'Minor Detail' by 'Adania Shibli'
I want to write the land,
I want the words to be the land itself.
But I’m just a statue the Romans carved and the Arabs forgot.
Colonizers stole my severed hand and stuck it in a museum.
No matter. I still want to write it – the land.
My words are everywhere and silence is my story.
-Najwan Darwish
"Minor Detail" is an Arabic novel by Adania Shibli that delves into the displacement and expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homeland. The story is divided into two parts.
The first part is a heart-wrenching story of a bedouin girl. The first part takes us back to the summer of 1949 (one year after the Nakba), when Israeli soldiers capture a Bedouin girl after brutally killing her family and tribe. They shoot the girl after raping her.
In the second part, we meet a woman who was born exactly 25 years later from that incident. She got to know about the incident from a newspaper article. She feels compelled to know more about the incident and sets out to visit the places where these events occurred. As she journeys through these landscapes, she uncovers layers of history and pain.
Shibli’s novel not only portrays the immediate impact of violence but also explores the lasting psychological effects on future generations. It shows how those who inherit such a tragic past struggle to cope with their lives under occupation. The story highlights how occupying forces impose their culture and attempt to justify their wrongdoings. It also captures the attempts to erase the cultural and historical identity of a whole civilization by changing the names of the cities and villages. (This can also be seen in the recent Indian context, who knows the inspiration behind it.)
