The Olive Grove – a
Palestinian Story, by Deborah Rohan. London: Saqi, 2008.
This book will leave the reader wanting to do some research and
find out more about Israel/Palestine, to get a larger picture of the rights and
wrongs. It is hard to be sure which parts of the book are historically
accurate, and which are fiction; a lot of background knowledge would be needed to
be able to sort it out. The book does not actually claim to be history, but a
fictionalised account of one family’s story – though my library, interestingly,
has it firmly in the “History” section, and large parts of the book are devoted
to people explaining Palestine’s situation, and its causes, to one another at
length.
To start on a
positive note, this book is a good read: the story is engaging and claims one's interest. However, it is not good literature. Some of the incidents, and many
of the characters’ reactions, seem stilted and contrived. The prose is patchy at best, often hopelessly
awkward, and sometimes the author simply can’t work out the structure of her
own sentences, as on p. 97: “He had repeatedly blamed himself for Hagop’s
departure on his own need to have tobacco.” Rohan also has the widespread American
habit of using the first word that comes to mind, without checking what it
really means. E.g. “languish” when she really meant “pause” or simply “lie”:
again and again, “Haniya languished in the doorway”, “olives languished on a
plate”. Or “donned”: “Raji spotted the soldiers donned in red and white
headdresses”. There are plenty of other examples.
It does not convey the reality of Palestinian life and culture, or make
the Palestinian character come alive – rather than being a “Palestinian Story”,
as its subtitle claims, it’s a family story, and the family is an American one
with Palestinian bits added on for decoration. All the characters are drawn as
Americans, which comes across as completely out of place – e.g., on p. 66,
Hagop the Armenian says to Kamel who is reproaching himself for leaving Hagop
to be attacked by two Turks, “Don’t do that to yourself, Kamel. Things happen.
You were there for me.” This is a late-twentieth-century American talking, not
an early-twentieth-century Armenian. The whole atmosphere of the book is very
Western. There is scene after scene of the Moghrabi children playing, which can
end up being merely tedious; the author was presumably trying to build up a
picture of family life in Palestine, but lacked the skill to do it
successfully. A much better picture of another culture is achieved in Three
Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, poorly written though it is.
The action in The Olive Grove is slow and often plodding. Even
when Kamel is in prison, there is not much of a feel of what it is like because
only the most obvious and superficial, almost clichéd, details are given. Fair
enough, the author was re-working what she had been told by Hamzi, and maybe
didn’t have very much to go on – but did she try to find out? The reader repeatedly wonders whether Rohan had done any investigation or
information-gathering at all – did she have any idea of the real scene in a
Palestinian refugee camp? She talks about the stench – but then Hamzi got used
to it, and that is all. She doesn’t explain how these destitute people could
find money to buy his cigarettes, yet he seems to have supported himself by
selling them.
A question about the Moghrabi family which does not seem to be
explained in the book is why they were not practising Muslims. The reader also
notices that the Moghrabis do not represent the majority of Palestinians, in
that they are a rich family, and even in exile in Lebanon, after their money
has run out, they are still only relatively poor – they never live in the refugee
camp themselves.
The Palestinian people in the book appear too perfect, and the Jewish
people and others are demonized. It could
be a good book for softening attitudes towards Islam, but leads one to dislike
the Jews intensely – though it does distinguish between (bad) Zionists and
“good Jews”, in the person of Rabbi Moussa.
Other “good” characters in the book are the Arab Christians who hid and
protected their Jewish or Palestinian neighbours at the risk of their own lives. Dr White, the American director of Hamzi’s
school in Lebanon, championed Hamzi and tried to help his Palestinian pupils react
positively instead of going for retaliation and revenge.
The book raises the whole question of Jewish identity, how it comes to
be wrapped up with that particular piece of land – the Promised Land – and the
question of anti-Semitism and the results of the Second World War. If the
Palestinians are actually Philistines, then their claim to that land goes back
even further than the claim of the Jews does – though the Jews’ claim is not
based on antiquity so much as a God-given promise. However, the Jews in Israel appear
to be Zionists first and worshippers of God only a very poor second, if that. The
book does not mention the fact that Jews and Palestinians are, by all accounts,
very closely related, but this is a fact that it is important to bear in mind.
Readers who come to this book knowing nothing about the British in
Palestine will be shocked at how they behaved, not only on the large scale, but
also in the story of Lieutenant Bainbridge and Mahmoud’s and Kamel’s rifle (which
ends on pp. 280-1). The picture is of arrogant British supremacy: “I want your
property and I am stronger than you, so I’m going to have it.” In dealing with
the situation in Palestine after the Second World War, the British clearly did
not know what they were dealing with. They were seriously to blame for this,
because they should have taken pains to find out since they had assumed
responsibility for the country. They made and broke promises to both sides,
both the Jews and the Palestinians.
It is also clear that
the UN is at least as much to blame for the situation of Israel/Palestine as
the British.
The same achingly desperate story of wrongs could
be written and told by a Jewish family. Stories of atrocities by Palestinians
are part of what every Jewish person knows. It is worth bearing in mind,
however, that this book was written in America for Americans, who are used to
Israel being “right” because the US supports it (not the other way round). Do
we get a slightly more balanced picture in the UK? At least we hear a lot more
from the Palestinian side. Neither side (taken as a whole) can ever see that
two wrongs don’t make a right. However, Kamel and Hamzi are “enlightened”
Palestinians and can see it more clearly than most. Although they don’t often
make the international news, there are people on both sides who are working to
unite the two communities at the local level, just as there were people doing the
same in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles.
Finally, there is an absolutely amazing episode
on pp. 420-431. Fifty years on, Hamzi, with his adult daughter, goes back to
Israel-Palestine on a brief visit from America. They go to his former family
home and find it is a café, owned by a Palestinian. When he tells the owner,
George, who he is,
George’s face grows ashen. He
stands up, nods an ‘excuse me’ to Ruba, and leaves the room. Moments later he
returns, holding a set of keys. ‘Please, sir, the restaurant is yours.’
‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘If you have returned to your home,
after these many years, I will gladly turn over my business to you. I do not
wish to prosper from anyone so hurt by the Israeli occupation. My family could
not flee. For many years we suffered, but at least we had the good fortune to
remain in our country. Now we are allowed to run our own businesses.’ He nods
his head again. ‘Consider the restaurant yours.’
Hamzi has to refuse, of course, since he is
only being allowed into Israel on a short tourist visa. Did the author (and did
Hamzi himself) see that this episode was an astonishing mirror image of the
whole miserable question that lies behind the book? After many years of bitter
exile, the Jews came back to what had once been their homeland. The present inhabitants,
the Palestinians, who had a perfect legal and historical right to the land,
could either welcome them as long-lost brothers and hand over the land to them,…
or resist them bitterly. The Jews could have treated the Palestinians as
friends and neighbours, each side aiming to share generously and equably and
treat the other with humanity, fairness, and compassion. But because each side
saw the other from the start not as brothers but as enemies – invaders,
occupiers – the story of Israel/Palestine has been tragic from the start and continues
to be one of hatred and killing, with no real solution imaginable even now.
