The Psychological Impact of War on Individuals in Emile Habiby’s The Pessoptimist and Hoda Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter

Historical Background
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 that divided Palestine into two independent entities: “Israel” as a national state for Jews and an Arab state for Palestinians. This partition plan was met with a robust rejection by Palestinians, as they argued that it deprives them of their inherent right to self-determination and unfair to the Arab population that would remain in the Jewish territory under the partition. As such, the Resolution sparked a conflict between Jewish and Arab groups in Palestine. Israel claims that the Fight began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. They claim that the first Arab attack was in the morning of the 30 of November 1947 when the Arabs killed 5 Jewish passengers. This is the Israeli narrative. Yet, according to ‘Aref Al’Aref’ and ‘Waleed Al-Khaldi’ this narrative was a justification to their war and make the Palestinians responsible-;- as well as their ultimate goal was to establish their Jewish state in Palestine without the existence of non-Jewish people. The Jewish forces were composed of the Haganah, the underground militia of the Jewish community in Palestine. The Arab’s goal was at first to discard the Partition Resolution and to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. When “Israel” declared its independence on May 14, 1948, the fighting intensified with other Arab forces that participated along with the Palestinians in attempting to regain their control over the territories previously seized by the British. After tense fighting, “Israeli” forces won the war and therefore managed to create their national state over the ruins of the Palestinian society, leading to the disposition of Palestinians.
For the Lebanese Civil War, it was a multi-faceted civil war, lasted from 1975 to 1990. In days gone by, Lebanon was multi-sectarian with Sunnis dominating by Maronite Christians. The link between politics and religion had been reinforced under the mandate of the French colonial powers from 1920 to 1943, and the parliamentary structure favored a leading position for the Christians. On the other hand, the country, in fact, had a large Muslim population. The establishment of the state of “Israel” and the displacement of a hundred thousand Palestinian refugees to Lebanon changed the demographic balance in favor of the Muslim population. Accordingly, the militarization of the Palestinian refugee population, with the arrival of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) forces after their expulsion from Jordan during Black September, sparked an arms race amongst the different Lebanese political factions, and provided a foundation for the long-term involvement of Lebanon in regional conflicts.
The study deals with Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Ill-Fated Pessoptimist (1974), and Hoda Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter (1990) and how they were able to shed light on the history of war and dissolution and their Psychological impact on the individuals in the 1948 Palestinian exodus in Habiby’s text, and the Lebanese Civil War in Barakat’s text. On the one hand, the research analyzes the dispossessed Palestinians in the narrative of The Pessoptimist-;- focusing on the problematic mechanisms of survival, the tragedy of their lives as represented in the antiheroic character, and the national identity of the marginalized Palestinian minorities who stayed in their lands. On the other hand, it clarifies the dissolution of the Lebanese society during the Civil War and its effect on those who lived through it, in The Stone of Laughter-;- concentrating on the mechanisms of survival, the anti-heroic character, and the sexual identity of the protagonist. Eventually, it discusses the stylistic narrative in the two novels. This study is based on the concept of the “Sociocide”, by Saleh Abdel Jawad, a professor of History and Political Science at Birzeit University. Indeed, any definition to the concept shall take into consideration the gradual undermining of the communal and psychological structures of a society (Abdel Jawad). This concept also refers to the life in a place under conditions of fear, anxiety, and unbearable depression and frustration. Yet, this situation demands a high degree of personal sacrifice and commitment to the cause an individual is fighting for (Abdel Jawad).
Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Ill-Fated Pessoptimit is a novel that takes place in “Israel” between the years 1948 and 1967. This is the period when "Arabs were living in Israel under the Military Government" (Assi 87). In this fictional writing, Habiby is "serving as an intimate witness to the early history of Palestinians in “Israel”, widely referred to as the "Israeli Arabs", according to Seraji Assi (87-88). Saeed, whose name means literally “happy”, is the protagonist in this novel-;- he narrates his story of dispossession and the inequality of living in the newly created state of “Israel” as a second inferior class being Palestinian. In describing the protagonist of the novel, Salma Jayyusi says: “The main character in the novel, Saeed the luckless pessoptimist, is a comic hero, a fool, in fact, who recounts the secrets of his life in the state of Israel in the form of a letter to an unnamed friend” (Jayyusi 5). The contradictions of his name embodies “The paradoxical view of the dynamics of the situation”-;- his name is the Pessoptimist, combined of two paradoxical words the “optimist” and the “pessimist” in which it mixes “the comic with the tragic and heroic on the one hand, and, on the other, to uncover the various contradictions that crowd the distance between the extreme poles of Zionist colonialism and Palestinian resistance” (5). It is, in fact, the chain of hardships that are imposed on the Palestinians as a result of the sociocide by the “Israeli” government. Therefore, the contradictions of his name might embody the “heart-rending tale of defeat and rebellion, death and regeneration, terror and heroism, aggression and resistance, individual treason and communal loyalty” (5). These contradictions could also be describing “struggles and second-hand citizenship of Palestinian Arabs who remained in “Israel” after the exodus following the 1948 Nakba,” Sahar Khalifeh says (Khalifeh 1405).
Habiby’s Saeed character is a result of the situations that Palestinians were forced to undergo. Commenting on the Palestinian situation after the exodus, Seraje Assi says that “Nowhere is the Palestinian situation more absurd than in the case of those Palestinians who managed to remain within the borders of “Israel”. Overnight they became strangers in their homeland and a targeted minority” (Assi 88). In fact, Habiby’s protagonist is one of those Palestinians who were left without an opportunity to live normally. The experiences, struggles and second inferior class, which he underwent, and which aimed to destroy the Palestinian community, could not come up with a normal result, yet it came up with collaboration. Habiby clarifies the fact that Saeed had never attended neither school nor university, nor had he the opportunity to get a job-;- this is why Saeed accepts the laws of the new State of “Israel” so that he could survive (Sabry 13). In an interview, Edward W. Said says that our main battle was to survive, to re-create our national identity, and to have self-determination (Said). In our protagonist case, the chances of survival could be more by collaboration in a land that is occupied– being aware that the possibility of equality between Arabs and Jews in “Israel” is impossible in such a colonial context-;- even though there are several “Israeli” politicians who maintain that anyone lives in “Israel” is to be treated equally. Yet, they say that “Israel” is a “Jewish home, the home keys are given to Jews through the Law of Return” (Ghanem 233). Such politicians say and what they do are two totally different things, as they follow racist rules in conducting their policies.
Barakat s The Stone of Laughter has a powerful title that indicates the gender contradictions of Khalil’s character and the masculine violence and destruction imposed on the city during the time of the civil war. This proposes discussing the transformation of Khalil’s character. Further, Khalil’s transformation, as the title suggests, refers to the philosopher’s stone, which, in alchemy, is a stone´-or-chemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals into gold (Fayyad 165). Initially, it is the feminine character of Khalil who rejects violence that surrounds him, and this is a common characteristic between Khalil and the other females in the novel-;- they do not discuss the political issues that take place in the city. This might be the reason that Khalil does not laugh at the beginning of the novel. In the text, he is asked: “The landlord will laugh because the bombing will make hosts of people move to the city... And you Khalil, drinking your tea, why are you not laughing (Barakat 137)? However, the experiences of loss, scenes of ruins, pain, and fear are the bases, on which Khalil’s new character is being shaped, and he is now called “Mr. Khalil”-;- the first violent action he commits is raping his neighbor whom he used to describe her personality in resemblance to his personality. Still, the sociocide that is being imposed by the Civil War made Khalil become like everyman else involved in the civil war-;- “as the gold that is sought by the alchemists, Khalil’s new identity hardly resembles his former identity” (Katawi 112)-;- “he has become one of the boys now” (Boston University). He has become a complete man by his violent action-;- the standards of masculinity has glorified and accepted him and now he is a man who laughs”. Here comes the response to the question mentioned earlier in the novel “And you Khalil, why are you not laughing?”
Furthermore, Khalil, the protagonist, rejects the identity that is being imposed on him by society. Khalil’s homosexuality, which has a feminine tendency, keeps him inside the house refusing to be involved in the destruction of the city. Since war is concerned with men and violence-;- Khalil, who’s a feminized character, is isolated and alienated from this war. Moreover, he separates himself from the public sphere, which is full of violence and destruction, and keeps himself imprisoned in his personal sphere, where he is totally occupied with keeping his house in order and clean and daydreaming about the loved ones (Naji and Youssef), while the battles are active on the streets and the destruction is consuming the life of the city. In other words, the city is involved with the most atrocious civil war. As a matter of fact, this is one of the results of the sociocide-;- it kills the society’s capacity to survive and keeps the individual imprisoned in alienation (Abdel Jawad). Fadia Faqir justifies Khalil’s action of isolating himself from war-;- she says that “these are futile attempts to keep at bay a war that has lost its logic” (Faqir 6). Consequently, Khalil’s alienation from the society as a result of his femininity provides him with “a critical perception of the society he is living in and this perception is clarified in Barakat’s text, where she says:
"Laughter... thought Khalil as he made tea in his room... This is the place where people laugh more than anywhere else in the world. When Bombing is in full swing the children laugh and the government employees laugh because it s a holiday... The poet will laugh because... someone in his family´-or-sect will be martyred, which will lend him the microphone of the crowds which come... begging him to lament and warble... The foreign correspondents will laugh because it gives them juicy stories to work on... The landlord will laugh because the bombing will make hosts of people move to the city... And you Khalil, drinking your tea, why are you not laughing?" (Barakat 134-137)
The main character in Habiby’s novel, Saeed the luckless pessoptimist, is a traditional anti-hero character. The figure of the comic fool is not new in the Arabic literature, yet it is depicted in one of the most popular figures, which is Juha (Jayyusi 9). Habiby’s protagonist is considered to be an anti-hero character according to the contradictions his name embodies: the ill-fated and the happy as well as the optimist and the pessimist. His name is Saeed (the ill-fated pessoptimist), which combines two binary oppositions-;- his name means happy in English. However, in the title he is called “the ill-fated”. The contradictions of his character, which present him as a wise-fool “saves his life succumbing to the side that has the power, becoming an informer in the service of the state, which is the service of the enemy” (Jayyusi 9), this is one of the main problems in this character, which is being a traitor. Furthermore, it is noticeable from the beginning of the novel that Saeed is aware of the life he is living in “Israel”-;- he feels alienated and unaffiliated. The novel begins with: “In his letter to me, Saeed, the ill-fated Pessoptimist, pleaded. “Please tell my story. It is surely as weird as Moses’s staff, the resurrection of Jesus, and the election of the husband of a lady bird to the presidency of the United States. The fact is I’ve disappeared. But I’m not dead” (The Pessoptimist 3).
Additionally, Saeed is being victimized in the novel-;- he fails at everything he attempts. At the beginning, he tries to be a paid-puppet of the “Israeli” government-;- yet, he fails. Samia Mehrez says that “Saeed is the victim of irony”. He is the Palestinian-Arab victim who stayed in his land, but he was unable to be affiliated in the new state of “Israel”, and this makes him an anti-hero character. This idea is clarified in the scene where Saeed is imprisoned instead of the kid, and tortured without any guilt, and the reason behind this is that democracy in the new state is not applied on kids. Accordingly, the use of prison could be an instrument of the sociocide-;- Abdel Jawad says that “prisons are used to punish offenders, but in “Israel” they have other purposes” (Abdel Jawad). Yet, these purposes could reach more far than destructing the society, but the individual as well. Furthermore, Saeed tries to be a fedaiy (freedom fighter) but he fails. His awareness of this fact, that he is a victim and therefore cannot succeed is depicted in the scene where Saeed enters the Court of a King, in the jail where he meets the fedaiy (the guerrilla):
““I’m a fedaiy, a guerrilla and a refugee. And you?”
I did not know what to reveal about my identity before the majestic figure laid out there who, when he spoke, did not groan and in fact spoke in order not to groan. Should I tell him I was a mere “sheep,” one who had stayed on in the country,´-or-should I confess that it was through crawling that I entered his court?” (The Pessoptimist 132)
At the beginning of the novel, Habiby provides the reader, through the protagonist Saeed, with the fact that he is aware of what is going on-;- he says “I know my place. I’m not one of your so-called leaders, someone thought worthy of notice by an elite. What I am, my dear sir, is- the office boy!” (Habiby 3) When Saeed calls himself “the office boy”, we notice that this is another sign of awareness as a result of awakening. We could also consider Saeed as the scapegoat-;- he says “Leave me alone and try someone else.” The irony in Habiby’s novel presents to the reader that “there are no heroes in this text, but a list of characters lost in a tragic and confusing whirlwind of political events” (Smith).
In Barakat’s Novel, Khalil is considered to be an anti-hero character according to his disability of retaining his identity of being homosexual and his independency to create his own destiny. Khalil’s homosexuality is one of the most prominent cases Barakat is trying to present in the novel. At the beginning, Khalil alienates himself in order to move on with his case and to preserve his homosexual identity-;- however, he has no independency to create his own destiny in this patriarchal society, especially at the time of the civil war. Barakat presents Khalil’s kind of companions in the text so that we can relate to the kind of narrow choices Khalil has left with-;- men in a society that is involved in war, she says:
“Khalil’s companions could really be divided into two groups. The first group which looks like him, is made up of youths a lot younger than he, who have broken down the door of conventional masculinity and entered manhood by the wide door of history. Day by day they busy themselves shaping the destiny of an area of patent importance on the world map, concerned with people’s public and private lives, even with water, with bread, with dreams, and with emigration. The second group, which does not look like him is made up of men of his own age who have got a grip on the important things in life, and who, holding the tools of understanding, awareness, and close attention on theory have laid down plans to fasten their hold on the upper echelons… in politics, in leadership, in the press…” (Barakat 12)
Khalil was not accepted by these two groups-;- “the doors of both kinds of manhood were closed to Khalil and so he remained, alone in his narrow passing place, in a stagnant, feminine state of submission to a purely vegetable life” (Barakat 12). However, by the end of the novel, Khalil has accepted the masculine role and decided to join his friends. Up to this point, Khalil has given up the case he was preserving at the beginning of the novel, which is his homosexuality-;- “Khalil disappeared. He turned into a laughing male” (Barakat 264). In fact, Khalil has transformed into a broad-shoulder masculine figure, and this is the time we consider him an anti-hero character who accepted the role that society has imposed on him.
Emile Habiby’s The Pessoptimist might also be looked at as a historical study that highlights the discrimination that Palestinians underwent during the 1948. On the level of discrimination in the state of “Israel”, Habiby’s protagonist Saeed depicts the discrimination and inequality between Arabs and Jews in “Israel”. When the Israeli military governor of Nazareth misunderstood the verse used by the communists, which says: “Like desert camels of thirst dying/ While on their backs water bearing.” Habiby says: “He (the Israeli governor) denied that his army had prevented the camels and other such animals from drinking water from the well during the operation…He said, “You have become citizens, precisely like us.” He then had them herded out of his sight” (The Pessoptimist 56). This leads us to the fact that the equality between the Palestinians and “Israelis” is impossible. That is to say, “Israel” is a Jewish state that is identified with one ethnic group-;- therefore, Jews adopt methods in order to avoid including Arab citizens as equal citizens. Ghanem says that “Israel preserves the inferiority of the Arabs vis-à-vis the Jewish while discriminating against the former in a broad variety of spheres and at various levels, in order to preserve the status quo and prevent the Arabs from achieving equality” (Ghanem 93). Moreover, “Israel” uses different strategies to indicate that the Palestinians are lower in the hierarchy and unequal to the Jews. Amongst these strategies is the dehumanization-;- “Israel” associates Palestinians with dehumanization through literature and media-;- for instance, “Khirbet Khizeh”, a novel by S. Yizhar, narrates the story of a Jewish soldier in a single day in the 1948 in which his unit attacks the Palestinian village of Khirbet Khizeh and deports its inhabitants and describes the Palestinian-Arabs as cannibalists.
Moreover, Habiby’s novel deals with the dissolution and the struggle to survive in the state of Israel, which imposes a racist discourse on the Palestinians as well as keeping them marginalized in the light of the sociocide strategy. When Saeed was in Al-Jazzar mosque and a woman loses her child: “the girl isn’t ing Shukriyya-;- she’s dead” (The Pessoptimist 21). This moment of tragedy symbolizes the sorrow that the Palestinians had been through as a result of evacuating their homes. Moreover, Mushira Sabry says that this death could be a representation of the Palestinians who were lost and destroyed by the Zionists in the Nakba (Sabry 16). In the same context, in Al-Jazzar mosque in Acre, where Saeed finds displaced Palestinian refugees who were caught while they were returning to their villages after they evacuated them. These displaced Palestinians are kept there waiting for the “Israeli” authority to find them a new refuge outside Palestine. However, what shall be taking into consideration is Ben-Gurion’s idea— the “transfer solution”, which is a compulsory transfer of Arabs from their lands and replace the Jewish people instead of them (Nur Masalha). In fact, the image of the governor who tells the peasant woman from Berwah: “Didn’t we warn you that anyone returning there will be killed?” (Habiby 15) This is another proof to the fact that “Israel” has used violence and non-violence (sociocide) against the Palestinians to force them evacuate their homes. For example, it is said that Ben-Gurion, on the 19th of December 1947, advised the Haganah, the Jewish pre-state army to “adopt the method of aggressive defense-;- with every Arab attack, we must be prepared to respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the Arab place´-or-the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place” (Nur Masalha).
The remaining question therefore is: how a marginalized minority could deal with life in a state where the majority is in control? In fact, Habiby clarifies the dissolution of the Palestinian/Arab national identity as a result of the sociocide imposed by the “Israelis” in which he denotes to the Palestinians who celebrate the what-so-called “independence day” of “Israel”-;- Habiby says “Arab Nazareth is decorated with flying banners more than Tel Aviv… The Jewish home finds it enough to be Jewish” (The Pessoptimist 100-101). The dissolution was the only solution at that time because of the monitoring and policies that guaranteed the superiority of the Jewish people (Ghanem 234). As a result of this, the Palestinian identity is going to be threatened and degenerated into a different identity-;- and the loyalty of the Palestinians will be to the new state, which leaves us with the real results of the sociocide. Habiby illuminates this dissolution in the following text:
“And don’t forget Shlomo in one of Tel Aviv’s very best hotels. Isn’t he really Sulaiman, son of Munirah, from our own quarter? And ‘Dudi,’ isn’t he really Mahmud? ‘Moshe,’ too, isn’t his proper name Musa, son of Abdel Massih? How could they earn a living in a hotel, restaurant,´-or-filling station without help from their Oriental Imagination…” (The Pessoptimist 101)
Barakat s The Stone of Laughter is the novel in which its protagonist is a homosexual character, Khalil. This character is physically and psychologically represented in a feminine figure at the beginning of the novel-;- he stays away from the war atmosphere and rejects the idea of holding an arm and adopting one of the sides involved in the Civil War. In fact, he is a weak young man whose tendency rejects all of the violent actions committed by the masculinity of the patriarchal society around him, and instead of this, he preoccupies himself ordering, cleaning, and cooking in order to keep himself alienated from the conflict outside his doors. In describing the character of Khalil and his feminine tendency, Barakt says:
"Whenever a battle draws to an end, Khalil feels the need for order and cleanliness and the feeling grows, spreads until it becomes almost an obsession. After every battle, his room is clean and fresh like new, as if the builders had just left. The tiles shine and the room gives out a smell of soap, of polish, of disinfectant" (Barakat 9).
Accordingly, the death of Khalil s friends (Naji and Youssef) had its greatest impact on him. Talking about the fragmentation and sociocide of the Lebanese community by the Civil War, the death of Khalil s friends formalizes this sociocide, and accentuates his isolation. Moreover, the loss that Khalil had undergone makes the reader notice Khalil s physical and psychological agony and his struggle in order to protect his sexual identity. It is clear that after the death of Naji and Youssef-;- Khalil denies their death-;- yet, he eventually accepts the fact that they had died. However, their death clarifies his lack of defining boundaries-;- the acceptance of their death "affects him deeply. Unable to express his sorrow, he isolates himself and avoids almost all human contact. Khalil also gets severely sick. Unable to eat, he vomits blood and his body gets thin and ugly" (Katawi 112). In describing Khalil s physical and psychological condition, Barakat says:
"Khalil found himself standing next to his bed for- perhaps- minutes... every opening in his small body had let forth every of its special waters... he was drowning in his cold sweat and his pajama bottoms were clinging between his thighs... a watery blob of mucus was sliding down the saliva that ran from his mouth, running down in threads from his chin to the jacket of his pajamas which was open, showing his shoulder and part of his arm... only his eyes were dry, so he sat and wept a flood of tears until the sun had filled his room completely" (Barakat 69).
Most importantly, Barakat s novel is referring to the interpersonal relationships and the individual identities as being reshaped by the Civil War. One of the most prominent examples is the relationship between Khalil and the Brother, a leader of a military organization and Nayif s friend in the newspaper. Taking into consideration that both of the characters are homosexual, this confuses Khalil, yet it is clear that Khalil is replacing Youssef, the innocent friend who has died, with the Brother, whose a corrupt person involved with buying and selling drugs and weapons-;- a symbol of corruption. Then, Khalil is to be called "Mr. Khalil" who incarnated the character of the Brother. Even though Khalil resisted the mark of gender-;- however, in order to survive he had to make a change in his life (Katawi 112). As a result, he is now corrupt as the Brother-;- he became involved in the drug and weapons deals with the Brother. As a result of this, Khalil "turns against the passive world, sheds the female self and emerges into the tough and monstrous world" (Aghacy 200). The transformation of Khalil s character is clarified in the text-;- at the beginning he is described as "weak, stiff legs, his chest, hollow as a frying pan without a handle" (Barakat 159)-;- however, at the end he is turned into a macho man a "broad-shouldered" male with a "brown leather jacket" (231). Samira Aghacy says that "the irresistible social and cultural determinism precipitate the sad, but inevitable fate of a man like Khalil who has no choice but to assimilate his private mind into the public mind" (Aghacy 200). At this point, Khalil s transformation has exceeded the idea of being a man to be a corrupt person who takes over Naji s flat and rapes his next door female neighbor. The fact that he had turned into a man, means that he "embodies all the usual masculine values of conquest, domination, competition, fighting, and boasting" (Aghacy 200).
The language in Habiby’s novel proposes two important characteristics of the text-;- irony and absurdity in order to present the tragic life Palestinians live. On the one hand, Habiby manages to indicate the Palestinian style in his text-;- in a private sphere, he mingles several phrases and proverbs from the Palestinian idiom in the text (Jayyusi 7)-;- in a public sphere, he incorporates the popular figure of Juha, the figure of the wise Fool in the Arabic literature “whose foolery is his passport to safety” (8). Accordingly, the use of irony is not only used to make the reader entertained while reading the text-;- however, the irony is used to present the tragedies that the Palestinians had undergone. In an interview, Habiby illuminates that choosing satire and parody stems from the psychological burden of revisiting the experience of dispossession-;- as a result, he uses a cathartic narrative method to deliver the trauma by supplementing it with humor (Sabry 12). Well, it is true that Habiby is “one of the few writers who prefer to laugh…” Yet, “from the pain he pulls out humor-;- from the maladies he produces satire” (Khater 75). Furthermore, Habiby’s use of irony in his text is “his acute awareness of these tragedies that leads him along the literary path of irony and satire” (75-76). The irony is centralized in the “comic hero”´-or-“wise Fool” character which is Saeed, “by the nature of his role, from social norms, he leads an alienated existence: he is slapped, reviled, insulted, treated as an outcast, and disinherited. Yet, he bears everything with the rigid patience of the wise Fool” (Jayyusi 8). This is clarified in the text in the situation when Saeed is waiting for Adon Safsarsheck and a solider talk to him, Habiby says:
“He told me that he was a volunteer who had come to fight feudalism, and that he loved the Arabs. Before I left the station, he came over and shook hand with me warmly and promised that, when the war was over, they would build us kibbutzim. They would depend heavily on “liberal” young men like myself who knew a civilized language well. He said, “Shalom,” and I answered “Peace,” showing how civilized I was. He laughed and said, “Salaam, Salaam,” the Arabic word, and my depression was quite alleviated” (The Pessoptimist 41-42).
On the other hand, the narrative presents the absurdity in the lives of the Palestinians who live in “Israel”. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is presented in Habiby’s philosophy of being pessoptimist. Taking into consideration the fact that Habiby was a founding member of the “Israeli” communist party, a former member of the Knesset and a leading journalist, this could tell us more about his life in the occupied lands of 1948. In his narrative, Habiby says, in the mouth of his character Saeed, that his life in Israel was a gift from a beast: “When I was born again, thanks to an ass…My subsequent life in Israel, was really a gift from that unfortunate beast” (The Pessoptimit 8). Moreover, this narrative describes the absurdities that punctuate the lives of the Palestinians living in “Israel” under the military government of Israel. In an interview Habiby states, "I had a specific goal [when writing these novels] and it is to show the absurdity of the ethnic oppression in Israel” (Khater 77).
Barakat’s narrative in The Stone of Laughter is very comprehensive and effective in discussing the times of peace and war in the civil war in Lebanon, and in order to convey this message she uses details and de-script-ions, stream of consciousness, and shift in narrative. Barakat’s use of details and de-script-ions is painstaking. The de-script-ion she uses is simple, yet effective. Barakat engages the reader to sympathize with her protagonist Khalil, even though Khalil was a homosexual, which is not accepted in the Arabic culture. Among these instances is when Khalil is recalling the days when Naji used to surprise him and spend time with him-;- Khalil says: “Naji didn’t come yesterday so as to surprise me today because he loves to play games…” (Barakat 31), and then when Naji’s sister come along and inform Khalil with Naji’s death, “She left a long pause and then, in a voice that sounded, this time, like her mother’s, she said, Khalil… Naji is dead” (Barakat 35). Furthermore, Barakat uses the stream of consciousness to portray the violence of the civil war that dominates the scene. The narrator tells the story through the consciousness of Khalil-;- Khalil is on a neutral side from the civil war, yet he depicts what happens around him from violence and how it affects humans and objects, Barakat says:
“After the explosion the street… was even more meek and peaceful, like a believer after he has said his prayers, like a believer who has passed the test of patience sent by the lord, whose prayer has been answered and who, like compensated, is able to relax” (Barakatt 36).
Moreover, Barakat manages to shift the narrative from the third-person narrator to the first-person narrator. Throughout the novel, the reader recognizes two narrators-;- Khalil who narrates the story from his point of view in his room, and an unknown narrator (the omniscient narrator) who reports Khalil’s actions and thoughts. However, at the end of the story Barakat highlights the fact that she is the narrator-;- she says, “Khalil disappeared. He turned into a laughing male… Khalil is gone. He has become a man who laughs. And I remain a woman who writes” (264).
Habiby’s The Secret life of Saeed: The Ill-fated Pessoptimist and Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter are consolidating the historical and communal occurrences with the private life of individuals, and how could the 1948 Palestinian Nakba and the Lebanese Civil War affect the individuals who were living these incidents. Both events of the 1948 Nakba and the Lebanese Civil War were used as instruments of sociocide, in which a psychological war on individuals could be more effective than a violent war, yet in these two cases the violence and non-violence were used. The research has linked the actions that were used by the Israeli occupation in the 1948 as sociocide, and the Lebanese Civil war as an instrument of sociocide, in which sociocide, in these two cases, is murdering the society itself. In analyzing Habiby’s novel, the research has illustrated the mechanisms of survival for the dispossessed Palestinians, the tragedies of living as dispossessed, as well as the dissolution of the Palestinian national identity, as represented in the character of Saeed in a colonial context. In Barakat’s novel, the research has clarified the mechanisms of survival for individuals in the Lebanese society in the Civil War, the impact of this war on the individuals, and how the Civil War fragmentation was able to reshape the individuals’ identity.












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