Sunday 9 December 2012

The Olive Grove by Deborah Rohan

The Olive Grove – a Palestinian Story, by Deborah Rohan. London: Saqi, 2008.

Front Cover

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.