“My novel, ‘The Time of White Horses,’ counters the Zionist saying: ‘Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land,’ Jordanian-Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah told Arabic culture online publication Doroob in a recent interview.
Indeed, the epic “White Horses – one of the six shortlisted books for the 2009 Arabic Booker prize – is essentially a grand statement against this claim; a detailed account of the people of Palestine and a portrait of ordinary lives shaped and defined by a conflict forced upon them.
“White Horses chronicles Palestine’s modern history from the point of view of the inhabitants of a small Palestinian village called Al-Hidaya from the end of the 19th century until mid-20th century; from the end of the Ottoman rule, passing through the British occupation and ending with the 1948 Nakba. The novel is divided into three books named “The Wind, “The Earth, and “The People, respectively.
In essence, the novel is a collection of character-driven tales set against these historical events. Even though “White Horses has a powerful personal element, the novel, in its entirety, is closer to a large socio-historical narrative. The woes and myths of its characters gradually build up to reflect the woes and myths of the village’s collective conscience and identity.
Shifting between the village’s daily life and the political misfortunes it witnesses, the writing style of “White Horses is dense and multifaceted. Nasrallah divides his novel further into short chapters, each averaging a couple of pages. With a handful of storylines narrated in parallel to one another, each packed with events and queries, the work is definitely not an easy read. Some parts are more demanding for no apparent reason, with, unfortunately, no rewards to justify the challenge.
This rich complexity of the novel is a product of the long period Nasrallah took to write his novel; an astonishing 22 years.
From the first page, the reader sees through the eyes of Al-Hidaya’s elder Sheikh Mahmoud a miracle involving a breathtakingly white horse. Nasrallah heavily emphasizes the notion that legends are made by the perfected combination of many miracles.
When times get tough and the Turks start raising taxes and savagely collect them, when the occupying forces attempt to strip the people of their dignity, Nasrallah grants his village the one thing no force on earth can steal: Pride.
As the Palestinian village is subjected to more atrocities, the horse’s pride is gradually transformed into the collective Palestinian pride. Their pride in their women, their land and their horses becomes their mantra, reflected in every mundane action, in the simplest act of resistance.
Nasrallah strikes a good balance between the legendary and the outlandish. This dominant formula, in addition to the good nature of Nasrallah’s characters, veers towards predictability where good triumphs over evil and courage doesn’t go unrewarded. His characters are too one dimensional, falling inside the well-defined good and bad categories. Unlike Elias Khoury’s celebrated novel “The Gate of the Sun, there are no gray areas inside Nasrallah’s Palestine; the distinction between good and bad is crystal clear with no passing cloud of doubt to upset it.
However, the diversity of the simultaneously-told stories as well as Nasrallah’s singular imageries and analogies compensates for the poor characterization. By directing the readers’ attention towards the numerous unfolding events with their sharp twists and turns, the author shows a clear aptitude in concealing his shortcomings.
In the final scene of the book, the tragic fate of Al-Hidaya is revealed. The village’s flaming pigeons escape their towers, struggling for survival and searching for a new place to land. This leaves the reader asking “now what? In the very last page of the book, Nasrallah cites a quote from Jewish writer Nahum Goldmann’s book, “The Jewish Paradox : “Were I an Arabic leader, I wouldn’t agree to any Israeli agreement. This is only natural; we [Israelis] took their land.
Seeing the pride his Palestinian heroes have continued to display even in the face of death, the course of action the author suggests is quite clear: there is no alternative but resistance.
“White Horses is regarded by several critics as a strong contender for winning the Arabic Booker due in part to the basic subject matter and its relation with the recent events in Gaza. The artistic value of the book, especially when compared to the other contenders, is quite disputable though. In addition, revered Syrian director Nagdat Anzor is planning to adapt the novel into a TV series scheduled for next Ramadan.
