Israeli Perspective: Etgar Keret

DATE August 2, 2006 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Israeli writer Etgar Keret discusses Middle East
politics
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

On today's show we're going to hear from an Israeli writer and a Palestinian
writer who grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon. They won't be fighting or
debating. They're friends. A couple of years ago, they even collaborated on
a book called "Gaza Blues." We'll hear from Samir el-Youssef in the second
half of the show. First Etgar Keret, who was described in The New York Times
as the most famous young writer in Israel. The author of that article, Nancy
Updike, wrote, "Keret's fame is surprising even to himself, since his
characters possess none of the qualities on which Israelis usually pride
themselves: toughness, decisiveness and physical courage."

Keret has won Israel's Prime Minister's Award for literature and the Israeli
equivalent of an Oscar for a film he helped write and direct. Keret was born
in 1967, the same year that Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and
the Golan Heights. He lives in Tel Aviv and went to a studio there yesterday
to record our interview.

I asked him about his take on the war.

Mr. ETGAR KERET: Well, the strange thing about the war is that both sides
are really saying it's very, very temporary. We keep fighting just so we have
a better kind of negotiating position the moment that we have to sit to the
desk and decide things. So you can't help thinking that, you know, that this
war is going to take another couple of weeks or maybe a month, maybe hundreds
or maybe thousands of people will die from both sides just so somebody will
see that they have an upper hand in the negotiation and they can get, I don't
know, a little bit more. And it gives you that feeling because usually the
idea about war is it doesn't matter what they really are, if you have always
this feeling that it's kind of this sense of them being crucial, you know,
that you're fighting. You never know when it's going to end. You know,
you're fighting just so people won't kill you. And here this kind of war
that's just basically everybody is saying, `OK, you know, Hezbollah knows it
won't be destroyed completely. And Lebanon knows it won't be destroyed
completely. Israel knows that it won't be conquered.' Just a question, you
know, will they regain a little bit more by killing somebody who is important
in their organization? Will they gain a little bit more by shooting a missile
on Tel Aviv. So it's a little bit like a kind of game of chess, you know, in
which people are dying so you can't help...(unintelligible)...to exact things
to be decided. And like now, you know, why wait for more people to die?

GROSS: What is it like for you to watch television and see the amount of
destruction that the Israeli forces are carrying out on Lebanon and seeing,
you know, seeing civilians and children getting--you know, bodies getting
carried out of homes that have been destroyed? Like, what impact does that
have on you knowing both that you're under attack by Hezbollah, but at the
same time the Israeli military is responsible for a lot of destruction and
death in Lebanon?

Mr. KERET: It is a horrible feeling. And, you know, you can't help asking
yourself, you know, if any of this is necessary, you know. And I said to a
friend today, `Did you know that in the last few days I heard that the Israeli
Army kept apologizing, you know, for unnecessary attacks?' And I hope that
they're better at fighting than apologizing because they're not very good at
sincere apologies. They're only serious when people talk about this bomb
hitting that or the other. They seem to be more concerned about the fact that
they won't seem as good air force as they were before than they're really
concerned about the deaths. And they really--and actually, when you see
Hezbollah, you know, reacting to those deaths, they react to it as if it's
some sort of a victory. Those unnecessary deaths it seems to them like a good
thing happening because it's a good turn for them. And just that, you know,
you see bodies of dead children and everybody is kind of trying to exploit
them to their own needs, you know, and nobody really sees them for what they
are. There is something very, very cynical and painful in that.

GROSS: You live in Tel Aviv, which is within range of some of Hezbollah's
missiles. Do you feel vulnerable there?

Mr. KERET: Look, I felt as vulnerable before the war knowing that I can have
coffee in a coffee place and a suicide bomber would explode next to me. It's
not as if it were a time of quiet around here. Living in this country since I
was a child, I always felt vulnerable. You know, it's not--and basically
right now, I would say statistically it may be one of the safest times than
the past in Tel Aviv because there weren't any suicide attacks here for a long
time. The missiles didn't hit us yet. And even if a missile hit us, you
know, it doesn't kill more people than a suicide bomber does.

GROSS: You have a very interesting family. You know, your parents are
Holocaust survivors. Your sister is ultra-Orthodox and used to live in a
settlement. Your brother was a founder of the Legalize Marijuana Party in
Israel. I didn't even know there was such a party. And I'm wondering if you
all have similar or conflicting views about the war now.

Mr. KERET: Well, I think me and my brother would feel basically the same,
you know. My brother, except for forming the Legalize Marijuana Movement, was
very active left-wing activist. You know, my sister's real thing is really
different. She's not in any way pro-war. Actually, she doesn't really
acknowledge the existence of the state of Israel, basically being extremely
ultra-Orthodox. I mean, she has a family. She has 11 children. And the way
that she perceives things is really the conflict doesn't exist for her or in
any sense, it isn't her country. And all the actions, you know, missiles
falling or things going around, has to do with the fact that people aren't
being religious, and they don't do what they're supposed to do, according to
the Jewish religion. So you can't really have a political argument with her.

GROSS: I don't understand why she doesn't see Israel as her country.

Mr. KERET: Oh, it's easy because, you know, she has--her family still
doesn't eat kosher, you know. And people here...

GROSS: I...

Mr. KERET: ...who decide things in a democrat way, she doesn't believe we're
in a democracy. She really believes in the way of the Bible. And actually, I
must say that for my sister, I loved a lot and I learned a lot from, I really
understood a lot of things, but I struggle with the Hamas and the Hezbollah
because many people like to see those struggles as national struggles, but
they're actually kind of a religious war. And when they is a war of religion
and not a war of nations, all the laws are different. The narratives are
different, anthology is different. The way that people fight against you is
different. And I think that many times in the Western world when we talk
about people who are religious fundamentalists, we like to kind of colonialize
and...(unintelligible)...that they have the same values that we have, and that
if they do anything, they would do it according to our psychology.

For example, if somebody does a suicide bombing, he has to be depressed or in
a bad situation. But, you know, speaking to my sister or other people who are
extremely religious, death really is seen in another way. It's not
necessarily seen as a bad thing, you know. So, basically, if you're a
religious fundamentalist and you blow up somewhere, you could be in a very,
very good mood, you know? Having very wonderful life. But actually because
you serve a purpose, you want to forward this purpose and you see yourself as
a small molecule in a bigger picture. So, basically, you know, I can connect
with her on an emotional level, but I understand the way that she thinks and
the way that she sees that is fundamentally different than the way that I do.

GROSS: So it's interesting, your sister who is a Jewish ultra-Orthodox
believer has helped you understand Hezbollah.

Mr. KERET: Yes. Yes. It's helped me understand, really. My intuition is
somebody who lives in a democracy and holds a set of values. So this
intuition of mine that what I see is the universal truths aren't necessarily
universal truths. People can strive for me many things. You know, for
example, I always thought that people want democracy, that any society would
strive for democracy. But actually my sister doesn't believe in democratic
society in her neighborhood. She lives in a theocratic society, and she
thinks it's much better than democracy. She really thinks that democracy is
not such a great idea. She really thinks that democracy leads to some sort of
a wide and violent individualism. It ruins the idea of community. She really
things that people really--it's not about what many people think. It's about
what the people that count thinks. For example, for her, it's a rabbi. So
all those things that really we always thought that everybody thinks like me,
we understand that some people think in another way.

GROSS: My guest is the Israeli writer Etgar Keret.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is the Israeli writer Etgar Keret,
and he's joining us from Tel Aviv.

Now, the best-known Israeli writers, outside of yourself, have been pretty
political in writing about Israel and reflecting on Israeli life, you know,
the life of the country, the conflicts the country has been in. And you're
writing is almost famous for not being political, for being on a smaller scale
and more about certain absurdities and paradoxes of life. And I'm wondering
if it's difficult to remain an almost apolitical writer in Israel.

Mr. KERET: Well, I see myself as very political writer. It's just that my
politics is different. I think that in Israel when people talk about
politics, they talk about something very reductive. They're really talking
about some sort of simplification of the situation. Politics after all to me
means if you're political, you don't contain any sort of ambiguities. You
know, like being political is kind of a packaged deal, it's kind of a
pragmatic rule. It means that I support this party and I don't support that
party. And I really think that the politics should be something much more
complex than that. And being a fiction writer, when I write about life, I
want to show them as complex and ambiguous and as paradoxical as they are.
And when I write about a situation, I really want to write about the
ambiguities because to say this guy is right, the other guy is right doesn't
seem political for me. It just seems simplifying and boring.

GROSS: Now, you have had a friendship and a collaborative relationship with a
Palestinian writer named Samir el-Youssef, who grew up in a refugee camp in
southern Lebanon. And you collaborate on a book together called "Gaza Blues."
He's our other guest on today's show. Can you talk a little bit about the
relationship you have together and how you got together?

Mr. KERET: Well, basically, Samir and me--I think each of us is kind of
different among the landscape of writers. Like he's not a typical Palestinian
writer and I'm not a typical Israeli writer. I think when we talk about
politics, many Israeli writers are not happy with my politics. And this
doesn't mean that I think, you know, I'm too left wing or anything. They just
say, you know, `He's not clear enough. He's not talking about the topics that
he's supposed to talk about. He's not talking about the way he's supposed to,
you know. He doesn't have the pathos necessary to talk about those subjects.'
And I think that Samir suffers from the same problem. So it's actually
no--when we met it was like a two-people support group. It was kind of like
an AA meeting, you know, like--and the fact that we could have a dialogue, you
know, and disagree about things but still survive it because they--we really
believe that there are some things that are more important than saying what
you specifically think about an issue. And that's how do you conduct a
dialogue? Can you be critical of yourself in some situation without this
being kind of interpreted as a weakness in the eyes of the enemy?

GROSS: I see, yeah.

Mr. KERET: You know? And the fact that both Samir and me, when we talk
about an issue, we just say what we feel made us different.

GROSS: Now, you were supposed to be on a panel with a couple of Palestinian
writers. I think it was in Sweden, maybe. And they refused to be--to appear
on stage with you because you're Israeli. They would talk with you in private
but they wouldn't talk with you on stage. And I'm wondering what your
reaction was to that.

Mr. KERET: Well, it was in Norway.

GROSS: It was in Norway, OK.

Mr. KERET: Yeah, it was in Norway. And actually one of the people who
refused to be with me on stage, his name was Izzat al-Ghazzawi. He died since
then. But before dying, he translated one of my story collection to Arabic
and published it, and the Palestinian Authority, I think it was
maybe...(unintelligible)...book that was published in the Palestinian
Authority since the beginning of the second Intifada. And it really showed
this kind of a contradiction between the fact that he was curious and
interested in what Israelis are doing, but at the same time very difficult
officially, said it was a mistake. When he said to me--he said, `I hope that
you accept it in understanding.' So I said to him, `Listen, I accept it but I
really don't understand it.' And at the same writers meeting, the late Jack
Daily Dow was there. And he asked the Palestinian writers from stage, and he
said to them, `If you don't want to sit with a left-wing fiction writer from
Israel, who do you want to sit with? Do you want to sit with Ariel Sharon?
Do you want to sit with the Israeli right wing? Or just you'd settle for
sitting with Norwegian people? Do you want to make peace with Norway?' There
was something about this kind of basic statement that I really don't see any
progress coming from such a declaration.

GROSS: So the same writer who refused to share a stage with you published
your book in Gaza and the West Bank. And--but...

Mr. KERET: It was in Ramallah, actually.

GROSS: In Ramallah. But his position remained the same.

Mr. KERET: He really felt it was important for Palestinians to read my
fiction because he thought it would give them a different image of Israel than
they had before that. And we had a very funny dialogue about it because when
the book came out, I had an e-mail from the publisher. And after that, my
agent talked to the publisher, and the publisher said, `Listen, the book sells
really well. We finished the first edition but we can't--we aren't exactly
sure if many people reading it or if the Hamas bought all the copies and
burned them.' We still didn't make up our mind. And another Palestinian
friend of mine told me that the book--the collection of stories was called
"The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God." And he said that he met one of his
students and the student was very, very disappointed because he thought it was
a collection of stories about a shahid who explode himself in a bus because it
was "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God." He said, `Bus driver, God, it must
be kind of suicide bombing somewhere.' And when he bought it and he saw that
it was just kind of about story about the egomaniac bus driver, he was very,
very disappointed.

I think that you kind of develop this kind of macabre sense of humor, and, you
know, and just what Samir and me have. And I feel that there is something
very good about this kind of root of communication. It is completely not PC,
and it is completely kind of it's OK to talk about things and to laugh about
things that you usually don't laugh about it. Because when you do it, it's
actually proof that you can overcome this sense of rigidness, you know.
Because sitting with somebody on stage or just kind of exchanging predictable
slogans, it's not--doesn't get you any closer anywhere. But being able to see
somebody in a room and, you know, and to crack a joke about something that you
wouldn't think that you'd be cracking jokes with him about is some sort of a
development because it's a normalcy.

GROSS: Your parents were Holocaust survivors. So growing up you knew that
they had survived something very terrible. I don't know how much they
actually told you about it but I'm sure you could guess that it was really
horrible. And then, of course, growing up in Israel--Israel has experienced
several--Israel has been part of several wars since you were born. Did you
grow up afraid of war and afraid of anti-Semitism and afraid that someday
you'd have to face something like what your parents faced in the Holocaust?
Or did you grow up without that kind of shadow of fear?

Mr. KERET: No, I grew up a very fearful and very hysterical, you know, I...

GROSS: Hysterical did you say?

Mr. KERET: I think--yeah. I think that one thing that I always felt is that
the existence of Israel as a country and the existence of a Jew as a people is
not something that is trivial. The idea of genocide was always somewhere in
here. And I'm not saying that it's necessarily justified, but the fact that
my wife always says, `You don't live, you survive.' In the sense that, you

know, there is always, I think, this kind of burden or this is this feeling of
struggle or potential struggle. Not necessarily a violent one. But it's very
difficult for me just to be laid back or relax because I always kind of have
all of those worst-case scenarios going in my head.

GROSS: You have a son now, right? How old is your child?

Mr. KERET: Seven months.

GROSS: Seven months, very young.

Mr. KERET: Yeah.

GROSS: When times get dangerous like this, do you consider leaving Israel for
your son's sake so that he isn't growing up exposed to the same kind of fears
and exposed to the kind of wars?

Mr. KERET: Well, you know, he's a tough kid. You know, when we think it
gets tough, I think in a few months' time, we'll start hiding behind him
because he's really tough. He's really tough.

One thing that my parents always told me is the fact that Israel, I may not
like things or many things that are happening here, but when I argue about
them, nobody can say to me, `You know, if you're not happy, just take your
things and leave,' you know. And part of it--and one of the ideas that I got
from my parents being Holocaust survivors is it--when you're an immigrant, you
never have this kind of a strong moral hold in the place that you live in.
And they--I think that, you know, I'm happy with many things happening in
Israel because at least here I believe that maybe I have the way of effecting
them and changing them. And I have the information to do it. And I don't
know if I'd feel the same in another place.

And another thing, you know, I'm a writer. I live inside language. I love
the Hebrew language. And I love many things in the country that I live in so
it would be very difficult decision, almost impossible for me to immigrate.
And, you know, again, you know, when I was born, things didn't look any better
than they look now, and I grew up. And I feel that there is always the fear
and there is always a pessimism, at least in my family. But I hope that, you
know, when they were really scared when I was born, you know, about the future
of the country, they were wrong. And I hope that I'm wrong, too.

GROSS: Well, Etgar Keret, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. KERET: Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

GROSS: Etgar Keret spoke to us from a studio in Tel Aviv. He co-authored the
book "Gaza Blues" with a Palestinian writer Samir el-Youssef, who we'll hear
from in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Palestinian author Samir el-Youssef talks about his
being a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon and gives his view of the
Middle East war
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Samir el-Youssef was born in 1965 in a Palestinian refugee camp in
southern Lebanon. He was exposed to a lot of radical rhetoric about
martyrdom, but what he responded to was literature. He's now a writer living
in London. Last year, the Swedish chapter of PEN, the international writers
organization, awarded him the Tucholsky Award, which is for writers who are
persecuted or living in exile.

In 2004, he co-authored the short story collection "Gaza Blues" with the
Israeli writer Etgar Keret, who we just heard from.

El-Youssef's mother lives in Lebanon. And some of his relatives there have
had to flee from Israeli bombing. I spoke with him yesterday and asked him,
first, about his view of the war.

Mr. SAMIR EL-YOUSSEF: What this war actually reminds is, reminds me of 1994
just after the Oslo Agreement in which the Hamas and the al-Jihad in Gaza and
the West Bank vowed to sort of bury the peace process at the set of the time.
And, basically, that's what they went about to do by basically sort of
launching a campaign of suicide bombings against Israel. The thing is Israel
and its unusual reaction for being an overreaction, an excessive reaction,
somehow accommodated the Hamas people by sort of, you know, responding to
their desire to destroy the peace process, which more or less that's what
happened in the years that followed.

What we see here is somehow similar. We have a country that's trying to
rebuild itself, Lebanon, with its different confessions and groups who are
trying to deal with each other peacefully or with a degree of peace, in which
no group or no confession can sort of input its own will on other groups,
Shiite, Sunni, Christian...(unintelligible)...Orthodox, etc. And that is
Hezbollah who believes in violence, who believes in the continuation of state
of war, targets Israel in this manner. And Israel responds by sort of
accommodating its desire to create a state of war instead of balancing
Lebanon. Unfortunately, we have basically, you know, people like Hamas and
Hezbollah and al-Jihad groups who do not believe in peace, groups who have an
agenda for war and violence. They are very coherent, very, in a sense,
brutally honest about it. They've never said anything otherwise.

On the other hand, we have Israel who's always willing to, sort of,
accommodate these people and responding to their desires. Somehow I feel
like, you know, there's a, you know, just a rebuilding, living in peace is
just sort of, you know, is something that's not going to happen, not only
because if one group that doesn't want...(unintelligible)...on both sides they
are sort of a certain desire or willingness to destroy and to rebuild and to
live in peace.

GROSS: Now, you grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
And so you came of age with a lot of militant Palestinians. And I'm wondering
what the rhetoric was like when you were a teenager?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Well, the public was--you know, lots of sloganization, lots
of slogans and mottos about liberating our country about the resistance, about
our right to return, about fighting imperialism and fighting Zionism and
fighting this and fighting that. This was a sort
of...(unintelligible)...rhetoric. Within the camp and within Lebanon, in
general, in the '70s, however there was sort of, you know, appeal or influence
of left-wing Lebanese political parties. This was a kind of rhetoric that was
dominant. For me and for other writers, especially...(unintelligible)...we
had to fight our way through in order to sort of not to succumb to this kind
of hollow rhetoric sloganization, for resistance and fighting imperialism and
fighting this and fighting that. The great help was, of course, from
literature, from international--from, you know, international writers. But
also from private experiences, from the sort of, you know, popular way of
expressing themselves, of how folks, ordinary people would talk about things.
And that was very helpful in this attempt to find a different language from
the other sort of, you know, rhetorical political language that was dominant
at the time.

GROSS: In your novella, "The Day the Beast Got Thirsty," you have a character
named Ahmed, who is a militant within the Palestinian refugee camp. And the
main character says, `I like listening to Ahmed, especially after I've had a
couple of joints. But sometimes Ahmed used to say things that made me realize
that unless I leave the country, I shall go mad.' What kind of things did you
hear that made you feel like you would go mad?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Well, I think he goes on, I think the corrector of the
novella goes on to say that, you know, Ahmed, at one time tells him like, you
know, there's going to be a war. You know, and--but after that war everything
will be all right. So he tells him, `For how long this war is going to go
on?' He says about 20 or 30 years. And, you know, that's what would drive you
mad. If somebody tells you that we're going to have peace but only first
we're going to have a long war of 20 or 30 years, I don't think I want to hang
around waiting for that war to end.

The reference to madness basically is this idea that absurdity of frustration
in the Lebanon, especially at the time that the novella takes place which is
towards the end of the '80s. And a great deal of the expression `They don't
mean what they say,' you know. The narrator starts with this sentence. `I
love listening to Ahmed' or `I like this to Ahmed.' And it goes on and on,
also the novella, but, you know, by the end of it, you don't know whether he
likes to listen to Ahmed, just somebody saying something to express, you know,
how much, how bad things are because what Hamas says just basically makes
them, you know, angry, makes them laugh, you know. It's just a sort of thing
that you don't really want to hear in a sense.

GROSS: Let me quote something that gives a sense of the ironic tone of your
novel, and this is the main character, thinking, ironically, "Yes, I thought
to myself, we must get married, Dalal and I. We will get married and have 10
children. But then they will die and have their photos as huge posters glued
to the walls of the camp, declaring them as heroic martyrs who have died while
fighting the Zionist enemy. And Dalal and I would be the proudest parents of
10 martyrs. After that Israel could invade Lebanon again, destroy our camp,
mess us all up, so we die and get the hell out of this life."

And I just, I took a couple of liberties, changing a couple of the words that
we can't say on the radio. Did you have friends who wanted their children to
grow up to be martyrs?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Certainly not. I did not...(unintelligible)...children to
be martyrs, or they wanted to be martyrs. Not at all. Especially at that
time, that time of our lives, I don't think anybody believed in martyrdom in
the country. The whole point of this message, this expression, is to make fun
of the whole idea of martyrdom. You know, the children were killed by
whatever it is. You know, I mean, at one point in the novella, there's a sort
of dispute, a fight, a battle between local militias and local parties, and
the people who are killed in this battle are called martyrs. It's in a sense
to show the hollowness of this expression of martyrdom, of how easy, of how
simple to consider anybody who died in any kind of absurd fight or clash
between local militias to consider him as a martyr. One of the reasons for
writing about it in this novella, actually, to sort of, you know, to explore
this kind of rhetoric for what it is, you know, this idea about how heroic
martyrs who were fighting this stand, only they were not fighting the Zionist
enemy, and they are not heroic, and certainly, they're not martyrs. Just sort
of to just take this concept and show how hollow it is and how meaningless it
is. And...(unintelligible)...from all the agility that support it and glorify
it.

GROSS: As a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, did you have the rights of a
citizen in Lebanon?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: No, certainly not, unless you've been a Lebanon refugee.
Well, I mean, part of the problem of a refugee is not only what is
so...(unintelligible)...1948. You're going to find a lot of people who're
just going to talk about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria.
And a lot of them they demand the right to attend and things like that. There
isn't--don't confuse this issue. There is an issue. There is a problem with
Lebanon. Basically, it's refugee problems. And it is in Lebanon, it's in
Jordan and it's in Syria. Well, I hear a number of Palestinians are still
living in refugee camps without any political or civil rights we've given
them. In a country like Lebanon, there are dozens and dozens of jobs and the
Palestinians are not allowed to practice. Palestinians are not allowed to
benefit from any kind of public sector. They are not allowed to be employed
by the public sector. (Unintelligible). They are not allowed to go to
schools or hospitals in Lebanon. So this is after 60 years of living there.
So it's a problem that has--you know, there's more than one responsible party
for it. Basically, it starts with Israel, but then it goes on to include the
Lebanese government, the Jordanian government. There are countries, as you
know, who are not sort of, you know, helping to solve this problem. And, of
course, the PLO, who for a long time used refugee camps in order to promote
their own kind of politics.

GROSS: What year did you leave Lebanon?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: I left Lebanon at the end of 1989. I left and went to

Cyprus and stayed for a year there and worked there. And then having acquired
residence of permanent in Cyprus, I was lucky enough to get a visa to come to
England.

GROSS: Which is where you live now?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Yes.

GROSS: My guest is Samir el-Youssef. He's a writer who grew up in a
Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is essayist and fiction writer Samir el-Youssef. He grew up
in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon and now lives in London.

How were you exposed to literature?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: It's strange. I grew up in a house which--where there were
no books whatsoever, about--from the Quran. The Quran was not read because my
parents are illiterate. My father and mother didn't read. And by and large,
people around me didn't read. People only read books that were meant to, at
school and for education. I don't know, it was part of this yearning for
something else, I suppose, was this desire? I've always had this imagination,
the sense that there's something beyond, something greater, something bigger
and larger and more complicated and richer than the one we had. And I
supposed I came to books through this sort of, you know, yearning, this
imagination that led me to feel there must be something else. And books, I
suppose, like films, like photos, like so many things that sort of, well, one
way of trying to sort of, you know, satisfy this yearning for the world that
lies beyond.

GROSS: What were some of the books that made the biggest impression on you?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Well, I mean, basically, the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz
was, you know, the greatest influence. And his style and the way he
constructed his narrative. The tales that he tells. The world of Cairo in
the '30s and '40s--somehow within the Arab world, Cairo was a sort of
different place, a richer place, a greater place, more complicated, so many
things. Some--there's poverty but there's certain charm to this kind of
poverty. This is a sort of, you know, a poverty of more traditional setting,
you know, that somebody who lives in a refugee camp can identify with. I
mean, you know, unlike the Lebanese capital, Beirut, which was, you know, very
luxurious, very sort of posh in a sense. And it was very
hard...(unintelligible). With Beirut, you feel there's really a difference.
There's a huge gap between there and Beirut. Now, with Cairo, it was
something else for somebody who lives in refugee camp.

GROSS: Growing up in Lebanon during the civil war and the Israeli occupation
of southern Lebanon, growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp, where, I
imagine there was, you know, a lot of just petty crime too as there is in a
lot of poor neighborhoods. Did you grow up with a sense of constant fear? Or
did that--were you just so used to it that that didn't even get to you?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: The fear in desert came from...(unintelligible)...more than
anything else, not from social life here. I mean, this is one of the many
things about life, at least--I mean, the time I'm describing or I'm talking
about, that is early '70s--the late '60s and early '70s. And one thing about
refugees and the camps, there's some who behave themselves. I mean, you would
hardly hear about any kind of incident. I mean, there was sort of trouble
between families if some kind of feud, some old feuds and conflicts of this
sort. But like in other stuff, I mean all these other things, it wasn't
something common. I mean, it was so rare. It's unbelievable. And it's not
because there weren't good police or good policing or good--who believe in law
and order. It's just that there was this sort of, you know--Palestinians
managed after all these years, after they left their communities back in
Palestine and transferred it to Lebanon. They lived within the moral code of
traditional society where just sort of families where people respect--where
the young respect the old and people respect their borders and everything. It
was a kind of--they managed to sort of maintain this sort of life. The only
danger, really, that we were worried about, it was the one that came from the
conflict, the clashes between the PLO and Israel.

GROSS: When you meet Palestinians who grew up in the Gaza or the West Bank,
and you compare experiences, what are some of the most similar and different
things about your experience and theirs?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Actually, what I notice, unusually, is the difference rather
than similarities. I mean, for people who lived in the, you know, in the
occupied territories, especially people who are refugees in Gaza and the West
Bank the only people, the only sort of aggressive or dominant forces, you
know, are the Israelis. For us in Lebanon, it was more than just Israelis.
Israelis, the Syrians, Lebanese, sometimes appeared themselves. The PLO, for
example. So it's always sort of humor, sense of there's something different.
I mean, we assumed that we are alike, but then we once started to dealing with
our problems, expressing our concerns, expressing our political views and
ideals, you realize that there are quite a few differences between both of us,
between people living in West Bank and Gaza and Lebanon.

GROSS: Now, I'm wondering if that helped shape your attitude toward the
Israelis in the sense that the Israelis weren't the only group that you might
see as your enemy, because there were other people who were a danger to
Palestinian refugees. There were other groups.

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I do think,
you know in 1982, I wasn't really that much frightened. I mean, I know that
the Israelis were in full scale war against the PLO and Lebanon. And quite a
few thousand people were arrested and imprisoned in Lebanon. I don't think I
was at time as frightened as later on when the war of the camps, for example,
where a sort of Lebanese militia taking Palestinians. I was more frightened
then than from the Israelis. I'm not saying that the Israelis were very nice
and friendly, they were not. But what I'm saying is that there were, in a
sense, you felt less in danger than with the militia, with the sort of
Lebanese militia that who were acting out of shear hatred sometimes.

So it was, that. And you're absolutely right, this awareness, I mean, for me,
if you'd asked me at that time, `If you're going to be arrested or captured by
anybody, by the Israelis or the Syrians or the Lebanese militia, which one
would you want to be arrested with?' I would say the Israelis right away. I
would know what would happen to me if the Israelis. I'm not sure I would know
what would happen to me with the Syrians or with the Lebanese militia.

I'm not saying this to praise the Israelis, but I'm to say how bad things were
and why, in a sense, I grew up to believe that we are not just fighting. It's
not just a question of two sides fighting each other. We are more than one
side, there are more than two sides. There are plenty of sides there. And
Israel is fighting everybody. And the idea for peace and the whole project of
peace, it must address all these issues, all these sides. Not to just say
it's just a question of all of us against the Israelis, or Palestinians
against Israelis. There's more to it than just that. And there are certain
times in which, you know, an Arab side might be more dangerous to another Arab
side than the Israelis. And on more than one occasion it happened that way.

GROSS: You know, I can't help but wonder how growing up in an atmosphere with
a lot of hate, because it was a civil war, it was a period of occupation. And
the way you're describing it, a lot of different groups preyed on
Palestinians. How do you grow up in a climate of hate and distrust like that
and emerge without being a hater yourself?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Well, I don't know. I just think--I think that there is a
human will, there is a human will plays a great deal of it. I mean, and in a
sense of awareness of more than one--seeing more than one side to it or more
than one dimension. I mean, the sense that, you know, the Jews are not sort
of aliens coming from other planets, some kind of sinister aliens coming from
other planets. The awareness that there's life, that there's society there,
that there's people, that they are parents, that they are professionals, that
people grow up and wake up in the morning because they're thinking about their
social problems, about how to earn money. And it's not them that are thinking
and killing Palestinians. They're thinking about, you know, surviving, you
know, in their daily lives.

But it does help a great deal to sort of realize, to start from yourself what
is worrying you. You know, at an early age I realized it is not destroying
the Israelis or killing the Israelis is what really concerns us most, it's
what concerns us how to get out of this awful life in the refugee camp. How
to get an education and to get out of it and to have a sort of peaceful life
somewhere else. That's what we are worried about, not fighting somebody,
fighting the enemy as public and nationalistic...(unintelligible)...around.

So if this country--if you reflect on that, if you sort of reflect on what's
been happening, it wouldn't be very hard to sort of, you know, overcome the
sentiment of hate. And by and large I grew up within an environment which did
not appreciate the whole idea of this sentiment of hatred. I don't see in my
surroundings there would be ever somebody who really hated Israel, like hate
like, `I really wish them harm.' There was a sense that they are basically our
enemies, but it wasn't hate. It was like, you know, alright. We had a fight
with them. They're our enemies. We're still at war with them. Basically
it's just, I mean, basically it's too long a conflict to keep hating. You
just can't keep hating.

GROSS: My guest is Samir el-Youssef. He's a writer who grew up in a
Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is essayist and fiction writer Samir el-Youssef. He grew up
in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon and now lives in London.

Do you expect to see a Palestinian state in your lifetime?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: No.

GROSS: Really?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: No. I don't, no. Oh, well, I mean at best it's going to be
a failed Palestinian state.

GROSS: Why a failed state?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Can't you see? Can't you see what's happening in Gaza and
the West Bank? So I don't think it's going to be a peaceful Palestinian
state.

GROSS: Do you feel like you've found a real home in London?

Mr. El-YOUSSEF: No. I can't say that. I mean, London is very comfortable.
London has been very generous for me and for people like me. It's a great
place to be. It's great. I've been really very lucky to live the last 15 or
16 years of my life in London. I've learned so much. It's really a great
thing to be in London and all this time and to benefit from it in terms of
education, in terms of value, in terms of friendship and knowledge. It's
great. It's a good place. But I can't call it home.

GROSS: What do you call home?

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: I don't really know. I don't know what home is to be
honest. I was born in a refugee camp. Once you're born in a refugee camp you
don't know the meaning of the word home. So I'm sort of--I would call myself,
without being bit too pretentious here, sort of, you know, metaphysically
homeless I suppose, or something like that.

GROSS: Metaphysically homeless.

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Yeah. I mean, basically, I do not have an idea of what a
home is supposed to mean. I mean, you know, I very much choose to saying by
the German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno who says that the highest form of
morality is not to feel at home even when you're at home.

GROSS: Just one last thing. It seems to me that your sense of wanting a
peaceful resolution to the Palestinian refugees and to the Middle East wars is
somehow connected to your love of literature. I'm not saying that your love
of literature led to your interest in peace, but they're both connected to the
same impulse which has to do with having a sense of empathy for other people,
and seeing, being able to stand back and seeing a kind of larger picture.

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Yes. Yes, of course. I mean, there's, I mean, I don't read
literature in order to sort of, you know, f read the political message or any
other message in it. Literature is art. I'm reading a novel by an Israeli
writer. I think it was Aharon Appelfeld, the Israeli writer. And it was
about, I think, about a novel about three Jewish boys who are wandering across
Europe during the Nazi assault in Eastern Europe, Poland, other places. And
they're just running from place to place, and they're being, you know--and you
feel it. Like identifying this boy would be arrested by the Nazi and being
sent to Auschwitz or any of the concentration camps. And by the end of it,
these boys managed to get on a ship that was going to Palestine. And I
remember when I read it, I read the ending, I felt a sense of relief that
that's what happened in the end. But then for one second I realized these
people are coming to my country. They were coming to take my country, they
were coming to Palestine in the '40s.

And that's what literature is all about, isn't it? Literature is about this
sense of something that changes you, changes your identity. You discover your
humanity. You know, something larger than the country, larger than a home,
larger than the whole idea of national identity. And I identified with three
children which I could see myself as one of them, you know, wandering in a
sort of--in a hostile environment, in a sort of society where just one mistake
will lead to your death, and suddenly just wandering and trying to find a
place where they can be safe.

And this comes through reading fiction. This comes through a novel. I mean,
I would have--probably I would have argued against, you know, the Jewish
immigration to Palestine for ages. And suddenly all of a sudden I realized
that, you know, how important for people to come to Palestine, for important
for them.

Later on, of course, my--I attempted to write in different ways. But I'm
saying that how important for a novel to sort of open up our minds and our
sentiment to other people's existence, other people's experience. And, yes,
that's what helped me to sort of understand and to be aware and to have sense
of the Jewish experience in Europe and the first part of the first half of the
20th Century.

GROSS: Well, I regret that our time is up. Samir el-Youssef, thank you very
much for talking with us.

Mr. EL-YOUSSEF: Thank you.

GROSS: Samir el-Youssef co-authored the book "Gaza Blues" with the Israeli
writer Etgar Keret. His essays and reviews have been published in major
Arabic periodicals. He spoke to us from London.

I'm Terry Gross.

(Credits)
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.