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His close involvement in the struggle for the recognition and restitution of Palestinian rights might lead us to expect that Kanafani’s novels and short stories would be no more than vehicles for the preaching of those principles, albeit in an indirect form. Part of his achievement, however, lies in the fact that he avoided this pitfall—for rather than transfer experience directly from reality to the printed page, he reworked it to give it a more profound, universal meaning. “The Land of Sad Oranges” reveals the way in which he did this: the flight of Palestinians from their country is woven together with the themes of the reduction of a family to destitution and its children’s loss of innocence, and the scene in which the narrator’s uncle tries to shoot his children and himself provides the culminating point of all three strands. Concentrating on the day-today tragedy of one family, Kanafani avoided theorizing about wider historical issues. By refusing both to analyze the causes of the flight of this family and to indulge in accusations against specific groups, he gave his characters, passive victims of events, a universal quality that is reinforced by the symbol of their banishment.
Men in the Sun reveals an equal commitment to the Palestinian cause, but also a development on both the political and the artistic levels. The novella tells of four Palestinians in exile struggling to build, or rebuild, a future. On one level it can be read as an exposé of their weakness in preferring the search for material security over the fight to regain their land, and also as an attack on the corruption of the Arab regimes that allowed them to suffocate in an airless, marginal world of refugee camps. In fact, at the time the book was published, many readers took the ending literally, and Kanafani was accused by enraged compatriots of “throwing Palestinians on the garbage heap.”* But there is more to it than that. Abu Qais’s memories of the land he left behind and of his daughter’s birth a month after the family left its village could be matched by the stories of thousands of displaced persons who have been uprooted in Europe and elsewhere. The naive, barely educated Marwan, setting off into the unknown in order to support his family, is a brother of the economic refugees from the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indian subcontinent who throng London, Paris, and Munich. The desert, often used as a symbol by Kanafani, here represents the ordeal of fire that the Palestinians must pass through, and it is depicted in its starkest guise; its presence contributes to the suspense that is built up as the lorry races along under the broiling August sun. Moreover, Kanafani’s interest in technique is clearly revealed, as he skillfully blends present and past in the consciousness of his four characters, thereby enabling the reader to perceive their motives for undertaking the hazardous journey. The careful construction and controlled economy of the writing contribute to the total effect of a short novel that is among the best in Arabic literature.
“Umm Saad,” one of a collection of stories built around a middle-aged refugee peasant woman, reveals a further stage in ideological development.