State of the Gaza Strip Border Crossings 01 - 31 December 2017

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-133
Author(s):  
Drew Paul

This chapter examines a literary depiction of the repeated borders encountered on the Palestinian journey of return from exile in Raba‘i al-Madhoun’s Lady from Tel Aviv (2009). While many earlier examples of the common Palestinian literary trope of return, such as Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud (1978), either ignore the border or go silent altogether at the crossing back towards Palestine, al-Madhoun’s novel metafictionally reimagines the narrative of the protagonist’s return from London to the Gaza Strip by way of Tel Aviv as a series of encounters with borders that progressively blur distinctions of past/present and real/imaginary. At each crossing, new narrative voices appear, and gradually the lines between characters, narrators, and authors disintegrate, producing a cacophony of voices and an uncontrollable narrative of return. The novel performs and thereby exposes the disorienting effect of the border and its production of an unpredictable, “stray” life in blockaded Gaza. The Lady from Tel Aviv reveals that an unruly multitude of voices can offer a response to the silencing effect of the border.


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