Oldal 26 [26]
OCR
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, addressing 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, simultaneously 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 theoretical 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 relexifications, 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. Gambier — 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. s 24 c
