“You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once – there has to be a limit” Edward Said
“The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality” Mahmoud Darwish

Introduction

Since the fall of Palestine to the Zionists in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), the political, geographic, and demographic map of Palestine has altered drastically. Due to the claimed inevitable “reconstruction and rebuilding” of Palestine, an estimated 780,000 Arab Palestinians were displaced and dispossessed of their lands due to usurpation policies imposed by the apartheid regime (Abu-Lughod 155). In further steps to satisfy their lust for power, land, and control, Israeli occupants started to implant their cultural seeds by eradicating symbols of Arab identity. They changed Arabic Palestinian names of towns, and even uprooted olive trees that serve as potent symbols of Palestinian “collective memory” (123 Jayyusi). Reacting to these Zionist strategies, Palestinian writers adopted literature of resistance to assert justice and defend Palestinian rights of self-determination and repossession of the land. Writers and artists of resistance, says Tahrir Hamdi, “have taken it upon themselves to bear witness to an unspeakable past, something which dominant History has been bent on silencing” (23). Literature of resistance has proven its effective role in challenging conspiracy and betrayal of the Palestinian cause while also preserving the nation’s identity by providing written evidence of its rich heritage and centuries-old history. Palestinian resistance literature writes Salam Mir, emerged out of Palestinian authors’ urgent need for “new literary modes” that enable them to “legitimate the cause of their people and their history” (Mir 110). In Poetry of Resistance in Occupied Palestine, Ghassan Kanafani asserts that Palestinian literature of resistance was born after a short period of silence that followed the 1948 war (3). Kanafani further argues that post-Nakba literary expression had to mark its independence as a unique type of production (Poetry 3). Due to the changing circumstances, independence from mainstream Arab literary movements became necessary for Palestinian literature, especially after being considered, for a long time, as one of its small fractions (Kanafani, Poetry 3). Exile resistance literature, Kanafani goes on, emerged during a time when the “backbone” of Palestinian Arabic literature weakened due to the “migration of a whole generation of Palestinian” authors (Poetry 3–4). This mode of writing broke traditional rules of technique (Kanafani, Poetry 3–4), and its language was mostly fueled by national fervor and a strong spirit of resilience.

Ghassan Kanafani’s provocatively entitled short story “The Forbidden Weapon”, completed in Beirut in 1961 and published in his collection of short stories The Land of Sad Oranges (1962), is one example of Palestinian resistance literature. The story revolves around an old Palestinian man and a rifle. Kanafani opts for metaphors and symbols while avoiding direct references to Zionist occupation or Palestinian resistance. Instead of providing clear-cut conclusions, the author challenges the reader’s consciousness to decide who is rightful to hold the weapon that is stolen twice in the story, and to whom it legitimately belongs. For such reasons, this research argues that resistance in “The Forbidden Weapon” is interpolated into the folds of the story by assembling a set of symbols that accentuate Palestinian cultural, geographical, and historical identity. The focal aim of this paper is to delve into Kanafani’s “Forbidden Weapon” to decipher the metaphorical depiction of the Palestinian cause and the different attempts of sapping Palestinian fight for freedom and land. This research proves the role of Kanafani’s resistance literature in the journey of repossession. It concurs with Barbara Harlow’s assurance of the function of literature and literary works as powerful tools in creating change. It assures that literature is a weapon as strong as other spheres of influence to the extent that might lead, as in Kanafani’s case, to assassination and the “actual death of the author” to silence resistance (Harlow 26). This story, as this research will demonstrate, proves the role of words in the decolonizing process. It shows how words can turn into effective “weapons” against Zionist occupation and attempts of denudating Palestinians from their land and collective identity.

1. Metaphors of Geography, Land, and Collective Memory

The question of Palestine is, at first place, a question of land in whose bosom the identity and heritage of a whole population find refuge. The Palestinian people’s connection to their land is a sacred one. For this reason, Zionist occupation targeted what could be termed as “Palestinian geography” and altered each cultural aspect related to the Palestinian land. As argued by Hania Nashef, once “the nation is lost, a person who originates from this nation likewise no longer exists” (58). It is for this reason indeed that Kanafani makes use of geographic metaphor as a signifier to tackle Palestinian displacement and dispossession. “The Forbidden Weapon” is set in a small village that functions as a metaphor for Palestine, and the population inhabiting the village refers metaphorically to the Palestinian population in the occupied lands. On the other hand, the foreign soldier who comes into the village with a gun on his shoulder and seeks residence there through some meetings and agreements with the village’s Mukhtar (headman) reflects Zionist occupation and the ongoing attempts to thrust settlers amid Palestinians to assure eventual annexation.

Abu-Ali, the protagonist of Kanafani’s story, decides to snatch the rifle from the foreign blue-eyed soldier for two purposes. First, he wishes to defend his house from the threat of howling hyenas that break into his olive grove in the silence of the night. On the other hand, Abu-Ali thinks that the soldier will “be like anyone else in the village, he would not be harmful without his rifle” (32). Noteworthy, Kanafani does not provide a specific name for the village. Instead, cultural symbols like the Kufia, Iqal, thowb, and the white ankle-tight trousers that Abu-Ali wears (32–33) serve as precise locators of the place as a Palestinian village. Kanafani intentionally avoids stating precise names to assure Palestinian unity of cause and self-determination. In addition to that, he uses further geographical descriptions to allude to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as two centers of Palestinian resistance. In a folkloric narrative tone, the author writes that Abu-Ali needs the rifle to defend his family and his house that serves as:

“The first house in the village. It is located on the western border of the village, at the bottom of a hill planted with olive trees. It was there, as long as people can remember. Before the birth of Abu-Ali himself. Even before the birth of his grandfather. They inherited the house one after the other, in total silence and order. And along with it, they inherited all those duties that have stuck to the house, as long as people can remember.” (“Forbidden” 37)

The quoted lines, despite the absence of direct reference to Palestinian West Bank or Gaza Strip, form an indirect allusion to the rightful possession of Palestinian land. Kanafani’s description of Abu-Ali’s house, its location, and the fact that it was possessed by Abu-Ali’s family for a period longer than anyone could remember, is a metaphor through which the author stands against Zionist usurpation of Palestinian lands. Kanafani here states that Abu-Ali’s possession of the house is a matter of common sense, an axiomatic truth that cannot be denied. Its rootedness in the memory of the villagers makes that argument even stronger. As noted by memory theorist Allan Baddelley, memory has a powerful link to “the capacity of people to recollect their lives” (qtd. in Assink and Schroots 4). Memory in Kanafani’s story stands firmly against forgetfulness of Palestinian rightful possession of a land with which they have been associated for thousands of years. In this sense, memory, quoting Ahmad Qabaha’s words, “functions as the antithesis of nonentity and forgetfulness, or even compromise” (77). Abu-Ali’s house does not only exist in the memory of its owner but has become a part of the collective memory of a village that stands as a minimized metaphor for Palestine as a whole.

Juliane Hammer and Helena Schulz state that collective memory in nationalist discourses is “intimately connected to place and geography” and that one example of this manifestation is witnessed in Palestinian “memories of orange groves and olive trees” (15). In fact, Kanafani in “The Forbidden Weapon” carefully uses olive trees as metaphors of resistance. The author refers to them as long-living symbols of Palestinian identity. John Docker, in his book The Origins of Violence: Religion, history and genocide, sheds light on the Israeli Ilan Pappe and his coinage of the term “memoricide” (128). This term stands for the non-stop waves of identity destruction. Pappe, focusing on the need to eradicate Palestinian culture and implanting a total Israeli nation, defines memoricide as “the erasure of the history of one people in order to write that of another people’s over it” (qtd. in Docker). History’s destruction widens to touch olive trees as long-living symbols of Palestinian existence.

In the story under discussion, Kanafani includes the olive tree as a cultural, natural, and historical weapon against memoricide and forgetfulness. Olive trees in Kanafani’s story metaphorically talk to Zionist agents, telling them that each tree will stand as a deeply rooted witness to the crimes of usurpation and assassination of Palestinian life. The author proves that the relationship that gathers the “olive tree and the Palestinian is very symbolic” in Palestinian literature of resistance (Nashef 61). In this type of literature, the tree’s “longevity and healing properties of its oil symbolize eternity. Its products provide sustenance” (Nashef 61). Thus, the olive grove near Abu-Ali’s house reflects the strong physical and spiritual attachment of the Palestinians to their land. Despite the absence of actual weapons and support, Abu-Ali uses his ax to scare the howling hyenas as they attempt to break into his olive grove. By protecting his trees, Abu-Ali also protects his land and all the memories linked to it.

2. Archetypal Use of Characters

In a chapter entitled “Fictional Characters as Social Metaphors,” Noël Carroll defines metaphor as a “figurative device for calling attention to certain aspects of its target domain” (394). In Kanafani’s “The Forbidden Weapon,” this truth is beyond dispute. The author imagines a number of characters who serve as symbolic representations of specific social, cultural, and political types. Kanafani turns people involved in the question of Palestine, with their numerous roles, functions, and types, into a number of villagers, while reshaping Israeli soldiers through the character of the foreign soldier who insists on settling in the village. As asserted by Carroll, a writer’s fictional characters mostly supply the readers, and the author, with references to their “cultural memories” and enable them to “identify and to mark various social types” that help the reader understand the “social environment” (394). In the same vein, Kanafani’s characters provide insight into people of different roles and “types,” ones included in the Palestinian-Israeli war in different ways.

Abu-Ali, the simple old villager, is the main character. He serves as a signifier for the persistent and brave Palestinian freedom fighter. Abu-Ali decides to steal the soldier’s rifle as soon as the crowded villagers inform him that the foreign soldier came once more to seek permission to settle in their village. According to him, this action will protect his family from the hyenas that surround his house each night, and will protect the villagers from any possible attack from the soldier as well. Abu-Ali represents self-sacrifice to obtain freedom, independence, and repossession. As the story goes on, Kanafani reveals that Abu-Ali never arrived at his house. At the same time, the villagers begin to spread numerous rumors concerning his destiny, while the truth is only known to the reader. Two men interrupted Abu-Ali while he was running towards his house. The old man then discovers that the two “ghosts” are Farouk and Abdu-Allah who threaten to “strangle” him if he refuses to give them the rifle. Abu-Ali is extremely shocked to see the two men together due to his knowledge of their indescribable hatred for one another. At that moment, he keeps repeating the words “I know who you are” (“Forbidden” 41–42) while holding the rifle tight to his chest, resisting their attempts to steal it. Eventually, Abu-Ali finds himself in the middle of two threats: the two villagers on one side, and the approaching voices of the soldier and his company on the other. Despite his warning to the two men that unless they release him, they “will all die” (“Forbidden” 42), the two men keep holding his arm and the back of his neck with robust hands. At this point, Abu-Ali becomes extremely:

“Exhausted, and his fear worsened his exhaustion while the fists tightened on his neck and arm mercilessly. Despite all that pain, he suddenly recognized that the road he was taking is not the one leading to his house. He tried to look back, but the man’s fist did not allow it to happen. He was totally drained of any strength. The wounded coughs that emanated from the deepest parts of his lung almost uprooted it and threw it out of his chest and into the ground. No, this is not the road to his house! He tried to elude or stop for a while, but the pain caused by the man’s hands became even fiercer, sharper, and wilder. At that point, he felt, while tears almost dropped from his eyes, that there is absolutely no escape.” (“Forbidden” 43)

The lines quoted above form the closing part of the story. Kanafani symbolizes the strength, courage, and insistence of Palestinian freedom fighters. Abu-Ali holds the rifle close to his heart, despite his old age, worsening health, the two villagers’ betrayal, and the foreign soldier following him. The representation of Abu-Ali’s multilayered fight recalls the words of Mia Swart who states that “Advocates for Palestinian sovereignty and human rights need to fight on different fronts” (509). Not only that, the author makes use of a further metaphor that stands in opposition to Abu-Ali’s bravery. Abdu-Allah and Farouk overcome their hatred for the sake of dispossessing Abu-Ali of the rifle. Betrayal extends also to include the village’s Mukhtar (headman) who welcomes foreign intruders. Instead of supporting Abu-Ali for the sake of achieving victory and independence for the village, the villagers and their leader (Mukhtar) rather welcome foreign intruders and fail to achieve unity of cause, again alluding to another episode of Arab history and its relation to the Palestinian cause. “The Forbidden Weapon” was written in 1961. During the same year, history witnessed the failure of Arab unity due to the collapse of the Egyptian-Syrian union (Podeh 141), an event that destroyed much of the Palestinian hope for freedom, and one that Kanafani reflects through fictitious lenses.

In addition to the failure of unity, Kanafani also uses Abdu-Allah and Farouk to draw attention to betrayal and conspiracy and highlight their consequences on Palestinian resistance. When the reader first encounters the two characters, they stand close to each other, shouting Abu-Ali’s name and encouraging him to steal the rifle from the foreign soldier (“Forbidden” 32). They assure him that he “can do it”, “it will be yours”, and that he can “count on [them]” to block the soldier’s path (“Forbidden” 32–33). On the other hand, the two of them show another attitude as soon as Abu-Ali takes the rifle and runs towards his house. Put this way, Kanafani challenges the reader to conclude or guess what Abdu-Allah and Farouk signify in real settings. The author here refers to conspiracy and betrayal of the Palestinian cause, not only by certain people inside Palestine who pretend to support the cause but secretly work against it, but also by Arab leaders whose actions are mere reflections of Israeli will. This concern is critically reflected by critic Atif Yusuf who declares in his book The Arabs on the Brink of the Grave that “some Arab collaborators with Israel promulgated the notion that the Palestinian national rights are biblically unfounded … Many Arab regimes crushed some Palestinian freedom fighters as if they were venomous snakes” (89). On the other hand, Abu-Ali’s endurance is similar to what Yusuf describes when he says that Palestinian freedom fighters have “endured the Israeli persecutions with patience and stern determination to resist occupation” (89). Abu-Ali, despite his illness and old age, as well as the betrayal of Abdu-Allah, Farouk, and the Mukhtar as the leader who represents the conspiracy practiced by certain “Arab tyrannical regimes” (Yusuf 89), stands firm and fights for his house and village.

In addition to the metaphorical use of Abu-Ali, Abdu-Allah, Farouk, and the Mukhtar, Kanafani includes Abu-Ali’s family to reflect the oppressed Palestinian population. The disappearance and supposed death of Abu-Ali leave his family alone and without protection. Um-Ali refers to Palestinian women and their vital role in resistance. She supports her husband’s mission against colonization and usurpation. Trying to protect her children, Um-Ali sends them to the village, away from the hyenas that multiplied and became even more furious in the absence of Abu-Ali. She is the protective mother who sacrifices her life to protect her children. At the same time, she resembles what Yusuf describes as a woman of “ardent piety and unflinching courage in advancing the justice” of the Palestinian cause (102). Despite her fear, loneliness, and the upheaving threat of the hyenas, she insists on staying in her house. She “remained there, sobbing for her husband and crying over her fate. The hyenas multiplied each night and circled the house, sending sharp howls into the village’s silence, and terrifying Um-Ali’s heart” (“Forbidden” 38). Like any Palestinian woman, Um-Ali covers her husband’s absence and fights for her house against the animalistic attacks. Simultaneously, her children represent the broken hope of oppressed Palestinian people who were scattered around different countries and lands after the 1948 Palestinian exodus. Nonetheless, Kanafani does not openly declare Abu-Ali’s death at the end of the story. He refuses to declare the death of the freedom fighter, even fictitiously. This action represents a glimpse of hope in Palestinian return. Um-Ali remains in her house and never allows the hyenas to conquer it. Abu-Ali’s children will grow to gain the strength of youth and will eventually come back to stand against the threat of the hyenas. In this sense, one recalls Said’s words when he says that “what matters is that they are entitled to return, as international laws stipulate, as numerous United Nations resolutions have averred, and as they themselves have willed” (“Question” 70). Betrayal is a matter of fact, but resistance is also a fact that will force the occupants out of their lands.

As already stated, the threat posed by hyenas in Kanafani’s story stands in opposition to Abu-Ali and his family’s resistance. The author uses animal imagery to reflect Zionist occupation. In an article entitled “On Animal Symbolism,” Marie Elizabeth Motte-Florac asserts that the animal is a living being of the exterior world, which can be seen and taken as a model (morphologically or dynamically, behaviorally) (63–64). Literature has been using animals as metaphors to represent types of behaviors and actions related to certain categories of people. Similarly, Kanafani does not directly allude to Zionist occupation or colonialism. His text urges, and even challenges the reader to draw conclusions and create logical associations that stem from the author’s political activism and his nature as one of the prominent authors of Palestinian literature of resistance, a type of literature that is considered a cradle of symbolism and metaphor. In “The Forbidden Weapon,” hyenas constantly threaten Abu-Ali’s house and family. This threat becomes even more dangerous after the disappearance of Abu-Ali with the rifle. The numbers of hyenas multiplied each night as they circled the house, sending sharp howls into the village’s silence, and terrifying Um-Ali’s heart (38). Surely, Kanafani’s use of hyenas, specifically, to reflect the Zionist threat is not mere coincidence but is intentionally used because of certain characteristics and behaviors of these animals.

In certain communities, such as West African folklore, hyenas are considered as symbols of immorality, dirty habits, and negating normal activities and common sense (Glickman 503). The hyena is an animal generally related to betrayal and deceit in many cultures due to its claimed ability to change gender through time, a matter that makes it untruthful and untrustworthy (Huggoson 85). Basing his metaphor on the same idea, Kanafani uses hyenas to refer to Israeli attempts to dispossess Palestinians of their land. They disappear in daytime and appear at night, so their darkness serves as a cover for their crimes. Like the soldier who first begs for admission into the village, they turn into an actual threat as soon as the protector of the house and village disappears.

4. Media, Conspiracy, and Masked Truths

Political leaning to certain sides and biases of media coverage are additional issues that Kanafani symbolically tackles in “The Forbidden Weapon.” In a chapter entitled “Influencing the Media,” Hilary Aked discusses what she describes as “anti-Palestinian bias media” that bases its arguments on the long-living “anti-Semitic” theme (176). Aked states that the media is a “hotly contested field,” through which different actors, including pro-Israeli actors, do, of course, seek to exert influence. The media plays a critically important role in framing how Israel/Palestine is understood. In Kanafani’s story, the role of media in forming public opinion is presented by using several villagers as agents who spread false rumors. The villagers, including the headman and other leading characters, gather in the headman’s office daily to discuss possible reasons for Abu-Ali’s absence. This is seen when Kanafani writes that in “closed Diwans (Offices), in Mukhtar’s house, questions about Abu-Ali are raised: where did he go? What happened to him? Did he go to another village? Did he sell the rifle and marry another woman using the money? Or was he secretly killed and buried?” Not a single villager provides any support to Abu-Ali’s wife, and no one supports or tries to protect his children who are scattered around different parts of the village. Moreover, no actual investigation of Abu-Ali’s mysterious disappearance is made. The villagers soon forget Abu-Ali’s heroic actions and launch a series of rumors and false accusations against him. They even accuse him of abandoning the mission of protecting the village for the sake of marrying another woman in a different village where no one knows him. In this specific part of the story, the reader is invited to rethink the supremacy of the media through the representation of the villagers as agents of news reports. The story refutes and challenges the passive acceptance of Israeli victimhood that is usually being injected into the veins of world audiences. While hyenas are devouring Abu-Ali’s house, people mostly accuse him of betrayal and greed. The village’s headman even agrees that the foreign soldier’s actions are an unacceptable form of terror and accompanies the soldier to chase Abu-Ali. In this context, Kanafani’s metaphoric presentation of the issue resembles the words of Edward Said in his introduction to “Blaming the Victims.” Said writes that the place of Palestinians in public locales and their attempts to regain connection with their land in western, and mostly American “television screen, the daily newspaper, the commercial film,” shrinks to “a few stereotypes – mad Islamic zealot, the gratuitously violent killer of innocents, the desperately irrational and savage primitive” (“Introduction” 3). In this sense, as seen in Kanafani’s work, western media, as the primary purveyor of information, ignores the usurpation practiced against Palestinians and the staggering loss of Palestinian lands. World opinion is rather led by systematic favoritism that “instructs” receivers of information to sympathize with colonial agents. Again, the role of authority as presented through the character of the Mukhtar plays an important role in shaping and even ruling common people’s perception of things. The rumors and conclusions made about Abu-Ali initially start from the Mukhtar, who, despite his knowledge of Abu-Ali’s innocence, does not attempt to prove it. The Mukhtar plays the role of authority that not only restricts the role of media but also instructs it to take certain sides. Once more, Kanafani’s story sees eye to eye with Said’s words when he asserts that authority is both instrumental and persuasive and that it has a status that establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces (Orientalism 19–20). In this sense, Said, like Kanafani, shows that authority and power are not free from manipulating and constructing public opinion that circulates and reproduces to the extent of becoming generally acknowledged truths. In the same book, Said expresses his belief that history is written by power and that power could, in no time, rewrite it and remake it. Throughout this process, history takes sides with the powerful who can impose its shapes and disfigure realities (Orientalism XIV). The strategic formation of ideas is exposed through the creation of characters and actions that juxtapose the real world with fictitious creation to express biases of media presentation.

Conclusion

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once said, “The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation” (109). Literature, as a potent tool of expression, possesses the remarkable ability to change world perception and unveil harsh realities of violence, usurpation, and colonization of minds and lands. Similarly, Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Forbidden Weapon” is a literary text that prevents “the decline of a nation” by asserting Palestinian identity and celebrating the unstoppable fight for freedom and agency. Through poignant narrative, compelling storytelling, and the power of metaphorical symbolism, Kanafani supports the Palestinian cause, celebrates the nation’s identity, and exposes tyranny, conspiracy, and usurpation. His story crafts characters and designs a plot that resonates with readers and challenges their consciousness to draw fair conclusions and reasonable links with the real world. Serving as an example of Palestinian literature of resistance, “The Forbidden Weapon” sheds light on the plight of the oppressed while simultaneously asserting Palestinian bravery, power, resilience, and unwavering belief in the cause of a nation. As this research has shown, Kanafani’s story uses fiction and metaphor as symbolic representations of a land and its history, serving as a forceful ally in the struggle for justice. It voices the concerns, struggles, hopes, and bravery of a population that mainstream media coverage has attempted to silence since 1948, and even before.