Native: Dispatches From an Israeli-Palestinian Life

February 16, 2016 by Tasnim

Sayed Kashua’s new book Native: Dispatches From an Israeli-Palestinian Life is a collection of reflections written between 2006 and the summer of 2014, when Kashua left Israel and moved to the US to teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Native was originally published in Hebrew as Ben Ha’aretz. As Adam Kirsch writes, this “title that contains an untranslatable pun. Literally, it means “son of the land,” and coming from Kashua, an Arab Israeli who writes in Hebrew, it implies a claim to nativeness that carries a […]

Categories: Art, Literature, Television • Tags: Hebrew, Israel, Naguib Mahfouz, Palestine, Sayed Kashua

Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi and the Berlinale

February 11, 2016 by Tasnim

Inhebbek Hedi, directed by Tunisian director Mohamed Ben Attia,  with Belgium’s Dardenne brothers as co-producers, is “the first Arab contender in two decades” in the official competition of the Berlinale, running from 11-21 February. Hedi tells the story of “a simple young man” who “does not expect much from the life that is traced for him. He just takes life as it comes.” “He allows his authoritarian and overwhelming mother organise his marriage to Khedija. He allows his boss send […]

Categories: Film • Tags: Haifaa Al-Mansour, Hany Abu-Assad, Ibtisam Mara'ana Menuhin, Israel, Jordan, Larissa Sansour, Mohamed Ben Attia, Naji Abu Nowar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia

Palestine/Israel, Music and Photography at Aspen

July 8, 2015 by Tasnim

Palestinian Violinist Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar speaks about his initiative Polyphony at a panel about the Middle East and Art at Aspen, alongside French photographer Frédéric Brenner who spoke about his project Diaspora and his book This Place (You can see a longer presentation on the book entitled Israel through 12 lenses). The third person on the panel was Dutch composer  Merlijn Twaalfhoven who spoke about his project Carried By the Wind, “a spectacular music performance from atop rooftops and balconies, across the Separation Wall.” I have my issues with the idea that […]

Categories: Music, Photography • Tags: Israel, Palestine

Sayed Kashua at Other Israel Film Festival

November 30, 2014 by Tasnim

Following a screening of Season Four of his comedy show Arab Labour, Sayed Kashua talks about his reasons for leaving Israel, in a panel moderated by Lucy Aharish with Mira Awad, Menashe Noy and Sammy Smooha. Nashua gets into a  bit of a heated debate with Smooha as to whether things have improved or not for Arabs in Israel and expresses his disillusionment and pessimism about the future, while Awad is more reconciliatory, expresses her belief that the silent majority is not […]

Categories: Film, Literature, Video • Tags: Ibtisam Mara'ana Menuhin, Israel, Mahmoud Darwish, Menashe Noy, Mira Awad, Palestine, Sammy Smooha, Sayed Kashua

Days of Dust

April 27, 2013 by tasnim

The scene of the destruction of Dayr al-Bahr that Halim Barakat leaves us with at the end of his novel Six Days returns in The Return of The Bird to the Sea, translated as Days of Dust. The novel takes place during the six day war of 1967, over the course of which we follow Ramzi Safadi and his friends and acquaintances, and listen to his discussions of the war with Pamela, an American woman whose husband returns to the […]

Categories: Literature • Tags: 1967, Beirut, Days of Dust, Halim Barakat, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Six Days

Returning to Haifa

February 14, 2013 by tasnim

Ghassan Kanafani‘s novella, Returning to Haifa (1969), tells the story of Said and Safeyya, who fled their home in Haifa during the 1948 Nakba. In the chaos and violence of their escape,  their five-month old son Khaldun is left behind. Twenty years later when the Mandelbaum Gate is opened they return to Haifa,  “to see” as they tell themselves. They find their home occupied by Miriam, a widow whose husband died in the war eleven years earlier, and Dov, their son […]

Categories: Film, Literature, Theatre • Tags: adaptations, Ghassan Kanafani, Hebrew, Israel, novella, Palestine, plays, war