Javed 1 Talha Javed Professor Cagidemetrio 13th March 2015 Paper 2 Psychological Subtexts in Kanafani’s Men in the Sun Ghassan Kanafani’s novel, Rijal fi al-Shams, translated by Kilpatrick as Men in the Sun, is a work that has a realist, relatively straightforward storyline but is deeply complex in its various interpretations and profound symbolism. Though the text is brief, it conveys influential messages and thus it is renowned as an exemplar of Palestinian fiction, and considered “among the best in Arabic literature” (Kilpatrick 12). Through its plot, Men in the Sun illustrates the plight of Palestinians and the psychological subtexts of the novel act as focal points of Kanafani’s writing. Through analysis of symbolism and several distinctive interpretations of the story, this paper seeks to underscore the important subtexts related with the journey of the characters that are embedded within Men in the Sun. The story of Men in the Sun presents a disaster that ends with three tragic deaths. It describes an incomplete journey in which three men attempt to cross the desert between Basra and Kuwait. The three men are from different generations: the old man Abu Qais and the young man Asaad and the young boy Marwan. Travelling from the refugee camps, where the three men stay, to Kuwait is a central motivation for the main characters who are smuggled in a water tanker. These three men moved to Basra to cross the frontier into Kuwait, with the help of a guide. The main aim of this journey is to search for a better life free from the bitterness of the past and bright with promises for a secure future. Therefore, crossing Shatt al-Arab to Kuwait is their ambition. In one scene, Abu Qias imagines Kuwait. He says, “On the other side of this

Javed 2 Shatt al-Arab, just the other side, were all the things he [Abu Qais] had been deprived of. Over there was Kuwait. What only lived in his mind as a dream and a fantasy existed there” (Kanafani 25) Clearly, Kuwait for the three men is the only salvation from their poverty and bad situations. They believe that they will find the luxuries that they are deprived of in their homeland. Thus, the journey that the three protagonists undertake is representative of the search for identity and the theme of escape. This is highlighted by the passage, “The huge lorry was carrying them along the road, together with their dreams, their families, their hopes and ambitions, their misery and despair, their strength and weakness, their past and future, as if it were pushing against the immense door to a new, unknown destiny” (Kanafani 63). Although this passage separates the reader from the individual stories of each character, it further highlights the collective hardships and shared aspirations of the men. These dreams represent everything they live for and everything their families mean to them. Their aim is to bring an end to their poverty, since each has been plucked from his roots, and to achieve economic stability, needs which are universal. Even Abu Khaizuran's "big wish" is "to rest in the shade" after he collects some money (Kanafani 40). The shade, indeed, doesn't appear throughout the whole text except as a wish, a hope, and a nice word uttered by all of them; three generations that have been deprived of the shade, and, ironically, all of them head towards a country where there is not even a single tree, a fact which surprises Abu Qais, the old farmer. In their attempt to cross the borders, the three men pass through very hard times. They are forced to hide in a water tank in the heat of August summer. Kanafani chooses the tank as a symbol to signify the effect of the imposing borders on the Palestinians. The tanker has very tight borders with a very limited space, which symbolizes the borders that are enforced upon them. Similarly, Kanafani portrays the borders as a violent space and a place of death. The borders for him mean exile, that is, death

Javed 3 and humiliation. Throughout the journey, the smuggled men notice the dead bodies of men who previously tried to cross the borders, but lost their lives in the heat of the desert. This is even prominent in how Abul Khazuran tells the stories of men who were trying to reach Kuwait, “Stories of men who became like dogs as they looked for one drop of water to moisten their cracked tongues with” (Kanafani 55). The portrayal of the border adds to the overall feeling of the journey being an impending disaster. From the beginning of the novel, everything indicates that the passengers are heading towards a dark destiny. This leads to the interpretations of the story that “pursuing a dream far from one’s country can only lead to tragedy,” a message that is foreshadowed multiple times. Even the opening scene of the novel refers to death indirectly, “Abu Qais rested on the damp ground, and the earth began to throb under him with tired heartbeats, which trembled through the grains of sand and penetrated the cells of his body…there was one black bird circling high up” (Kanafani 21-22). This animal is a bad omen in itself but in Arabic, the association Abu Qais makes with the black bird is even stronger. The bird is a crow, which symbolizes estrangement and death. A similar scene serves as the conclusion to the story, providing an eerie resonance and an uncanny repetition that gives the novel a circular pattern. This form further reinforces the hopelessness evidenced by the story’s gloomy ending. In “Sun and Shade” the words, “the lorry traveled on over the burning earth” are repeated four times, each with a different descriptor (Kanafani 63-64). In this situation, repetition is used to accentuate the monotony of the journey and the feeling of getting nowhere despite traveling forward on the road. A second foretelling moment is when the men come out of the tank after the first border crossing when “[Assad’s] trousers were soaked with sweat, and his chest, which had marks left by rust, looked as though it were spattered with blood.” However, the men do not die a violent

Javed 4 death, and so Kanafani amends this foreshadow saying, “no one answered him [Abul Khaizuran]. His gaze wandered over their faces, which seemed to him yellow and mummified. If Marwan’s chest had not been rising and falling and Abu Qais’s breathing an audible whistle, he would have thought they were dead” (Kanafani 61). While at the time, Abul Khaizuran’s observations simply provide insight for the reader to understand how intolerable it is to hide in a metal tank in the August heat, Kanafani’s word choice is very powerful. There are many interpretations of the ending of Men in the Sun. The novel ends with a series of questions, or rather the repetition of the same question; “The thought slipped from his [Abul Khaizuran’s] mind and ran onto his tongue: ‘Why didn’t they knock on the sides of the tank?’…‘Why didn’t you knock on the sides of the tank? Why didn’t you say anything? Why?’ The desert suddenly began to send back the echo: ‘Why didn’t you knock on the sides of the tank? Why didn’t you bang the sides of the tank? Why? Why? Why?’ ” (Kanafani 74). These questions essentially indicate the longing for justice and dignity, since one's original land is a precondition for a decent life, free from alienation and exploitation. The intimate relationship between the Palestinians, especially peasants, and the land makes their separation tragic. Land is much more than just property. It is a mirror, an identity and a belonging. Land, in Abu Qais's memory, is not mere landscape or a geographical space; it is a living being that has a "heart"; that is, land is a mirror of the human being, in as much as the human is a mirror of the land. Thus, this portrayal of land and the conclusion of the novel itself help showcase Kanafani’s brilliant use of symbolism in his novel and highlight the importance of the various subtexts present in the novel.

Javed 5 Works Cited: 1. Kanafani, Ghassan. Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories. Trans. Hilary Kilpatrick. Lynne Rienner Pub, 1998. Print.