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LITERARY CODE-SWITCHING
about a century ago and the indifference of the UK, which was well aware that
if it were to withdraw, the Zionist project would come to fruition while the
Palestinian would not. Keeping this in mind, a novel about Palestine is always,
at least implicitly, political. The novel is not only rich in historical details, it
also is the story of Nablus. Apart from a detailed portrayal of its architecture
and urban space, Hammad offers a fine-grained description of the social and
cultural fabric of the historically important town. She describes the delicate
balances and tensions between the different social groups in Nablus, address¬
ing gender and family relations, as well as the relations between city dwellers
and fellahin* (peasants), the rivalries and feuds between important middle- and
upper-class families, and the relations between different religious communities,
not only Muslims and Christians but also the Samaritans. These fine-tuned
and well-researched descriptions give the novel an ‘ethnographic’ twist, simul¬
taneously drawing and commenting on ethnographic texts.
THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF LANGUAGE USE
Language (variability) is at the core of the literary aesthetics of this novel. In the
narrative and especially in the dialogues, English, French, Palestinian and fusha
(Standard) Arabic are interwoven in a highly sophisticated way. This interaction
between languages and language varieties can be approached in many ways,
code-switching being one of them, another by considering the novel through the
lens of “hybrid literature.”* However, my main argument is that the language use
in this novel defies straightforward classification. After setting out my theoreti¬
cal and methodological framework below, I will explore how the intermingling
of languages and language varieties, in combination with the mixing of genres
and registers (storytelling, proverbs, songs, letters, etc.), is deeply intertwined
with the novel’s political and poetic dimensions. The code-switches and relexifi¬
cations, a term that will be explained below, not only invite the readers to step out
of their comfort zone, they are also a constant reminder that readers are reading
a Palestinian novel that foregrounds a Palestinian perspective on the historical
3 Arabic words will be transcribed using a simplified transcription system without diacritics
that follows as much as possible the transcription used in the novel.
* For hybrid literature, see among others, Sherry Simon: Hybridity and translation, in Y. Gam¬
bier — L. van Doorslaer (eds.): Handbook of Translation Studies. Vol.2, Amsterdam, Benjamins,
2010, 49-53, and Yasir Suleiman: Arabic in the Fray. Language Ideology and Cultural Politics,
Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2013. For an overview of other terms see Johanna
Domokos — Marianna Deganutti: Four major literary code-switching strategies in Hungarian
literature. Decoding monolingualism, Hungarian Studies Yearbook 3 (2021), 44. In doing so,
Hammad is in the good company of many other Arab authors who write in other languages
than Arabic and insert Arabic elements in the main text in English, French, Spanish, Catalan
or Hebrew, just to give some examples. When English is the main language, this literature is
also often referred to as Anglo—Arab or hyphenated literature.
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