Arabesques

Abstract

This article looks at the discourses shaping the purports of the narrative structure of Anton Shammas's Arabesques, an Arabic tale written in Hebrew letters. Addressing the Hebrew-speaking readers in the first place, Shammas designs this semi-autobiographical novel to reposition himself as both narrator of his family saga and character in his own right. As a narrator-character, he is privileged to witness the horrible demise and loss of his own Arab Palestinian identity and the emergence of quite another identity imposed on him by the newly-established Jewish settlers' State. Seeking a way out of this ambivalent national allegiance, he gets involved in various situational conversations with a number of Jewish Israeli intellectuals, some of whom feature as characters in the tale. The reactions of those intellectuals to his compelling attitude and tone, as he pragmatically voices himself in their language, vary widely. Surprisingly, however, all of those Jewish intellectual voices echo the same Zionist zeal when their polarizing talks create the Arab other outside the discourse.