Yassin-Kassab on PalFest: ‘It’s time to write back’
March 19th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Robin Yassin-Kassab is a PULSE coeditor and author of The Road From Damascus. Last year he was a featured participant at the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest), recently featured here. You can find some pieces about his experiences while travelling with the roadshow here and here. I recently asked Yassin-Kassab to reflect on Palfest again, this time almost one year after his participation.
Robin Yassin-Kassab in Palestine, beside Mahmoud Darwish, the late national poet.
Palfest has three sets of benefits: for the foreign writers involved, for the Palestinians living under occupation, and for the wider world which is too often starved of information (as opposed to propaganda) on Palestine.
For me personally, the benefits were enormous. Palfest was by far the greatest opportunity I’ve been offered since my novel was published. For a start, I was able to spend a week sharing fascinating and sometimes extremely emotional experiences with an international group of writers accomplished in a wide range of genres. These included Michael Palin, best-selling crime writer Henning Mankell, renowned American novelist Claire Messud, and two-time winner of Canada’s most prestigious literary award, M. G. Vassanji. I also had the honour of meeting Palestinian writers, academics and intellectuals, both residents in Palestine (such as Raja Shehadeh) and those who live abroad (such as Suheir Hammad). I was able to visit refugee camps and villages in the West Bank, to briefly taste the enwalled and humiliated existence of Palestinians in Hebron/al-Khalil, Jerusalem, and elsewhere. Students and shopkeepers taught me more about resistance than I’d previously known, as did Israeli dissidents. Of course, I already knew a lot about Palestine; seeing it with your own eyes, being hassled at borders and checkpoints, having guns and cameras pointed at you – this is something else.
The Palestinians themselves were touched by the solidarity of a literary festival coming to them. And it does come to them. Unlike other literary festivals, PalFest is mobile. Because it is often impossible for a Palestinian to travel the few miles from Ramallah to Jerusalem, or from Jenin to Ramallah, the PalFest itinerary covers as many locations as possible. We wanted to go to Gaza, and the government in Gaza wanted us to come, but Israel didn’t allow it. Literature, like pasta, is obviously considered to be a raw material out of which ‘terror’ can be manufactured. The occupation attempts to seal Palestinians in ghettos and isolate them from the world beyond. PalFest is a small action against this plan.
And the wider world? There are many people who would never read a news story on Palestine, but who would read a Palestine-related story written on the culture pages by an admired novelist (such as Deborah Moggach). PalFest doesn’t ask anything of its guests other than that they meet Palestinians and talk to them about their work. Most guests, however, go on to write about their experience or to organise further teaching sessions to Palestinian students once the festival is over. Just the fact that a household name like Michael Palin has visited Palestine and enjoyed it gives a tremendous boost to the often demonized Palestinian cause. When people read that Michael Palin has been hustled at gun point out of a reading, they may well think twice about the mainstream media version of plucky little democratic Israel.
Lovers of justice and cultural interchange should support PalFest. Part of Zionism’s ideological success in the West has been achieved by co-opting cultural figures from Bono to Sylvester Stallone. It’s time to write back.
The creators of PalFest are currently working on their upcoming 2010 roadshow and are expected to release the names of this year’s participants in April. In the meantime be sure to check out their website and fan them on Facebook for regular updates.
Last year only 4 writers were Palestinian – and these writers write in English, not Arabic. This seems more like a political tour for these writers, than a literature festival for Arabic-speaking Palestinians.
There were other Arabic speakers with the group, but yes, you’re right, Leila. The Festival is definitely Anglophone, and therefore inevitably won’t reach many important sectors of the population. I still think the Festival does important work, however. Certainly it is a political tour, for some writers an education, and that is surely a good thing as it helps to bring increased coverage to and understanbding of the palestinian cause in Anglophone countries. And Palfest does its best to engage with university English departments etc to meet a wider range of people than those who come to theatres (I did two workshops with great students, and a reading in bir zeit). But a lot of Palestinians came to theatres. (and, at least in Bethlehem, there was tranlsation). Plafest has also brought Palestinian writers to London.
I think Palfest has achieved great things. Remember it’s small, held together by a small group who do it for the love of it. To help it grow, I certainly agree that there should be perhaps a partner org of palestinian writers to coordinate events.