At Mirath (The Inheritance) is a powerful novel written by the acclaimed Palestinian author, Sahar Khalifeh, in 1997. It has recently been translated into English and published by the American University in Cairo Press. In the novel, the author takes a deep look at Palestinian society. She emphasizes the profound divisions existing between Palestinians of the diaspora and those who never left their homeland.
The possibility of losing a prospective inheritance forces Zayna, the protagonist, to travel for the first time to Palestine. Born to an American mother and a Palestinian father, Zayna takes an indefinite leave from her job and decides not to return until she has found her family and “reconnected the severed stem to its roots.”
Until she decided to go to Palestine, Zayna always wondered who she really was. “I didn’t say I was Arab because I wasn’t. Who am I then? Despite my mother’s citizenship, my birth certificate, my books, my accent, my clothes and everything about my life, I was not truly American. The depths of my mind were inhabited by visions and pictures, love songs, those Arabic mawwals moving like the passage of a breeze, the scent of violets, the fragrance of memories...filling the darkness with the smell of jasmine, rare incense, Arabic coffee with cardamom, almonds and cinnamon, mahaleb and nutmeg, grilled bread and chestnuts.”
The stark reality she encounters in Palestine upon her arrival immediately shatters all her dreams and she is left with feelings of sadness and estrangement and the search for her roots turns into a voyage of self-discovery. She soon finds out, however, that the people she meets are “still genuine like fresh fruit” and she realizes that the purpose of her trip is to become revived and to feel her heart again. Zayna is touched by the people’s genuine feelings and she compares their hearts to “offerings on the altar of selflessness.”
Khalifeh also offers a critical portrayal of the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990’s when the Gulf War and the Oslo Accords radically changed the political scene. Mazen, one of the main characters, personifies the failure of the system, a failure which he himself clearly denounces: “The revolution started and people followed the educated and the crooks, the successful and the failures. It led people to this stage. Before that. it guided them and squeezed the best out of them. It created an unqualified and lazy generation that slept till noon and stayed up till the morning, meeting on planes and in airports. That generation was living in a dream that had lost its luster and its myth. It had become the same thing it had once opposed”
Towards the end of the novel, Mazen, who once carried the hopes of a nation, admits that something has gone wrong and wonders how the Palestinians can face the tragedies and protect themselves. “Our people aren’t up to the challenge and neither are we up to the plan. No small spot in the world would give us hope or even the flicker of a light. What have we done? “
In this novel the female characters shine above their male counterparts. Khalifeh who has established herself as the leading female Palestinian novelist explores the lives of Palestinian women from the time of the Nakba - catastrophe, the name that Palestinians use to describe the events surrounding the loss of their homeland. The year of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 is seen by Palestinians as a disastrous year in their history which transformed them into refugees. From that time , many Palestinian women had to work when the men found themselves unable to provide for their families. A number of young women left to work abroad, especially in the Gulf states.
“The Inheritance” is particularly well translated. Aida Bamia, the translator, is professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is also the author of “The Graying of the Raven: The Cultural and Sociopolitical Significance of Algerian Folk Poetry.” Unlike many Arab novelists Khalifeh has used the Palestinian dialect extensively. The novel is also characterized by very long sentences and colloquial expressions which don’t always have an exact equivalent in English. Resisting the temptation to rewrite the novel, Bamia chose to stay close to the original language while preserving the intended meaning: “I have sought to reproduce the mood of the Arabic style. I have tried my best to recreate the high-spirited and sarcastic undercurrents that run through the novel and which are an important aspect of Sahar Khalifeh’s inimitable style,” she explained.
