Caminos para la paz. Literatura israelí y árabe en castellano (review)

I am very grateful for this opportunity to address the "review" by María Aránzazu Alegre-González, of Townson University, of the book Caminos para paz. Literatura israelí y árabe en castellano (published in Hispania 94.1 this past spring). I felt compelled to offer another perspective of the text, particularly since the published review says nothing specific about the book's content. The "review" offers little critical commentary—good or bad. The only particularized criticism the reviewer offered concerns the book's title, which in the reviewer's opinion employs unfortunately imprecise language (e.g., israelí) with its reference to "nation-state" (but that really implies "Jews") and, more importantly, árabe, which does not refer to a nation or religion, but is meant to imply Palestinian and Muslim (both criticisms I cannot totally dismiss). She also critiques the editors' "utopian" view of what can be expressed in a third language (castellano) that Jews and Muslims might not be able to otherwise (a criticism that is short-sighted, given that the book's contents often belie this notion). Finally, she criticizes the mythical nature of the convivencia to which the editors appeal in creating this "third place" in which their contributors write. Unfortunately, the review also makes accusations about the political tendencies of some of the books' contributors without offering a bit of substantiating evidence to those who have not read the collection. Reviews are most useful to readers when they are specific, and what is most missing in this one is a discussion of the actual work contained in the collection.

Coeditors López-Calvo and Ricci saw in their project the possibility of creating a "third space" in which Spanish-writing authors from both groups could offer an intimate sense of shared concerns that, for the most part, transcend their entrapping geopolitical and historico-religious boundaries. In other words, castellano seems to have served as a "third place" for the authors who finally did contribute to the volume. Most of the contributors do not write from a position of binary opposition, with an "us vs. them" dynamic, but rather from a very human and humane perspective, such as in stories like "Imán en el cuarto cerrado" about the fear experienced by a little girl who senses being watched through rifle scopes (ojos de fusiles, in a panoptic sense) as she walks to school every day; "Salmos trozados en salumuera," an all-out, Borgesian, word-bending criticism of the peace process that disputes contradictory yet assumed meanings of words and references; "Al borde del desenlace," about differences that seem insurmountable more due to a failure to acknowledge what Bakhtin called the "primacy of context" in the competing meanings of words and places than anything else.

In considering the possibility of language as a "third place," I am reminded of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, whose book Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (New York: Springer, 1979) posits that our responsibility for the "Other" derives not from our own subjectivity, but from the experience of meeting the "Other" face-to-face, from encountering his or her own subjectivity. Such is certainly the case in "Imán en el cuarto cerrado," by Abi Ben Schlomo, about a girl who fears being indiscriminately shot by all-seeing but invisible border guards, and is eventually shot, making impossible the face-to-face meeting that Levinas believes to be so necessary for avoiding the "othering" of other human beings.

Likewise, the outcome of "Al borde del desenlace," by Ahmed Mohamed Ngara, whose main protagonist "others" potential African immigrants to Spain, results from his finding a language "common" to him and a group of them, and additionally discovering that what seemed to him to be two, clearly defined national and political shores (the northern coast of Africa and the southern coast of Spain) are really both a blessing and a...