Inextricably Bonded: Israeli Arab and Jewish Writers Re-Visioning Culture

Chapter 11. Tales That Ought to Be Told: David Grossman’s Smile of the Lamb and Anton Shammas’s Arabesques

11 Tales That Ought to Be Told David Grossman’s Smile of the Lamb and Anton Shammas’s Arabesques The Paternal Legacy of Tales of Love To demonstrate the centrality of the storytelling motif in both novels, I wish briefly to recapitulate the plots of each of these works. In Arabesques the two interweaving narratives are entitled “The Tale” and “The Teller.” The connection between these narratives is forged by Uncle Yusuf, the narrator’s uncle and the village storyteller. Among the stories he shares with his nephew, Anton Shammas, Yusuf tells the story of a cousin named Anton who allegedly died in infancy. Apparently Anton the narrator was named after the dead child. Uncle Yusuf is a Christian Arab who maintains friendly relations with Muslim Arabs. These friendships are certainly atypical of the long-term hatred and hostility that marked relationships between Arab Christians and Muslims. Indeed, Yusuf tells his stories over the course of years while waiting for his own son, Ameen, who ran away to Lebanon to join with Christian Arabs in their struggle against Muslim Arabs. Yusuf’s stories prompt Anton to search for his namesake, the cousin who he believes is still alive. The search leads him to write “The Tale.” This part of Arabesques presents the saga of the Shammas family, whose history extends from the Ottoman and British rule of Palestine, through the Israeli conquest in 1948, up to the Israeli 248 Tales That Ought to Be Told 249 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War. The story of the hostilities between Muslim and Christian Arabs merges with the story of the Israeli conquest of Fassuta and the transfer of some of its inhabitants to refugee camps. Episodes of war and violence intermingle with the story of the courtship and marriage of the narrator’s parents and his nostalgic recollections of his childhood in the village. The family saga intersects with segments of “The Teller,” where the protagonist-narrator recounts his stay in Paris and his participation in the International Writing Program in Iowa City, Iowa. One of the many thematic strands of “The Teller” focuses on the narrator’s ambivalent relationship with the Israeli Jewish writer Yehoshua BarOn , who is planning to write a novel about an Israeli Arab. Another strand follows an unexpected development in Anton’s search for his cousin. The ties between Anton, the narrator, and Michael Abyad— the adopted son of a Lebanese couple, who works for the Palestinian Center for Research in Beirut and who, presumably, is the other Anton —are reestablished in a dramatic meeting in Iowa City. Yet another thematic strand recounts the narrator’s love affair with Shlomith , an Israeli Jewish woman married to an army officer, which ends abruptly. The narrator’s love letters, written in Hebrew from Iowa City, recount the tale of his childhood. The interception of the letters by the husband ends all communication between the lovers. In an ironic and quite confusing plot twist, it turns out that the narrator’s autobiographical tale, parts of which fell into the hands of the Israeli officer, was not written by Anton but appears to be a translated (by Anton) version of an autobiography written by Michael Abyad. In the course of his meeting with Anton, Michael, who denies being the first Anton but who nonetheless identifies with the dead child, admits to having written an autobiography in the narrator’s name, which he (Michael) had entitled “Tale.” In The Smile of the Lamb, the importance of the storytelling motif is signaled by the refrain of the Arabic phrases “kan-ya-ma-kan” (once upon a time) and “tuta tuta khelset elkhaduta” (so ends the tale), which the protagonist, Uri, a young Israeli Jew of Iraqi origin, has learned from the Arab Khilmi, an estranged member of his community , a worldly wise fool, and a storyteller. Uri has befriended Khilmi in Andal, a village in the occupied territories, where he serves 250 Discourses of Bonding as an assistant to his Jewish friend Katzman, the military governor of the area. Khilmi, who lives in a cave above the village, has captivated Uri with his fantastic stories about his imaginary redeemer, the Greek hermit Darius, who came to console him after his father’s suicide . Thanks to his tales of love, Darius taught Khilmi to live in a world of poetic fantasy...