4.5 stars
Ghassan Kanafani, the author, was killed by a car bomb. He was a journalist who wrote for several newspapers before starting a magazine called Al-Hadaf in 1969.
He believed that there would be no solution to the problem in Palestine unless the Arab world had a social revolution.

Men in the Sun, 5 stars
Three Palestinian men are trying to make their way from a refugee camp in Iraq to Kuwait, in order to get jobs to support their families. One is an old man, one is a young man, just dropping out of school, and the other is of marrying age.
Abu Qais, the older of the three, recalls a teacher from the their village, Ustaz Selim, who had died before the Jews kicked them out of their land:
"... The mercy of God be upon you, ustaz selim, the mercy of God be upon you. God was certainly good to you when he made you die one night before The wretched village fell into the hands of the jews. One night only. O god, is there any Divine favor greater than that? It is true that the men were too busy to bury you and honor you and your death. But all the same you stayed there. You stayed there. You saved yourself humiliation and wretchedness, and you preserved your old age from shame. The mercy of God be upon you, Ustaz Selim. If you had lived, if you had been drowned by poverty as I have, I wonder if you would have done what I am doing now. Would you have been willing to carry all your years on your shoulders and flee across the desert to Kuwait to find a crust of bread?"
Marwan is the young man of the group. His father left his mother and their family to go live with a young woman who was given a house by a charity group. Her left leg had been blown off. Now his family is destitute without any support, which is why he wants to go work in the Kuwait oil fields.
"Yet he couldn't hate his father so much, for the simple reason that his father still loved them all. Marwan had been completely convinced of that when he went to say goodbye to his father before he left. He did not tell his mother that he was going to shafiqa's house, or she would have been beside herself. His father said to him there:
'you know that I have no choice in the matter. It is something that has been decreed for us since the beginning of creation.'
Shafiqa said:
'we suggested to your mother that she should come and live here but she didn't agree. What more do you want us to do?' "

There are many smugglers in Basra, and most of them charge 15 dinars ($49.38). they have heard that the guides will leave them on the road, and tell them to walk the rest of the way by themselves. They show them the lights in the distance, saying that they are the lights of Kuwait. But when they get near, they see they are a village of Bedouins.
The sun is a blazing torrent of fire that pours down on anyone attempting this desert crossing.
It is august, and Google reports that the desert near Kuwait can get up to 130° f.
Abul Khaizuran drives a water tanker. He meets with the men, and offers to smuggle them inside the water tanker for 10 dinars. They will ride on top of the truck, and one can sit inside with the driver, But when they get near to the checkpoints, they will need to climb inside of the empty water tanker. It will only take Abul Khaizuran 7 minutes, tops, to go inside, get the papers signed, jump back in the truck, drive a little ways, and let them out of the water tanker.
But on the second checkpoint, the officials start teasing Abul Khaizuran about spending a night with a sex worker, and end up taking 36 minutes before he can get his papers signed and run back to the truck, start it up and, as soon as he gets past a little hill, stops and opens the cover of the water tanker.
Guess what Abul Khaizuran finds when he opens the tanker?

From a footnote to the story:
"Those who have seen the filmed version of the novella, Al-Makhdûcûn (The Deceived, 1972), will realize that the plot has been altered, so that the three Palestinians who in the book die in silence are shown in the film beating on the walls of their hiding place as they suffocate, to attract the attention of those outside. A film similar to The novella and its denouement would have appeared glaringly incongruous at a time when the resistance movements were established."

The Sad Oranges, 4 stars
The story recounts the life of a family, living in palestine, who had a large orange orchard. One night Jews came and they had to quickly load up their household onto a truck. They stopped by the side of the road to buy some oranges from a peasant standing there.
As The story goes the oranges would shrivel up if a change occurred and they were watered by a strange hand.
The family was destroyed by the change.

If You Were a Horse.. , 2 stars
A superstition about a creature born with a blood-stain birthmark on its side causes self-fulfilling deaths

A Hand in the Grave, 3 stars
A Turkish peasant has the last laugh when a couple of medical students try to rob a skeleton from his "graveyard."

Umm Saad, 3 stars
A mother's son joins the Arab guerillas, who fight against the israelis, and she's worried about him.
When her son goes off to be a soldier, Umm Ssad wants to follow him.
" 'God bless them all.' She falls silent for a moment, then turned to face me. 'Do you think he'd be pleased if I went to see him? I can save the money for the journey, and get there in 2 days.' She remembered something and finished off: 'do you know something? children are slavery. If I didn't have these two children, I'd have followed him. I'd have lived there with him. In a tent, yes, a tent and a refugee camp is quite different from one in a guerilla base. I would have lived with them, cooked for them, done all I could for them. But children are slavery.' "
I wish I could read the whole novel that this is an excerpt from.

The Falcon, 4 stars
This is a beautiful story about a man who had a falcon, who helped him to hunt gazelles. One day the falcon was hunting a gazelle, but it would not attack it. Instead, they became friends.

Letter from Gaza, 4 stars
So sad, this story, about a man whose friend gets a job teaching in a California university, and he wants his friend to join him there. But he decides to stay with his beloved Gaza. The story is a letter to his friend, pleading with him to come back to Gaza.


( )

I really wanted to read and enjoy this book, but it just didn't do it for me. I gave it four stars because there was no way to review without rating it and I wanted my rating to have as little effect as possible, while still giving my thoughts on a book I didn't finish. It sounds like a great book for anyone who already has a good understanding of the culture, but so much was lost on me. I thoroughly enjoy reading books about other cultures and I particularly wanted to learn more about Palestinian life, so was disappointed, especially since my Goodreads recommendations are usually spot-on. ( )

A great, but small, collection of short stories reflecting on the struggle of the Palestinian people through the partition and the creation of the state of Israel. The works in themselves are not political, but show the hardships and the struggle in a harsh land. The people are beat but not beaten. There is still a pride and memory of a greater past. Kanafani presents a look at a culture that is often misunderstood or misrepresented in American culture.

Kanafani played a role in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and was described as 'the commando who never fired a gun' His work and personal non-violence in conflict put him in the same league as Albert Camus. Kanafani and his niece were killed in a car bomb explosion on July 8, 1972. The assassination was widely believed to be a retaliation for the Lod airport massacre a few days prior. ( )

Debo decir que esta calificación alta se debe al espíritu tan humano de los relatos reunidos en este volumen, y no por su traducción (la de Hilary Kilpatrick) que a veces peca de plana y evidente.
En estos tiempos extraños, este libro es una gran herramienta para entender el drama humano de la migración, de cómo el hambre y la pobreza pueden diezmar el espíritu de un pueblo.

Eso sí, esta edición es horrenda. La traducción de Kilpatrick, en cuanto a matices y expresividad, deja bastante que desear, sobre todo si la comparamos con la espléndida versión al español hecha por María Rosa de Madariaga. Además, la tipografía es minúscula, tanto así que hace cansado leer textos de poca extensión.

En fin, lo recomiendo mucho. El problema es que, al menos la versión española, es difícil de conseguir en físico. Por fortuna, la embajada de Palestina en Argentina subió a su portal varios textos de Kanafani en pdf, incluyendo este. Les dejo el link aquí abajo, por si se interesan por este gran autor palestino:

http://www.palestina.int.ar/ghassan-kanafani-la-escritura-como-resistencia/ ( )

Tragic.
This is a difficult book to review because I'm not sure if the confusion I felt while reading this was due to the author's writing, or translator errors. There were several times where I wasn't sure which character was being referred to and even a re-read didn't always clarify the question. Considering the blurb above says "In the unsparing clarity of his writing", I suspect this was caused by the translation.

Ignoring the issues I had, this was an interesting read, very close to the bone at times. Life was cheap, yet each of these characters is close to our hearts and we're not ready to part with them.
The 'Men in the Sun' are unfortunate Palestinians, forced from their country and without means to help their families. They take the ultimate risk and join the floods of immigrants to Kuwait, where they believe that work and riches await them. The journey is treacherous and they must put their lives in the hands of strangers. Three such men travelling on the roof of a tanker give rise to the title.

'Men in the Sun' is the main story, but there are some shorter stories towards the end, along a similar vein.
Books like these are important for raising awareness; no-one should have to suffer such deprivations because another people has taken that which was not theirs.
I wish I could give four stars but sadly, the confusion marred an otherwise fascinating read. ( )