Karim Kattan, a French-speaking Palestinian writer, signs his second opus, “L'Eden à l'aube,” published by Elyzad. (Credit: Rebecca Topakian)
For almost a year, Arab voices have been viewed with caution, if not mistrust, in the Western media landscape. This is especially stark when they speak out against the ongoing massacres in Gaza. Speaking out for Palestine is a balancing act. To have the right to be quoted, you have to show your white paws, obediently line up the prescribed condemnations and use the terms dictated by those in power.
In this vast minefield, there are still some intellectual figures who are opening up a practicable path without caving to intimidation. Such is the case of the Palestinian writer Karim Kattan, known for his first novel, "Le Palais des deux collines" published by Elyzad in 2021.
Since October 2023, his words have been glimmers of intelligence and humanity. It's hard to imagine what it means for a Palestinian living in Europe to mourn from a distance. It's hard to imagine the Cassandra-like responsibility one feels towards a world in disarray. What it must feel like, to be invited by journalists to comment on atrocities that should speak for themselves.
In spite of this, Kattan speaks eloquently and clearly about his country in his op-eds, poems, television and radio appearances, while reflecting on his condition as a Palestinian in the diaspora, standing "on the threshold of humanity," a powerless witness to the horrors.
Kattan's second novel is a love story. It is scheduled for the start of the 2024 literary season. How did the time for fiction fit in with the time for commitment? How did he find the time, space and calm to write?
Writing during war time
"The book was finished long before!" exclaimed Kattan, astonished that anyone would believe he could have written the novel during the war. “For me, it's obvious that this book dates from another historical period," he said.
"Today, Palestinian writing is undergoing a metamorphosis. I write very little fiction and very short stories. Yet throughout Eden at Dawn, there are clues that could relate to the current situation. First, the Khamsin, a destructive, semi-mythological wind claims tens of thousands of lives. Then there's the opening scene, in which Isaac, one of the two protagonists, “sleeps as if dead” in a city in rubble, a “bombed-out 21st-century city of the nation of humans."
"All these things are there without being there," admitted Kattan. "It's not the first time our cities have been in rubble, it's a reality of today, but not only.” This network of clues, which seems to foreshadow the war in progress, is an ambiguity for the reader and a moral question for the author, who sees his book appearing during a period that "requires total responsibility."
But that's how it is: Publishing takes longer than politics. Kattan wondered whether he should amend his novel or add a preface to situate it: “How can I bear to talk about my work when my peers, writers, poets, journalists, are being massacred in Gaza? In the end, Isaac and Gabriel's story is left intact."
A great love novel
Eden at Dawn is a great love novel. Two Palestinian men, Isaac and Gabriel, meet and barely miss each other in a fairytale Jerusalem, teeming with enigmas and whimsical characters. Until the two lines of their lives cross over a game of cards in Aunt Fatima's cosy living room. A long, languorous courtship begins, with nightly rendezvous hinted at in hushed tones. All this under the watchful eye of a special kind of narrator, who spies on the lovers through their wide-open windows or sneaks in through secret skylights to get a better look: He's the sky itself, sometimes playful, sometimes impetuous, sometimes solemn.
At Kattan's, we love each other by telling stories. As a makeshift Hakawati, the wily Isaac improvises tales and legends to keep the handsome Gabriel. “These stories have a folkloric, Palestinian aspect, but they're also part of a global narrative. Their irruption into the novel is very natural; that's how I write, it creates a surplus of dream,” commented the author.
Kattan's language knows how to follow the tortuous paths of seduction, embracing the jolts of desire as it blossoms, hesitates, withdraws and then blossoms. The coming together of the two protagonists is the occasion for lyrical flashes. We recognize the original intention of this book, which was to be a prose poem.
“But love cannot exist without the material conditions of its possibility,” Kattan reminded us. For the story could only be set in Palestine, “the territory of my life and my imagination.” And with the turn of a phrase, we are transported from a dream world populated by djinns and brigands to the reality of soldiers and checkpoints.
Two men who love each other under occupation
“The political architecture of love is inevitable. Especially in the case of this love. From their genesis in the author's mind, the two characters are defined by their administrative situations. One has a green identity card, which restricts travel, while the other has a blue identity card, which you risk losing if you're absent from the country for a few years. But the novel doesn't dwell on clarifications for readers who have come to learn about living conditions in Palestine. All these things are evoked very simply, as if by someone who has always known them. “When you live under occupation, you don't spend all day talking about the occupation," the author said.
Yet it governed everything. Not content with administering bodies, it interferes with fantasies and imaginations. But even under occupation, there remains the possibility of lightning happiness, achieved through ecstatic devotion to the other, bordering on mysticism.
Let's talk about the obvious: Did Kattan set out to write a “queer love story in Palestine”? Indeed, this novel is, but the author didn't choose this story in order to shine a light on this or that minority. It was a kind of “evidence,” emanating from his person.
It's precisely because all these political issues “are the fabric of the book's reality without being its focal points” that the novel is highly political “without being geopolitical.” If Kattan still believes in the power of literature, it's almost an act of faith, without knowing “whether this belief is an illusion.” Yet, with this magnificent second novel, he achieves the most powerful act of which literature is capable: Affirming the full humanity of those to whom the world concedes only a partial and conditional humanity.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour; English version was edited by Yara Malka.
