The Barrier ... "A Novel of Fragments"
Azmi Bishara must surprise those who follow his various activities, the academic writer and researcher, the Arab nationalist, the enthusiastic Nasserite, the Israeli Knesset member, the national fighter and the political activist. Today, perhaps also the novelist, with his new book "The Barrier" and under the description: Fragments novel. As we have followed it on all fronts, we will not lose sight of its latest product.
His book "The Barrier" may not be fragments of a novel, even if it is a novelist novelty, but a novel, without the intention of the author's complete translation at the expense of the novelist art. This is how the novel becomes when the barrier plays the role of the main character, and we should not underestimate it at all It creates the events and tragedies together, does the unimaginable, blocks the movement and divides the space, into the pre-barrier and beyond the barrier. Time does not make sense to divide it because the place by the barrier absorbs it completely and determines the place of the human at any hour of the day , So that it places its dwelling on the same vein, either "before the barrier" or "beyond" though on The same stretchy street.
The barrier is fixed in place, but moving in the book, moving in the cities, and repeated from page to page, do not get rid of one until you see another, revolves around the destinies of human beings, they are personalities of flesh and blood, sunburned and disturbed, sweating and tired of standing, progress Slowly in the role towards him always, towards the barrier, may pass within minutes or hours, and may be delayed to pass for the next day. The barrier is manipulating their time and subjecting them to its system, disrupting their work and violating their dignity, even though the barrier is frozen in idleness, but it is based on the care of its affairs on the other side of the soldiers. They have no features, whether they are white Europeans or Middle Eastern Samarra or African blacks, but Israelis are playing their roles. You may be ashamed of you, some of them are really good, and yet they may turn into evil people. If they suspect a black bag or a bag or a bulging belly, do not take care of yourself from them.
There is no safety in front of the barrier, and this is the case for everyone, men, women and children, there is no difference between an old woman or pregnant woman, or a patient about to die. It is also important to take care of the checkpoint owners, as was the case at the checkpoint north-west of the city on Beituniya road when the soldiers stopped a white ambulance: the driver's article is sitting in his place, and there is a man arguing with the soldiers, the back of the ambulance is open, A soldier is searching inside the car, and the more they grow the more insistent the soldiers and the firmness of their assertive expressions in the implementation of their mission, although the car crossed the previous closed barriers, and soldiers know that an ambulance can not come on the way to the hospital only if it is emergency and to Intensive care But they decided to give the car their intensive attention. After a soldier searches for a side of the car or a stretcher, another soldier looks at him, and another invisible, unseen, and so on ... If the eyes of the soldiers meet, a malicious smile escapes and disappears, and once the smile is resolved, the soldier tries to get rid of them quickly and return to strict and objective expressions. He does his duty and does not distract, does not hit or insult, he searches quietly and strictly, the only inconvenience is that he searches continuously and consistent and obsessive and detailed and very legal, says the man is her husband:
What they did was a ambulance and a patient.
Why did not I hear that they were transporting weapons with ambulances?
Ok, Hai is sick and you're clean, and I'm her nut.
I do not need to stop.
How to stop my life.
His wife intervenes:
If you are disturbed by a policeman in the performance of his duties, I am in the hospital and I attended you to prison, and where do you live with the children? We were saved but we were saved.
How do you feel? If one of the first things we discussed, we would be sincere.
Pictures, stories and paintings follow without interruption, and there are always more laughable jokes, reality is rich in its tragedies, if it does not stop. Feel yourself among them, the Palestinian dialect, gives a tangible, burning and lively flavor to the long and exhausting positions, you feel that you live the event with emotion and without fabrication.
What really surprises us is the spirit of irony in which he wrote the gospel of his novel, and his ability to observe sharp and intelligent. The scenes are wide in the novel despite the narrowness of the place and the adverse weather conditions and the electrified climate. Events are inexhaustible and inexhaustible, and the movement, despite its great slowness in full swing, is boiling inside the breasts. And the dramatic development tends to surprises, as the idea of an echo or whispers make the soldier cancel the role and warn the people to be dispersed to their homes, the circular movement in which everyone is waiting, and talk and effort, division fair, but some, and on both sides, do not tolerate.
The existence of the barrier is established, and it generates a market of small vendors, coffee and horse sellers, carrying plastic or glass cups, cafeterias bearing the titles "Habayeb" and "Siege". It also generates daily stories, painful and harsh, and sometimes provocative. We are witnessing the daily life of our captive people in their land. The banners and slogans written in Hebrew may bother us, but this is the reality. Their stickers on their cars replaced the posters of the people of that country, O Zayn prayer. And the Lord her patron "" Ein al-Hossud wears blind "" The heart loves all beautiful, "we realize its meaning, the Arabs put the same slogans.
