Returner to Haifa
| Author | Ghassan Kanafani |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Language | Arabic |
| Publisher | Manshurat ramal |
Publication date | (First issue, 1969) 2015 |
| Pages |
Returner to Haifa (Arabic: عائد الى حيفا) A novel by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, this novel considered as one of the most prominent novels in contemporary Palestinian literature. Its first edition was issued in 1969, and it was translated into several diffrent languages, including Japanese[1] in 1969, English and Russian in 1974, as well as Persian in 1991.
“Returning to Haifa” may be in its text a literary and fictional work, but in its human text it is about an experience that Ghassan Kanafani lived and that every Palestinian “have had been though” lived through, the experience of the wound of a homeland, and the torment of a human being who suffered over oppression, injustice, deprivation and homelessness, but it always and forever carries the hope of returning to that homeland that dwells in conscience.
In “Return to Haifa,” Ghassan Kanafani picture the new awareness that began to take its shape after the 1948 plight.
It is a trial of oneself by reconsidering the concept of return and the concept of homeland. Said S. And his wife, Safiya, who return to their city of Haifa, where they left their child twenty years ago under the pressure of war, discover that “the human being is ultimately an issue,” and that Palestine is not a recollection of memories, but rather an industry for the future.[2]
Turning the novel into a work of art[edit]
Return to Haifa movie[edit]
The novel, Return to Haifa, whose number does not exceed 70 pages of average pieces in its literary and fictional text, was transformed into a movie directed by Qassem Hawal, and produced by the Land Foundation for Film Production in 1981 AD. The film won four international awards. The dramatic events of the film take place on the morning of April 21, 1948. Artillery shells rained down from the high Carmel hills to demolish the city of Haifa. And at this time, a woman had left her infant son Khaldoun at home and she went out looking for her husband among the terrified crowds, where they were forced to displacement. Days and years pass, and the family returns home after the 1967 war, only to be surprised that Khaldoun has become a young man, and his name now is Dov. He is a conscript in the enlisted army. He was adopted by a Jewish family that settled in their house after the 1948 exodus, and here the tragedy reaches its climax after the boy knews the truth as he insisted on taking sides. In addition to the Zionist mother who adopted him. At the same time, the husband was opposed to his second son joining the guerrilla action, and after seeing the condition of his eldest son, he wished that his son Khaled had joined the resistance movement.
Remaining movie[edit]
Another movie based on the same narrator was produced under the name of "The Remaining", directed by an Iranian and an Iranian-Syrian production in 1994 AD.
The events of the feature film take place in 1948 during the occupation of the city of Haifa by Zionist gangs and an attempt to evacuate the city and housing the Jewish settlers. Safia, the principal of a girls' school in Gaza, received a letter from her daughter-in-law, informing her that her son's life, Dr. Saeed, the youngest one of her children, is in danger. Safiya hastened to travel to Haifa to persuade him to run away to Gaza. But the occupation begins at dawn the next day. During the sniper's bullets, and the armored vehicles led by the Zionist gangs that filled the streets of Haifa to shoot bullets and shells at defenseless Palestinian citizens to harvest women, children and men, the doctor leaves his home and ran to his clinic to treat the injured and wounded out of national duty. On the way home, he is chased by Zionist snipers, so the doctor dies before the eyes of his wife, who left the child in an attempt to search for the husband and to be killed next to him with her eyes looking at the room in which the child sleeps.
The child 'Farhan' remains with a Christian family next to the family, but 'Shimon' the Zionist officer responsible for the displacement of the Palestinians expels the Christian family and seizes the child to give it to a Zionist family coming from Poland, because the Zionist woman does not have children. The Jewish family adopts him and calls him 'Moshe'. nevertheles, the attempts to recover the child did not stop, but continued through his grandmother, Safiya, who accompanied the child as a maid, and his grandfather organized an attempt to retrieve him, but it was unsuccessful try. And all the time we see suspicion in the eyes of the Zionist family, and 'Shimon' decides to leave the family to Tel Aviv with a group of immigrant Jews to settle there.
The film reaches its climax in guerrilla jihad and self-sacrifice when the grandmother takes from her struggling journalist husband a suitcase containing a time bomb, and with a daring adventure, she boards the train that carrying the Zionists in a scene full of tension and excitement. After the train runs, the Zionist officer "Shimon" discovers her and knows her action, and she jumps with her grandson from the train, which explodes in moments after her jump, so she sacrifices her life and her grandson remains alive, and his cry is an extension of the life of Palestine.
A series[edit]
As for the third work on this Kanafani novel, it was a Syrian television series that presented the Palestinian cause in its human dimension, directed by the Syrian director Basil Al-Khatib, and written by Ghassan Nazzal. The television series presented an influential national epic, drawing its characters with their nobility, violence, and having the ability to confront, and most important of it all, it simulates the cause of Palestine in its deep human and struggle dimension.
In this series, the viewer stands in front of a tragic, national human condition, as it begins with the year of the Nakba at the height of its events. The series depicts a long journey of displacement, torment and pain, a journey in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and deprived of their families and land. The series tells the diaries the fall of Haifa in 1948 by observing the fate of a Palestinian family (the tragedy of the Palestinian teacher Saeed and his wife Safiya), who was dispersed and suffered from displacement, displacement and displacement in the camps, and this is the case of all the Palestinian people.
A play[edit]
And for the fourth work, which based on a novel, Returning to Haifa, was a melodramatic play by the Jordanian Ritual Theater Company. The group aimed to raise the awareness by reverting to the first idea of theater that emanated from religion and morals, benefiting from the civilizational and human heritage and its knowledge accumulations over the centuries and working on the formation of an Arab and international theatrical model. Theatrical rituals troupe presented their latest performances on the circular stage at the Royal Cultural Center in Amman.
The play is directed by Dr. Yahya Al-Bishtawi and scenography dr. Firas Al-Raymouni, prepared and represented by Ghannam Ghannam, production management by Nabil Al-Koni, composed by Murad Damerjian, and sung by Suleiman Aboud. Ghannam played all the roles in the play and presented them in the dialect of the Palestinian countryside with high artisanship, and the work focused on the main character “Saeed”, Khaldoun’s father, whom they left in Haifa when he was five months old in the Nakba in 1948, and how he and his wife “Safiya” returned back in 1967, and finding him they found out that he changed his name into 'David' after David Ben-Gurion, and he works as a soldier in the Zionist army, and he refuses to accept them and sticks to his Zionist family, but the questions Khaldoun asked to his parents sparked widespread controversy within everyone who has work in this play, 'Why did you leave me?'
The work focused on a specific time stage, but the Palestinian -Palestinian differences were referred to, and here the author of the this work said what Ghassan Kanafani did not say by focusing on the personality of the resistance Khaled, who is the second son of Said who is arrested by the authority in Ramallah under the pretext of protecting him, but the resistance Khaled is kidnapped By the Zionists from the prison of the Authority, who then dies in the prisons of the occupation of a heart attack upon learning of the Palestinian-Palestinian fighting.
The artist, Ghannam Ghannam, excelled by presenting all the characters of the work, as he left a clear impact on the audience, which as soon as the lights were lit at the end of the play, signs of sadness and crying were visible to most of the audience.
References[edit]
- ↑ "العرب وجهة نظر يابانية", ويكيبيديا (in العربية), 2022-02-07, retrieved 2022-06-09
- ↑ "Rimal Publications :: Online Store :: Books :: G. Kanafani - Novels :: Returning to Haifa - عائد الى حيفا". web.archive.org. 2017-02-11. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
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