Fall 2017

A Review of Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed and Khadra’s The Attack

By: KJ Adisa

Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed and Yasmina Khadra’s The Attack are like distant cousins: sort of from the same family but weirdly different.

Both novels examine the occupation and the forcible removal of Arabs in Israel (or the region that what was once Palestine to them). Both novels feature troubled men attempting to assimilate to the changing landscape. Both novels feature a first-person narrator who has to make a choice, discover some personal truth, and, in the end, make peace with the reality of their situations. In short, though both novels are published 30 years apart, the books are a window into an uncomfortable house that is completely divided.

            What makes Habiby’s novel distinct from Khadra’s is the absurdity of the protagonist and his bungling through life. Saeed defines himself based on his family heritage: “we bear the name Pessoptimist.” And for him, there is no variation between optimism and pessimism. This state of being both allows Saeed to “occupy” various posts within the tale. On the one hand, he is an active observer of the problems facing Palestinians; on the other hand, Saeed is an ineffective participant in his own life.

            For instance, before becoming employed by the Union of Palestine Workers, Saeed travels through Haifa but becomes confused when the truck driver says, “Welcome to Medinah Israel.” Not knowing at the time medinah in Hebrew means “state,” Saeed seems to accept what is said to him, even when his thoughts (in hindsight) should have suggested an action. His lackadaisical approach is part of his pessoptimism; however, this approach makes him “dim-witted” and subject to a barrage of insults and abuses. In another scene, he is badly beaten for reciting Shakespeare as a prisoner. But even here, these scenes are presented as things happening to him; very little shows (reliably) how he acts upon events in his life.

            Having an action requires foresight, careful consideration, and an aptitude of doing something. None of this is readily available in Habiby’s character. In fact, Saeed’s only action is to remain balance on a stake. This balance between being up or down is a metaphor for the lack of real choices Saeed has available to him. That is, if we as readers are to accept the veracity of his claims.

            Saeed’s reliability has to be questioned. But I think that’s kind of the point of the novel. Having an unnamed recipient of his letters from “outer space” signifies the level of absurdity his experience as being an Arab in Israel. Someone else has to read (and by extension tell) his story.  Contrastingly, Khadra’s protagonist isn’t just an observer of his life; he is an active participant though readers may find his actions a bit contrived and foolhardy.

            Amin Jaafari is a celebrated Arab doctor fully assimilated to Israeli customs. At least, that’s how we meet him. Unlike Saeed, Amin’s actions are driven by a desire to be better than his heritage and family background. But after his wife is accused of being a suicide bomber, Amin’s life is made topsy-turvy. He ventures out to occupied spaces to find answers as to why his wife may have been involved in such a heinous attack. What he comes to recognize about the people who orchestrate such offensives, and perhaps why his wife was involved, is that they live in habitual sense impotency and humiliation. As one of the rebel commanders tells him, humiliation “takes away your taste of life.”

            Life and living are analogous to the destruction of Amin’s wife, Sihem, their home, their homeland, and his idealized version of himself. Distinct from Saeed, Amin’s life isn’t one of idly observing situations from a far. However, like his distant cousin, Amin is ineffective at changing the outcome of his situation. Instead of remaining on a stake, choosing neither pessimism or optimism, Amin’s choices come from a deep-seated desire to restore some sense of Sihem that’s acceptable, like cleaning and clearing the detritus left by the police and vandals of their home. Unfortunately, both Saeed and Amin leave the reader to wonder about the validity of the implicit critique of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which seems to be there’s no peace or end of violence, by the novels’ closings.

            As writers, Habiby and Khadra are vastly different. The prose stylings of Habiby are terse and at times doggedly simple. The tone of the sentences is matter-of-fact, which can be off-putting to traditional narrative readers. Even his metaphors, though possibly better in Arabic than in English, seem weak. For instance, “Suddenly afraid, I withdrew my hand and held my tongue before it slipped and got me into trouble” doesn’t create a sense of anxiety in the reader nor does it rely clearly what sort of trouble he’d be in because he was almost always troubled.

            In a more skilled hand, Khadra places his audience in the room or situation of his characters. For instance, when he visits the Grand Mosque, Amin’s description of the events has a rhythm and pace that makes putting down the book quite difficult: The young religious man “requests that I wait in the sanctuary, goes behind the minbar, lifts a curtain leading to a concealed inner room, and disappears. The few men who were reading with their backs to the wall consider me with curiosity. […] A large bearded fellow decisively lays his Qur’an aside and stares at me so imperturbably, he makes me uncomfortable.” Khadra shows Amin’s discomfort and the empathetic reader knows he’s not going to be able to see the Imam.

            And it is in this distinction, the ability to feel what the character’s express and experience, that make Khadra’s novel stronger. That, and it wears a modern skin where terrorism and terrorist attacks are part of our world’s cultural milieu. What Habiby describes is a landscape 30 years removed from the one Khadra shows us.

            As distant metaphorical cousins, The Secret Life of Saeed and The Attack show us the sublimity and the absurdity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both novels are good reads, though Khadra’s writing is vivid and engaging.