5: Enter Ghost

I picked 'Enter Ghost' by Isabella Hammad from the Women's Fiction Prize shortlist from last year, and it sat waiting for quite a long time. It follows Sonia as she returns to her homeland of Palestine after a long time living in London, reconnecting with her sister and her country. It is set in 2017 and so very much predates the current violence but as I read you feel aware all the time of the tension between the residents of the West Bank and the occupying Israeli forces. Sonia is an actor and, lacking anything particular to spend her time on, she ends up joining a theatre group staging Hamlet in Arabic. Much of the story is taken up with the relationships within the group of actors and watching them rehearse. It was a serious read, lots of literary references, that would no doubt mean more to someone familiar with the play, I often felt I was missing something more subtle. It's very much a book about identity and sense of belonging. And yet also there is also an atmosphere of weary resignation amongst the Palestinians, of acceptance of the restrictions imposed on their lives and the pointlessness of resisting them.

Couple of long quotes, the first really struck me, an incident where they pull up at a checkpoint that bought home the tension of the whole situation:

"One foreign national with an Arab name, two Palestinian citizens of Israel and one West Bank resident with a temporary permit sit in a car with yellow Israeli plates approaching a checkpoint. The line is sluggish: the soldiers are investigating every vehicle, regardless of the number-plate colour. Near the windowless tower, a shabby Israeli flag roils on the wind, looking not at all like those forlorn fraying Palestinian flags that, once illegal but now par for the course, adorn electricity pylons across Ramallah, but rather somehow eternal and careless, a mark of the ragged outposts of empire. Part of the checkpoint itself is surrounded by scaffolding, and the red plastic webbing around the base has broken down, the stick supports in the corners pointing at odd angles. A tap on the driver's window: a slender soldier bends over wearing a very large green helmet like an upside-down basket. He has blond eyelashes. A typical rigmarole of identification cards and passports ensues, conducted in Hebrew with the driver. Then the soldier points at the youngest of the men, the West Bank resident, sitting in the back. Hebrew switches to Arabic. The soldier tells him to get out of the car.

'I have a permit,' says the young man.

'He has a permit,' repeats the woman driving.

Another soldier appears on the other side of the car. He opens the rear door and orders the young man out; the threat has materialised so quickly, unspoken, that if he does not comply they will force him out. Wael gets out. The soldiers escort him into the building at the checkpoint.

As they are passing through the doorway, the blond soldier taps him on the back of the head, and Wael's shoulders flinch into an automatic hunch. It is as though the scene is being played out on a roll of film, from which this frame onward has been bleached.

I was hardly aware of my body as I thrust my door open. I only knew my vision filled with white. And now I was outside, and the morning air was cool on my face and hands. Propelled by an alien force I marched over the uneven, untended terrain that preceded the checkpoint, the rubble and trash and random horizontal blocks of concrete, towards another soldier now standing to attention with his gun ready. Dimly conscious that Mariam and Ibrahim were shouting at me from the car windows, Come back, Sonia, come back, the crucial thought swooped through my mind that the soldier might suspect I had a knife, a suspicion I knew was grounds for shoot to kill, and although my ability to pass as a foreigner might offer me some protection I nevertheless dropped my pace and lifted my arms to make clear that my hands were empty. Rage was making me vibrate. Strangely, as I neared him, the soldier turned to one side, as if to ignore me, except that his hands were on his weapon and he looked ready to use it. He was young, probably eighteen or nineteen. Perhaps he didn't know how to respond to this situation, the approach of a possibly raving woman in white linen trousers and Converse sneakers. He spoke rapidly into his walkie-talkie. Oh god, what am I doing? I thought, and then said loudly in English: 'Where have you taken my son?' The voice came from somewhere other than my mouth, somewhere further away." (p. 153-154)

It is another feature of the book that she frequently finds herself observing, as if she is not part of the scene. And lots of theatre-y language and references, and some of the 'scenes' between the characters are written in the form of a play. It is designed to make you aware of the very fine dividing line between reality and performance; how much of the time we are all playing parts. Here they are seeing the outdoor set that has been constructed for the performance for the first time, having just heard the news that a cast member has received an interrogation order. Where earlier Sonia had been outraged and forthright, here she seems to have accepted that control over her actions is limited:

"Jenan and Wael returned to their positions to complete the dialogue. Both looked rattles, particularly Jenan, which was understandable: she'd just joined us, she was feeling out our dynamic, and now not only was a new dynamic hatching but a threat had materialised of interrogation, of danger. Of dissolution, even. As far as I was concerned, if the Israelis really made an effort to stop us it would not be worth the fight. We were mere human beings, there was only so much we could do. The only person who didn't look unnerved was Mariam, who stared at her actors as though with the force of her gaze she could make them more sturdy. I had a feeling I sometimes get when I drink too much coffee, which was that while standing still, watching Jenan and Wael, another more agitated Sonia was wriggling inside my skin, trying to get out. I was thirsty as well and I needed the loo, and in this state of physical discomfort something strange happened. My viewpoint switched, and as though I were in a dream and my perspective had been breached I moved like a surveillance drone and saw our project from above, situation fragilely in time and place, this summer, this side of the wall. Accompanying this vision was a fear, almost a premonition, that it was all foretold anyway, everything had been decided in advance, we were only acting parts that had been given to us, and now some inexorable machinery was being set in motion that would sooner or later throw our efforts out into the audience, dismantle our illusions, and leave us cowering before the faceless gods of Fate and State." (p.223-224)

Seriously thinking about making some fatet betenjan.

Stay safe. Be kind. See you tomorrow.