The good Palestinian

Shubbak, meaning ‘window’ in Arabic, is a biennial festival taking place in various venues across London. The brochure reads like an A to Z of human misery. All the tired phrases from the Middle East’s history lurch up and poke the onlooker in the eye: ‘revolution’, ‘dystopia’, ‘cries of pain’, ‘ruins’, ‘waking nightmare’. The agony is leavened with slivers of earnest pretention. Corbeaux is a ballet designed for Marrakesh railway station by dancers who ‘take possession of public spaces’. Ten women with hankies over their hairdos move in ‘geometric alchemical arrangements’ making ‘piercing sounds and extraordinary cries’.

I decided to give that a miss and plumped instead for Taha at the Young Vic. This is a biographical study of the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, who was born in Galilee in 1931, fled to a displacement camp in Lebanon, and later opened a commercial reliquary in Nazareth. He recounts the circumstances of his family’s eviction from their home town in 1948 but the details are left obscure. The place was partially destroyed — by whom is unclear — and they made their way to Lebanon along with thousands of their countrymen. Their move was facilitated by three factors: their mistrust of the British mandate, the willingness of their Arab neighbours to accept refugees, and their belief that their exile would be temporary. Returning to their home district, they found a new military governor in charge, who demanded obedience in return for ID documents that would entitle the holder to seek work. Thus Palestinians reluctantly participated in the creation of Israel.

Taha’s cuddly stoicism is calculated to win us over. He’s every westerner’s idea of ‘a good Palestinian’ — industrious, creative, unthinkingly pacifist. When not turning a profit at his crucifix shop (‘a Muslim who sells Christian trinkets to Jews’), he’s busy with his notebooks writing dreamy wordscapes about suffering and loss.