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Gate of the Sun

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The following review in the NY Times is a good review of the novel. I strongly recommend. Whether you are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Arab or American, a must read.


New York Times
Review by LORRAINE ADAMS
Published: January 15, 2006

TO Americans, the novel in Arabic remains on the margins. Nonfiction devoted to the Arab world may be in demand, but interest in Arab literature, even after Naguib Mahfouz's Nobel Prize in 1988, hasn't moved too far past Aladdin and Sinbad.
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Maria Söderberg

Elias Khoury
GATE OF THE SUN

Elias Khoury is one of a handful of contemporary Arab novelists to have gained a measure of Western attention. He is also one of the few to write about the Palestinian experience, albeit from the perspective of an outsider. As a Christian born in Beirut in 1948, at the moment of Israel's inception, Khoury was too young to know firsthand the events that "Gate of the Sun" encompasses. Unlike the Palestinian novelists Emile Habibi and Ghassan Kanafani, who were born earlier in the century, Khoury could not rely on his own memory. To write this novel, he spent considerable time in the camps - more accurately, concrete exurban slums - throughout the Middle East, interviewing Palestinian refugees.

Narrated by a peasant doctor talking to a comatose, aging fighter, "Gate of the Sun" relates a swirl of stories: of grandmothers and grandfathers, midwives and children, wives and lovers - the lucky and the hapless, the mad and the hopeful. Employing a strategy that's an inversion of "A Thousand and One Nights" (whose narrator, Scheherazade, tells stories to save herself), Khalil half believes that these stories are keeping his dying friend Yunes alive.

Between November 1947 and October 1950, some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to flee their homes as the British departed and the Israelis took control. Disputed and complicated, the refugee problem has been a sticking point in more than five decades of war, terrorism and failed peace talks.

But while Khoury's narrator explores Palestinian privation and Israeli cruelty, this is not a predictable novel of despair and accusation. It contains, for example, a story about the madwoman of Al Kabri, a reputed bone collector who actually searches for wild chicory. There is a wedding-night farce involving a cotton swab. And a dark story of infanticide - and pita bread.

Khalil assembles these vignettes with a clumsy talent, digressing as often as he gets to the point. His moods are many. One minute, he's swooning about a French actress, the next he's saddened by the antics of a shampoo seller. He crows about Yunes's wife telling Israeli interrogators she's a whore in order to hide Yunes's whereabouts. And he gives another man's wife the last word on what happened to his prized buffaloes: "I'm certain the Jews didn't kill them. . . . Why would they kill them? They'd take them. And how could they have killed the buffalo and not him with them? No, the Jews didn't kill the buffalo. I'm certain his cousin stole them. Took them and disappeared. The man must have waited a month at the border, then despaired and had no choice but to make up the story of the buffalo massacre. Everything foolish we do, we blame on the Jews."

Interspersed with Khalil's stories is his one-sided conversation with Yunes, which gradually reveals the history of a friendship where nothing is withheld. The two men "discuss" everything and nothing, but always they return, with respect and wonder, to the women in their lives. Early on, Khalil recalls that the novelist Kanafani interviewed Yunes but decided not to write about him because "he was looking for mythic stories, and yours was just the story of a man in love. Where would be the symbolism in this love that had no place to root itself? How did you expect he would believe the story of your love for your wife? Is a man's love for his wife really worth writing about?"

This love roots itself in Bab al-Shams, the cave where Yunes and his wife, Nahilah, met secretly over the decades of their marriage. Bab al-Shams (Arabic for "gate of the sun") is where they made love, shared meals and discussed their children. It is also the scene of Nahilah's loving exposure of Yunes's self-delusion, an inspired monologue that chastens and enlightens him. The cave is the novel. At one point, Khalil explains this to Yunes: "We've made a shelter out of words, a country out of words, and women out of words."

All of which is not to say that historical events are absent from Khoury's fiction. But he confines them to the conversation between Khalil and Yunes. Speaking about the Holocaust, Khalil tells his friend: "You and I and every human being on the face of the planet should have known and not stood by in silence, should have prevented that beast from destroying its victims in that barbaric, unprecedented manner. Not because the victims were Jews but because their death meant the death of humanity within us."

On the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Khalil tells Yunes: "I know what you think of that kind of operation, and I know you were one of the few who dared take a stand against the hijacking of airplanes, the operations abroad and the killing of civilians."

On Palestinian identity before 1948, Khalil admits to Yunes: "Palestine was the cities - Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and Acre. In them we could feel something called Palestine. The villages were like all villages. . . . The truth is that those who occupied Palestine made us discover the country as we were losing it."

Asking why the Palestinians fled their land, Khalil demands: "Tell me about that blackness. I don't want the usual song about the betrayal by the Arab armies in the '48 war - I've had enough of armies. What did you do? Why are you here and they're there?"

There has been powerful fiction about Palestinians and by Palestinians, but few have held to the light the myths, tales and rumors of both Israel and the Arabs with such discerning compassion. In Humphrey Davies's sparely poetic translation, "Gate of the Sun" is an imposingly rich and realistic novel, a genuine masterwork.

Elias Khoury weaves a multitude of stories of people, some good, some less so, all flawed in their various ways, into a narrative that makes up the story of a people. One can recognize and identify with the human condition and struggles of each of those individuals, and yet through Khoury's eyes one can also see the whole of the society as it suffers the destruction from being uprooted and exiled by outside forces.

Not just about Palestinians - but about humanity everywhere.

If was there one epic,one literary saga and masterpiece deserving of the tragedy, brutality, betrayal, strength and also beauty that is the Palestinian cause, it is this book. Every page is filled with humanity,regret,passion and the myth that ordinary people fashion for their cause, the myth they need to fashion in order to survive in a world that doesn't care. It is a story of men and women, of love that exists only unfulfilled, of death and self betrayal and the answers that will never be told, that can not be told. There is cruelty and injustice, yet among all the people who have lost their masks, victims and perpetrators, there is no true evil. There is love, yet no one enjoying its bliss without being eluded by its fragility. It is a world of massacres, of lime stained nameless corpses, of heroes turned mad and hair turned white early, but also of beauty, strength and hope that can not die, even in the filth and sorrow stained alleys of a refugee camp. In other words, it is our world.

Yunes, an unflinching hero of the Palestinian resistance,man of countless sacrifices and mentor to forty year old Dr. Khalil,a warm thoughtful man who was among the fedayeen in Lebanon and refused to leave Beirut in 1982, has fallen into a coma. In the almost empty corridors of the neglected Galilee Hospital of the Shatila camp,it is up Khalil to care for him when everyone else has in one way or the other surrendered.They can not understand why Khalil would care so tenderly for what they call a corpse. In a world turned up side down by endless war, they have learned to leave it to God. Not so Dr. Khalil. His refusal to let Yunes be taken home in order to die is his way of paying back his debts and showing his respect and devotion to the man. At the side of Yunes bed he holds a long inner monologue with his friend, who in many ways is still a riddle to him. His admiration for the sacrifices that Yunes has given to the cause that is Palestine does not betray Khalils thirst for answers, for truth in a world of countless conflicting stories. "Tell me- you know better than I do- do we all lie like that? Did you lie to me to?" he asks his silent friend without expecting an answer. Khalils thirst for truth is also personal; the uncertainty of his former lover Shams feelings toward him is torturing. He does not understand why this passionate, yet haunted woman, slept with him. He does not know why she betrayed him and can not understand why she had to die, yet he can forgive her. "I waited, not to understand what she had done, but because I loved her. It no longer made any difference to me whether she had been unfaithful or not. She was what mattered not, me." His long stays in the hospital are also an escape from the feared revenge of Shams family and especially from Shams ghost haunting his unfulfilled longing.

In the centre of the mosaic of tragic, humorous and horrifying stories, such as the story of the Palestinian midwife Umm Hassan, a refugee from 1948, who after years returns to her village of Al-Kweikat to find her house untouched and occupied by a Lebanese Jewish woman, who is herself heartbroken in longing for her country Lebanon and the tragic everyday story of the shampoo seller and con man Salim Assad,stories ranging from pre-Israeli Palestine and the catastrophe and chaos that was the Palestinian Nakba up to the Lebanese civil war and Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its horrifying aftermath,is the story of Yunes and Nahilah, his beautiful and long suffering wife and their secret meetings in the caves of Bab al Shams in Galilee. They can only be man and wife in this cave, in those rare moments of love and passion, both divided by circumstances they can not control. Yunes is a fedayee in Lebanon and can only pass into Galilee by secret. He is not there to support his wife, raise his children, be a father and he is absent when his first born Ibrahim dies tragically. Yet Khalil is uncertain about many aspects of his friend's life, he can not understand why Yunes never tried to give up the life of a fighter and be a husband to Nahilah and father to his children, nor is he certain about the circumstances of Ibrahims death. "Tell me, Yunes, why didn't you go back for good? Why didn't you ever try? Were you afraid of dying? If you say you were afraid they would liquidate you, Ill understand, but then don't talk to me about the struggle or the revolution or any of that." Khalil is even uncertain where the love story of ever patient Nahilah and Yunes ends. Was is it on that fateful night under the Roman olive tree when Nahilah opened herself to Yunes, revealing the full extent of her sacrifice to him and telling him she could not bear this life any longer, or was it in 1982 when all passing into Galilee became impossible because of the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon? There are no answers to all these questions. It is their memory that Khalil wants to keep alive, the memory of ordinary men and the memory of extraordinary women, in a world of confusion and happiness that can not be."I didn't weep for Shams as I have wept for you and for this woman.I didn't weep for my father as I have wept for you and for her.I didn't weep for my mother as I have wept for you and for her,Khalil tells Yunes at the end of their path together, realizing that in this human tragedy the conclusion of every story can only be heartbreak.

The entire novel is told without chronology and jumps from event to event, often without giving dates and detailing the political happenings mentioned,such as the many sieges of the Shatila camp,the pre-1967 history and subsequent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.Readers of this beautiful epic need atleast a rudimentary knowledge of the conflict and its historical outline, in order not to get lost and fully immerse themselves in the stories,events and people presented in Bab al Shams. Nonetheless,the scope, brilliance and humanity of Elias Khourys acclaimed epic is almost beyond words.It is a story,or hundredths of them, ripped straight out life. There are no villains, only human beings. There are heroes, yet they are almost too quiet to be heard. The prove that Elias Khourys novel is fully set in the world we inhabit, is that we are ultimately left without answers, wishing with all of our hearts that things could have been different for Yunes and Nahilah, for the abused Shams and the gentle Dr.Khalil,including the mother and father he barely knew. We, like Dr.Khalil, and all human beings must never stop searching. It is the ultimate goal and drive of our humanity. We must never stop asking and never stop admiring, despite all weakness we might encounter. The truth is not always in need of a definite answer. The story never ends and should never end, as we learn in this magnificent book.

This is an extraordinary story, essentially a personalized account of the history of the Palestinians of Galilee since the Zionist immigrations -- certainly, after the genocide of the Jews in the 1940s, the cruelest assault on a people in the 20th century (though the Armenian genocide too is right up there if one is counting), and it continues today in all its horror. The story is hung on an initially irritating conceit, one man's monologue as he cares for a mentor who has suffered a stroke and is brain dead. The protagonist imagines that his charge can hear and comprehend him. But as the story progresses, the immediacy of the reality of the intertwining biographies and the awful -- and often beautiful -- story they tell is so engaging that the irritation passes. But what also makes this novel extraordinary is that it is told without rancor -- not that hatred wasn't swirling around and everpresent. The people are real, that world is real, the suffering and death are real. It is this, and the opening of a window on that world heretofore glimpsed only on the news, that is the beauty of this book. There were occasional and brief what seemed to me trite pop-philosophical digressions, but they did not seriously affect the power of the reading. Some episodes seem to be present to emphasize that the author is not anti-Jewish, but they feel contrived. In this feverish situation it is no doubt a good thing to emphasize an author's rejection of anti-Semitic prejudice, but one would hope the author could find a way that feels as real as the rest of the book. Well, truth to tell, there was one subplot that stretched credulity in the interest of creating an artful story. Nonetheless, this is a truly powerful book, and the reality of that world comes through despite the occasional novelistic artifice. How to right the wrongs and avoid further horrors for either peoples! But Gate of the Sun is a resolutely non-political novel about individuals -- largely unheard from individuals caught up in the maelstrom of the 20th century's awful story.

Occasionally you come across a great book by a great author and after reading 10-15 pages you realize that you could never write a novel like this, the prose, the detail, the character development are simply outstanding. After finishing the book you sit and reflect on it a bit and recognize that it has, in some greater or lesser manner, changed your world view forever. The novel has left you with images you will never forget. Elias Khoury's novel Gate of the Sun is this type of novel. Future generations will speak of Khoury in the same breathe with Zola, Dickens, and Dostoevsky.

Gate of the Sun is a story about the Nakba (or Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948 when the state of Israel was formed and the Palestinian people were scattered to the winds: some to life as second class citizens in Israel, many forced into ghettos in Gaza and the West Bank, and many other scattered throughout Lebanon, Jordan, and rest of the Muslim world. The story begins as a famous Palestinian freedom fighter lay in a coma dying in a hospital outside Beirut. A close friend sits with him day and night and spends the next seven months recounting stories from their lives. What follows is a recounting of the Palestinian experience from the Nakba through the '67 war, Black September, the Lebanon War, and the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. We learn about life in refugee camps, the struggle of the freedom fighters, how the Israelis drove the Palestinians out of their villages and homes before and after '48. In short, we learn about the peregrinations and vicissitudes of the Palestinian people.

This story isn't told in a linear fashion. There are jumps in both time and space as various episodes in both characters lives are revisted, and stories that were told to them by others recounted. We learn about all aspects of the Palestinian condition, big and small. The tales range from domestic disputes, love affairs, and parent-children stories to tragic tales of expulsion in '48 and genocide in '82. One of the great strengths of this book is that it is not simply a paean to the Palestinians. Khoury recounts many episodes that are not particularly flattering to the Palestinians.

This is not an easy book to read. Although the style is very different, I would compare it to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that it will take a bit of discipline to get through (this is definitely not a beach read). The only negative comment I can make about this book is that it is, in some ways, too bad that this book is so difficult to work through. I wish that this novel was more approachable by the average reader in the United States (not that Khoury was necessarily writing for these people). Any Westerner who reads this book cannot possibly look at the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same light. We have been conditioned to view the Israelis as the victims, after reading this book, you would be hard pressed to hold this view ever again.

Finally, on one quasi-political note, this novel also explained to me why the Palestinians have been so adamant about retaining the right of return in their negociations with the Israelis. I could never understand why they held onto this so tightly, but after reading this novel, you'll completely understand.

Bottom line is that this is one of the most detailed, well written novels I have ever read and I think that it compares favorably with the best novels written in any language. There are so many unforgettable images in this novel that you'll be shell-shocked when you finish it. Not a trivial undertaking, but you'll be richly rewarded if you take this journey.

Really a wonderful read - Khoury gives us the people inside the statistics. Reading "700,000 refugees" doesn't make the average person feel much, but Gate of the Sun gives us the individual faces and stories that make it all real. Other reviewers mentioned the artifice in the structure; I found it a touch annoying at first, then very appropriate as the book went along. Given the quality of the novel and the importance of the topic, I am surprised this novel has received only five reviews - are so few people reading this book?

The reviews of this book have been so laudatory that I began reading fully expecting to be swept away. Unfortunately, the only thing to be swept was the book, as I pushed it aside for something more readable. Months later, I began again and ground my way through the first forty pages, refusing to give up. The book did get easier to digest; it's not a book I will read again, however.

Why so difficult? Khoury wrote the book as a stream of consciousness narration, with all the associative leaps and bounds of human thought. Stories are interrupted by other thoughts, the past and the present become interchanged, and the reader is left with a montage of images formed by the onslaught of storytelling. After a certain point, Khoury's writing stabilizes a bit, and the reader has pieced together enough of the story to be able to follow along. Some stories are then told in a linear fashion, but those of the two main characters spiral around never ending and never seeming to find resolution.

The book is comprised of a young man's internal monologue as he sits at the bedside of his aged mentor and father figure, Yunes. Khalil talks aloud, hoping that his voice will bring the old man out of his stroke-induced coma. He talks about what is happening in his life and reflects on how he ended up living in a derelict hospital, afraid he will be killed if he leaves, yet knowing the situation cannot continue indefinitely. But mostly Khalil tries to put together the things that he knows about Yunes, in an attempt to create a story that explains the old Palestinian freedom fighter's life and his relationship with his wife. Along the way, Khalil tells the stories of countless others: the Palestinian midwife living out her life in a Jordanian refugee camp, a Jewish woman living in a house taken from the Palestinian woman who visits her, French actors who visit the camp hoping to improve a play they are doing on the massacre that took place there, the young Gazan fighter who learns his mother is Jewish.

The stories loosely hang together by themes which appear and reappear throughout the book. Primarily it is a book about the inanity of war and the cycles of violence that perpetuate a situation in which neither side can win. War is examined from both the general sense and the particulars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why do young men fight and die for a country in which they have never lived? Why does Yunes risk his life over and over to visit his family, rather than bring his family to Jordan? Why do Jews treat the Palestinians in ways that eerily resemble 1930's Germany?

Others may find the patchwork of discombobulated stories a fascinating look at the situation of Palestinian exiles in Jordan and the themes a literary treasure hunt. Personally, I found the book exhausting. It was like reading Ulysses without a concordance. My recommendation? Read Khoury's later book, White Masks, instead.

A book having to do with war, upheavel and the enduring drive of humans to carry on. While this book is touted as supporting the palestinian cause, its underlying theme can be seen and understood by anyone who can understand what war and instability does to people, how it can drive them mad, how it can inspire them and wear them down at the same time, how a man can miss his life and children chasing a dream. Nothing in this book is portrayed as easy as black and white, good or bad, so regardless of which side of the conflict you side with it is a good read. The storyline swirls and eddies, kinda dreamlike, moving back and forth from one time period to another as a man visits his "father figure" in the hospital and tells the dying man (as well as himself) stories of his own life and those around him. It is as much about the conflict as it is about a man who comes to terms with the mortality and faulty humanity of his father figure.

This is a sadly moving, if not depressing book. It is very well-written and tells the saddest of stories, the rip-off and expulsion of a people from their homes and their lands. I found it fascinating and learned from it although I am an Arabist long familiar with the subject matter. I would consider this a must reading for any American who truly wants to understand and come to his/her own conclusions about the on-going crisis in the Middle East. It is for any interested person who is unwilling to swallow the party line as put forward by the zionist entity and its lackeys.