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8. Conclusion
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
8 Conclusion THIS BOOK HAS EXAMINED A GROUP OF WRITERS WHO MOVED FROM ONE culture to another-from Iraq to Israel-and their writing. After looking into the factors causing this move and the culture left behind, the study went on to explore the issues raised by this move and its expression in their writing. These issues-choices of language, genre, and topics; considerations of audience; and literary contributions-are inextricably linked with each other in parallel, complementary, and causal relations. One of the first issues in deciding (to continue) to write in Israel was the choice of language: whether to write in the language of their former culture or their new culture. An author's reasons for choosing one language over another are complex and often highly individual; however, there are similarities among those writers who have made the same choice. While I use the word "choice" in discussing the issue of language, it implies more volition than may actually exist. The writers who have stayed with Arabic seem to have done so because of their attachments to their mother language and because of what the writers perceive as their inability to replicate these ties. For those writing in Hebrew, their relation to both the world around their source material and that of their target audience is dominant. In both cases, the "literary appropriateness" of the language chosen and its inherent qualities are overshadowed by the above-mentioned considerations. The writers' perceptions of the past and the transition to Israel influence what they choose to write about as well as in which language. 151 152 ExiLE FROM EXILE: ISRAELI WRITERS FROM IRAQ Intuitively, the language in which the work is written becomes an inherent quality of the work, inseparable from the form and content. For although we may, albeit reluctantly, accept the idea that a work, at least a work of prose, can be more or less adequately translated into another language, we balk at the notion that it could, indifferently , have been written in a language other than the original one.I Shimon Ballas initially attempted to translate a work he had written in Arabic into Hebrew. After completing the first chapter, he abandoned the procedure and began again, writing what was to become HaMa'abarah in Hf:brew. Both Shalom DarwIsh and SamI Michael have addressed entirdy different concerns in their Hebrew works than in their earlier Arabk stories. Michael left behind the buffoonery of his first pieces. DarwIsh became freer and more explicit in his social criticism .2 SamIr Naqqash and Yi?l:lak Bar-Moshe have taken very different approaches to adapting Arabic for writing in their new home. BarMoshe simplifies the idiom in a style approaching the journalistic. Naqqash takes advantage of the complexity of the language to add to the many layers of meaning in his dense and reference-laden narratives. However, the degree of linguistic sophistication in his writing is taken to an extreme, resulti.ng in a failure of communication. The choice of language also has a less direct role in shaping the literary work. I have suggested ways in which it may influence the content of the work. Those writers who chose to write in Hebrew wrote their first novels about the transit camp experience. They present the trials of the new immigrant to Israel in a direct manner, thus giving rise to a new subgenre: sifrut hama'abarah, a literature of transition. These writers show a willingness toO bring issues raised by the ma'abarah experience to the attention of the Israeli readership. Through these novels they confront the reality of the present (or the more recent past). While the various crises are de:scribed as specific to the Iraqi-born newcomer in the early years of the state of Israel, they also represent the crises encountered by immigrants in general. These crises-economic, social, religious, moral, cultural-arise from the differences between the two societies (motherland/home and exile/refuge) and cause the crisis of identity. Adolescence is used as a central metaphor for the condition of the migrant; both t<::~enagers and uprooted immigrants stand on the [3.141.47.221] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 10:00 GMT) CONCLUSION 153 brink of a new identity that they themselves must synthesize from their past and present. These narratives present characters who respond to the identity crisis in a variety of ways. The strategies range from rejecting the new or the old to attempting to merge the two. Only this last option meets with any degree of success. These are the characters-Sha'11l in Shavim VeShavim Yoter, Yosef in HaMa'abarah, and, we are led to believe, Niirl in Tarnegol Kaparot-who deny neither their Iraqi past nor their Israeli present. Their attempts to reconcile the conflict between the two lead to the formation of an integrated identity. Israeli institutions central to the process of socialization-the ma'abarah (transit camp), army, and kibbutz-are both background for the stories and subjects for scrutiny. While the army appears to succeed as a means of integration where the kibbutz fails, all three institutions allow the characters to begin to formulate an Israeli identity and allow the readers to probe the nature of this identity. Sifrut hama'abarah introduces a new kind of identity to Hebrew literature. Stories of the Generation of 1948 present the sabra hero, the native-born builder and defender of the land. The literature of the next generation, the New Wave, offers the hero's fictional son, the sabra antihero. The characters of the transit camp come from outside the Ashkenazi-based sabra model and lineage; their fathers were not there to build or to defend the land. Their exile is neither the national exile brought to an end by the heroes in the works from the War of Independence generation nor the existentialist exile suffered by their successors , but a very real and personal one. Those choosing to continue writing in Arabic return to their lost childhood in an attempt to prolong the past. They travel back in time through their remembrances, recovering the past and bringing it to the present through narrative. The subjective reconstruction of the pastthe nostalgia lurking in the shadows-is not denied. These are personal accounts of the lost Garden of Eden, of home. The description of home in these narratives defines exile, for home is everything exile is not. Home is childhood, while exile is adolescence; home is the past, exile the present; home is stability, rootedness, continuity, and order, while exile is discontinuity, transience, and chaos. Home is the memory and exile the reality. The narratives of Iraq written in Hebrew describe the area between home and exile. They offer a different view of life in Iraq from the Arabic works: of home no longer safe, of a permanence unraveling. 154 EXILE FROM ExiLE: ISRAElI WRITERS FROM IRAQ The stories take place mostly outside of the actual home and tell of leave-taking. This in-between stage-of knowing one is on the verge of leaving-offers a vit~w of home without the nostalgia. While DarwIsh describes a society at least as insulated and unchanging as that portrayed by Bar-Moshe and Naqqlish, his depiction is with as critical a pen as that of Ballas and Michael. The authors write with the hindsight that these are the final days of the Jewish community in Iraq; their protagonists are only starting to become aware of this. Home is on the verge of becoming not-home, and the tone-realistic, critical, nightmarish -reflects the changing moods. The tone of these works speaks to the successful resocialization of the authors themselves in Israel. Their adaptation to Israeli society enables them to reject nostalgia for Iraqi and Jewish Iraqi society. This does not, of course, preclude Michael and Ballas from continuing to view Israeli society in the critical manner of their ma'abarah novels. The language decision also contributes to the definition of audience, potential and actual, and consequently to the readings given these works. Considerations of audience also differ according to the language. The Hebrew author is encouraged by the publishing industry to be concerned with marketability; the author of a work in Arabic must find a sponsor for a vanity press and may target a more specific following. The type of work written coincides with the language in which it is written. The language of the work correlates with its place on the autobiography -fiction t::ontinuum rather than in terms of length-identified narrative genres (short story, novella, novel). Yi~l:tak Bar-Moshe is alone in identifying his roughly chronological assortments of vignettes as memoir, although he also suggests categorizing it as either a collection of short stories or .as a novel. SamIr Naqqlish's work clearly has elements of autobiography, while DarwIsh crafts into a fictional mode an incident he establishes as personally experienced. Shimon Ballas writes stories about his childhood but then casts doubt on their authenticity by the afterword. SlimI Michael, Eli Amir, and Shimon Ballas all write about the transit camp from a position of personal experience in the best tradition of "write about what you know," but they do not write these novels as memoirs or autobiography.3 The works in Arabic are more closely based on real life, almost as if the exercise of writing is intended for the writer's self and for no other audience. The Hebrew authors exploit the distancing quality of fiction, reaching for an outside audience . [3.141.47.221] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 10:00 GMT) CONCLUSION 155 The Hebrew authors write, in part, to educate those who do not come from similar backgrounds. They write of the horrors that befell them before the exodus-tragedy was not a monopoly of the European Jews-and the indignities and hardships suffered upon their arrival in Israel. Their accounts of the early transition period as newcomers call the veteran settlers to task. The contribution of the Iraqi Jewish writers to Hebrew literature is comparable to the contribution the Jews made to modem Iraqi literature before their departure. Like their predecessors they use the literary tools of the majority culture. Unlike them, however, they are not actively developing these tools but accept those developed in the previous generation. Their writing is less central to their contemporary literary scene than was that of the Jewish literati of Baghdad because of this more conservative style. Their importance lay in their presentation of perspectives alternative to the mainstream Ashkenazi voice in modem Israeli literature. At a time when the future of Zionism is being questioned , they ask about its present and its past. In a society based on the principle of the ingathering of the exiles, they explore the exiles of the ingathered. The greatest collective achievement of the Jewish writers from Iraq is the creation of a new literary subgenre that focuses on the experiences and issues at the core of Israeli society. The contribution made by the Arabic-writing authors to both Arabic and Israeli literatures is considerably more limited due to the lack of readers and the subsequent marginality. Few readers have both the language skills and interest to read about the Iraqi Jewish experience in the Arabic language. Despite the paucity of readers, these works do add to the diversity in both literatures, and they document a world that no longer exists. The Jewish writers made great contributions to the national literary renaissance in Iraq in the early part of the century. Now in Israel they and their literary descendants serve as an important cultural bridge between Arabic and Hebrew literatures, and between European and Middle Eastern Jews. Within this group of Israeli writers from Iraq, there are many voices. As a group, however, they have given expression to the thoughts and feelings of a generation of Israeli readers and have helped broaden the scope beyond cultural hegemony. They present another, less uniformly joyful reaction to the 1948 War of Independence . While the victory was a cause for celebration among the Jews in Palestine, the founding of the State of Israel had negative consequences for Jewish communities in other Middle Eastern countries. 156 ExiLE FROM ExiLE: ISRAELI WRITERS FROM IRAQ Similarly, the realization of the Zionist dream of "ingathering the exiles" affects those dreaming and realizing. For some, moving to Israel (realizing) is not coming home but leaving home. The Zionist homeland is exile from th(~ir native lands and childhood memories-an exile from exile. It is not a negation of Zionism, but rather an acceptance of the personal experience. In contrast to the Jewish conceptions of exile and redemption discussed in chapter 1, this literature has precedents within the tradition. Jews have used the language of exile (galut) to express forced separation not only from Zion but also from a homeland in the Diaspora to which they felt a strong emotional attachment, such as Spain.4 So, too, the "return" to Israd was not necessarily redemption for the Jews of Iraq but-at least ternporarily-a "Second Babylonian Exile."5 The Jewish notion of exile is the context by which this literature realizes its irony and its power. The literature of these writers comprises another chapter in exile literature. Many of the same themes, issues, and strategies of exile literature from around the world find expression in the works of the Israeli writers from Iraq. Exile may serve as a metaphor for life in the modem era, for alienation from oneself and others; but it is also a literal condition : alienation from one's roots. The literature of these writers has redefined the concept of exile, placing it between the Jewish notion of exile as a national condition and the modem metaphor of human alienation . Exile is a personal experience even when shared by a community. Until recently the literature of the Iraqi Jewish writers in Israel has been all but ignored. This study has identified and examined a literature of exile within the Israeli Jewish context. It has looked at a group of writers and their works previously unexplored and unmentioned in the linear model of Isradi literature. Perhaps this study will contribute to revising this model to include voices from the margins. The Iraqi-born writers are among the first to challenge the European bias of the Israeli canon. They are not an aberration but a beginning . It is to be hoped that their contributions will be appreciated in their own right, and will open the canon to the voices of other Middle Eastern Jews and of more recent immigrants. ...