Sayed Kashua is born in Tira an Arab town in Israel, he is a leading Hebrew writer 10/8/25
Leaving his wife and their three children, he returns to Jerusalem and to his hometown of Tira in Palestine to be by his family’s side. But few are happy to see him back and, he is geographically and emotionally displaced, he feels more alienated from his life than ever. linked to a short story he published years ago about a young girl named Palestine. Whether or not the pen is mightier than the sword, careless use can destroy lives.”
At the Chicago O'Hare airport a smoker is officially despised, cigarettes is the habit of beggars and criminals. His ear is not attuned to the American accent there are words that he won't attempt to say. Yet he can always detect a foreign accent in any language. His middle son asked him what a autobiography is and why he writes them for other people, why don't they write them themselves. At the stopover at de Gaul airport he is condemned to smoke in a glass cage with people speaking in many Arabic accents.
Tira is the place of his birth and that of his parents and siblings that he has not seen for 14 years. At Ben Gurion airport the driver has a Russian accent and says he can smoke in the cab just open the window. His grandmother went on hajj with the first group of Israeli's to be granted visas to visit Saudi.
When he was a child it was obligatory to visit a sick family member in hospital. When in high school he was asked to stay in Maier hospital with his uncle who was recovering from a car accident, they did not want the uncle to know yet that his child had died in the same accident and the clan was at the funeral. His mother is pleased to see him but his older brother indicated that he smelled death and came to take some remains.
He has 2 sons and a daughter and thinks that they will never know of the Arabic music of Umm Kulthum , Abdul Halim or Fairuz. His kids have never been to Tira and since their marriage his wife had wanted to leave Israel.
He thinks of many of the boys in his school who failed in learning and thinks what happened to them? In Jerusalem downtown he started work in an office at Zion Square , but they later moved to the Industrial zone. Far fewer reporters were needed and many sent their news to the press by email and the digital camera replaced the dark room and less reporters or office space was needed and he got the role of editor in chief.
He was stopped driving his car and had too much alcohol in his blood and was given a fine and had to do 60 hours communal service. Every Sunday he went to the retirement home to give a 2 hour writing workshop. Residence there asked him to write their memoirs and were prepared to pay. Holocaust survivors , Palmach fighters , a man born in Bagdad. All of these he documented but someone asked him to write about their dead soldier son and here he had to add his own style of fiction and it was well accepted. A good editor can rewrite, reorder, delete and add without the reporter noticing the changes.
Over the next 4 years he wrote 30 books and was paid 10 thousand shekels a book of 100 pages.
An Arab worker's family left the village of Irtakh in the West Bank in 1940 and they moved into the hut of an orchard owned by a family in Jaffa. In 1948 the owner family fled for "3 days" and never returned and his family moved into the big house where they stayed after that.. How good it has been since the Jews came he said.
Sometimes the hardships of life leave no place for memoirs. he wrote a memoir for an Arab MK who had been in a Jewish left wing party. This was supposed to be published by a known Hebrew publisher. Only in Hebrew did it have a chance of being read.
While he was doing his MA in Hebrew lit. He had written a short fiction story about a women from Tira named Palestine as a metaphor for the political situation, not knowing that a girl named Palestine lived in Tira. She had been married 6 months and her husband divorced her as a result. The Sheik told him it is better that he marry the girl. Both families honor was badly besmirched. They registered the marriage and took a bus straight to Jerusalem. People called her Faula, Folo or even Paula like Ben Guions wife.
The summer they left for the US there were fires burning the Jerusalem forests and 3 Jewish kids had been kidnapped and were later found dead. An Arab kid was later found burned to death with rumours his family had killed him as he was homosexual?
His memories go back to going with his father in the wild, collecting za'atar on the hills which is a protected wild specie and you had to watch out for "insbektors" Nowadays za'atar is grown in hothouses the leaves are bigger and sadder.
Their children hear Arabic spoken at home but spoke Hebrew at school. They thought maybe this was the way of the world. On holocaust and memorial day the children asked if the grandparents had died in the war. The daughter was named Yasmin a name that goes in Hebrew and Arabic and they changed the family name to Hadad. Yasmin never heard a word about Tira from her parents.
In the States he tried to make typical food he knew with rice and different beans but had to drive to a Arab neighbourhood mostly Palestinian to buy molokhyiyeh leaves.(Jew's Mallow or tossa jute)
In the Midwest in the States, Palestine has a academic post and supporting the family. They go out for dinner she has never told him about her first husband.and what had happened or if he loved her. He says perhaps if he found a job he would get to know the society better, perhaps would have American friends.
At the hospital he describes that in the bed next to his father is an Arab man with a Taiba accent and the other side an old Jewish man thus diseases and death are still to be shared experiences. Births are however segregated.with Seperate rooms for Arabs and Jews.
Muslims bury their dead on their sides not on their backs.
He wrote a memoir called The folk tales of Grandma Mirriam. 2 days after the 30 copies were delivered and had been read to her she died of a heart attack. He figured out that she died a precisely the moment he was erasing her from his tape recorder and blamed himself.
His mother said that she never believed she would have to intervein in a conflict of her sons and that their father was his biggest defender. He tells that his grandmother came to the house and gave him a pack of cigarettes and said he should smoke to show his now a man. He realizes that he has nowhere to return to. How pride becomes a thing of honor. Immorality gnaws away the foundations of a society, indicating the weakening of faith.
At school other children were Jealous of Palestine as she was engaged to the guy, who was one of the first to become an accountant in Tira and had build a fancy house for her. Sayed had gone strait to the Sheik and told him he had never met Palestina and didn't know of her existence and the Sheik believed him. however he saw no way but for him to marry her. He had to save her from Tira , her husband a privative family that did not have the decency to stand by her side. After signing marriage his father took them to Kfar Saba and put them on a bus and said he never wanted to see him again. Ever since this story of Palestine he is incapable of making up stories. The love stories he used to hear in his youth have been erased and replaced by murder of women. Willingness of neighbours was swapped for bitter feuds. Instead of blessing there were pistols and rifles. Family ties became inheritance wars, and games of hide and seek became land quarrels. Hope of victory had become a fate of knowledge of defeat.
He took his wife out for dinner and they were able to leave the oldest daughter looking after the 2 younger boys. He realized that his wife had had a life or her own as she must have used a baby sitter when she went out. Palestine told him that she had been asked to extend her stay and had been offered a tenure track position that she sought after.
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Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua 2003 227 pages. 9/10/19
This is autobiographical of the writer written in Hebrew and translated. He lived in Tira and Israeli Arab town on the border of the West Bank. Some residents originate there but others are refugees from towns destroyed. The first incident he mentions is the Karama Battle which was March 1968 later on Sabra and Shalita 1982 are mentioned. The story is of a school kid his relationship to his grandmother who lives in a room of what was his grandparents home. Sayed's father took over the house while his sisters got married and moved out. The grandfather died fighting against Israel in 1948, his father got into trouble supporting anti Israel protests and so never finished his education, his grandmother he to visit him in detention. They mention driving into Kalkalya to buy clothes but there is an anti Israel protests. His grandmother was what was known as an exchange bride. Her brother wanted to marry the daughter of a man who wanted his sister as a second wife. After his grandfather died his grandmother had to fight her stepchildren for the property. Some Arabs in Tira are hoping that Sadam Husseins rocket will harm Israel during Operation Dessert Storm Aug 1990 till Feb1991. Arab society is certainly portrayed as violent. He mentions that his school friend ended up in a hospital in Ramatayim which we know is for Mental Patients. He portrays that Arab school then in Tira had very unprofessional teachers and mostly men. Many kids went all the way through school and remained illiterate. The Jewish school in Kfar Saba had a lot of women teachers. He gets a scholarship to got to a boarding school in Jerusalem and describes weird things about Jewish society and how they react to Arabs. Coming from a village getting used to open modern society, sitting next to girls at school or going with girls to movies. He marries Samia from Tira but they rent in East Jerusalem as it is cheaper. His father has build a shell of a home for him in Tira but they have to come live there. His father worked from the Ministry of Interior office in Tira thus was a collaborator? But later when he went to Hebron or Tulkarm was able to get hold of birth certificates from the mandate period for old relatives and his status went up. Kfar Warburg today is where some Tira residents lived. The book ends with his father visiting Egypt and returns shocked at the fact that the Arab leaders cannot cope with the poverty and have not time to deal with Zionism. He says that Palestinians will be better off as 7th grade citizens under the Zionists than 3rd grades citizens under Arab leaders.
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