Jews living in Jaffa - some rich, some poor - but almost no Arabs in Tel Aviv. We live in the same city, and they know us - but we do not really know them. It's a class issue, a cultural issue, and of course it's a political issue too.
Ayman Sikseck shows us his world - but he does not tell us. He does not lecture his readers; he compels them, with his beautiful prose and subtle observations, to empathize. You can read his previously published story here. (the stories were written in Hebrew and translated into English).
Update: I see that Karen was similarly moved by Sikseck's story (Nov. 19 entry). She took the trouble to copy out an English translation of a poem by Nizar Qabbani, who is promently mentioned in the article. Here it is, a most beautiful poem about love:
A Clarification to My Readers
by Nizar Qabbani
And the fools say of me:
I entered the lodges of women
And never left.
And they call for my hanging,
Because I write poems
about my beloved.
I never traded
like others
in Hashish.
never stole.
never murdered.
I have loved in broad daylight.
Have I sinned?
And the fools say of me:
with my poems
I have violated the commands of heaven.
Who can say
love ravages the honor of heaven?
Heaven is my intimate.
It cries if I cry,
laughs if I laugh
and its stars
grow in brilliance
if one day I fall in love.
So what if I sing in the name of my beloved
And plant her like a chestnut tree
in every letter.
Fondness will remain my calling,
like all prophets.
And infancy, innocence
and purity.
I will write of my beloved
Till I melt her golden hair
In the heaven’s gold.
I am a child,
And hope I never change,
scribbling on the walls of the stars
as that child pleases,
till the value of love
in my homeland
matches that of the air,
and to dreamers of love I become
a dictionary,
and on their lips I become
an A
and a B.
When I was at university I took a course on modern Arabic literature (in English translation). It was taught by an Egyptian woman professor who, I recently discovered, died of ovarian cancer a couple of years ago. I don't think she was even 50 years old. She and I did not like each other very much: she thought my interpretation of a certain novel written by a Somali author smacked of cultural imperialism; I thought that any woman who denied the horror of female genital mutilation in the name of "cultural sensitivity" forfeited the right to call herself a feminist. I also couldn't stand her knee-jerk anti-Western and anti-Israel opinions, and didn't hesitate to challenge her in class; this was possibly arrogant and unwise, especially since I was the only Jewish student among her Middle Eastern fan club. (She took her revenge by failing to return my final paper, ignoring my many inquiries via phone messages and notes left with the departmental secretary, before disappearing for summer vacation at the end of my final semester). But I did learn quite a lot from her. I especially remember her saying that in the Arab world poetry is a popular art form, whereas in the West it tends to be more for the elites. I think this poem illustrates her point rather well.
