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A Balcony Over the Fakihani (Emerging Voices)

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Liyanah Badr shares the experience of a Palestinian woman who has lived the resistance to Israeli occupation in its earliest stages. She provides insight into a world very few western readers will ever have exposure to, although it defines a critical period in the history and lives of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs. Her writing is lucid and quitely powerful, and her characters will stay with you for a long time.

Set in war-torn Beirut during 1980-82, this powerful collection of three novellas by Jerusalem-born writer Liyana Badr tells the stories of several displaced Palestinian men and women. With memories still vivid of exile from former homelands and being driven out of Jordan in Black September of 1970, theirs are accounts of attempting to rebuild lives, sometimes unsuccessfully, as unwelcome foreigners in Lebanon. "A Land of Rock and Thyme" describes the brutal relocation of refugees from a camp in a Christian area of Beirut. The brutality is underscored by the shocked and numb response of the narrator, a young widow, whose grief for her dead husband leaves no room for the loss of others in her family.

The title story, "A Balcony Over the Fakihani," is in effect a love story as a young mother, her closest friend, and her husband take turns describing a life that clings to a kind of normalcy even while that life requires continued armed vigilance. "The Canary and the Sea" is convincingly told from the point of view of a Palestinian soldier during the Israeli invasion of Beiruit. The shattered city, held by rival factions, forms the backdrop of a story of near-death and becoming a prisoner of war in the land that had once been his home.

Badr writes as a witness to the "catastrophe" that drove Palestinians into exile. These, she says, are what the West thinks of as "terrorists." And while her stories are graphic in their portrayal of brutality and grief, they are also alive with the joy of living and the refusal to despair. She seems to have special regard and affection for the men who bring warmth and reassurance to the women and families they love. The grief at their loss, described by both wives and comrades, is deep and palpable. We get a glimpse behind their hope and gentle optimism only in the final story, as a man who loves canaries is interrogated as a dangerous "terrorist" by his captors. Well translated, with a helpful introduction.