Summary
Elias Khoury’s novel Gate of the Sun — fiction, labelled as such wherever it is used here — which tells the story of Abu Is’af’s unit through its fictional heroes, and in which Sa’id Salih al-Asadi of Sha’b is memorialized, in Manna’s account (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.169-170, 173).
Details
- Fiction: Abu Is’af’s name crops up several times in the novel by Elias Khoury Gate of the Sun, which tells the story of his unit through its fictional heroes; in fact, two heroes who withdrew with their unit to the south of Lebanon became refugees and continued to strive to return to the Galilee for several years (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.169).
- Fiction: the other hero from Sha’b in Abu Is’af’s fighting unit, Sa’id Salih al-Asadi (1918–1997), is memorialized in Gate of the Sun; he is Abu Saleh, called Yunis in the novel, and his wife, whom he met in a cave near Dayr al-Asad on his dozens of returns to Galilee from 1948 to 1956, is called Naheeleh in the novel; Elias Khoury named that cave the Gate of the Sun in his novel (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.169-170).
- Fiction: like the hero of Gate of the Sun, Ahmad Mutlaq Hamid of Sha’b also joined Abu Is’af’s unit, withdrew with it to south Lebanon and then Syria, and strove to return; Manna gives his documented history — arrested twelve times, lastly sentenced to two years, and given an identity card after his 1961 release — separately from the novel’s hero (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.173).
- In the Introduction, Manna’s methodology discussion turns on Tom Segev’s review of Gate of the Sun, in which Segev demanded proof for alleged war crimes in Sha’b connected with the novel; Manna answers from the secrecy of the Israeli archives (fiction discussed as fiction, and the review as a review) (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.43-44).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, Abu Is’af, Sa’id Salih al-Asadi, Sha’b, Tom Segev