Buried in the deepest recesses of memory: a queen or a slave? The vision of Ghassan Kanafani and Emile Habibi of the City of Haifa.

WHAT IS A CITY?

ARABIC AND WESTERN DICTIONARIES define the 'city' as a place which is associated with civilization, civil rights, law and justice. The American Heritage Dictionary, for instance, refers to the city as "a center of population, commerce and culture; a town of significant size and importante", (1) The Oxford English Dictionary adds the concept of the "celestial, of heavenly city" and emphasizes the derivatives of the word, such as civil, civilian and civilization. (2) Similarly, Arabic dictionaries give details about the meanings of the city "madinah" which is derived from the root "madana" and "tamaddana"; i.e., to become civilized. Ibn Manzur (1232- 1311), for instance, in his classical dictionary, Lisan al-'Arab (3) refers to both temporal and spiritual cities. Madinah, he observes, is the city of the prophet Muhammad. II is the place of sophistication and worldly pleasure. But a new meaning is added. The slave-girl, we are told, is described as madinah which means possessed, or owned. Other dictionaries, such as Muhit al-Muhit (4) by the 19th century scholar Butrus al-Bustani (1867-1870) repeats those definitions in different ways by giving prominence to certain meanings over others. But regardless whether the dictionary is Arabic, of English, the word "city" means a specific geographical place in which people live together, presumably protected under the law. Unlike nomads, who roam the earth and are not subject to any law, city people settle in one place and are governed by "just laws."

Charles Molesworth quotes Cicero's characterization of cities "as societies of men founded upon respect for laws, which we call cities." Molesworth urges us also to think of the city as a stage "where staging itself occurs. If ... the city is the place where everything is both available and vanishing, then we can also see it as the stage in which all prosceniums are unfolding and disappearing." (5) Jane Augustine argues that the city is not only a geographical place; it "takes on the mixed qualities and functions of a human character ... [it] becomes less a topos and more organic and seemingly capable of choice. It becomes quasi human." (6) Paul Theroux presents a new definition of the city by borrowing C.P. Cavafy's argument to assure us that "the city is something within us, sometimes a 'black ruins' and sometimes representing human hope of failure. 'The city is a cage ... and no ship exists to take you from yourself.'" (7)

After these quick and often contradictory definitions, we ask in bewilderment: What is a city? Is it a real geographical place, of an imagined entity? Is it a castle where people are protected from their enemies, or is it a helpless slave that changes hands? Is it a place where one lives under just laws and enjoys oneself? Of is it a black dungeon where one lives enslaved and persecuted? What is it, paradise, or Hell? A symbol of perfection, or corruption? Is it a stage where everything appears and disappears? Do we see it with our own eyes? of does it have a hidden face? If it is feminine does it play a limited role, such as that of a goddess, a holy mother, of a whore? What is the relationship between the city and the person who portrays it?

I have chosen the city of Haifa, because the Palestinian cities in general are very complicated. Most of them are mentioned in the Scriptures, claimed by various parties and presented with different histories. No one disputes that Paris is a French city, or London an English one. But cities such as Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, or Jerusalem are presented in Western encyclopedias, travel, or scholarly books as Israeli cities. Men living in the West have dreamt about them. Then their dream became reality. Consequently these cities acquired a new history, a new population and at times new names in the twentieth century.

My purpose in this paper is to examine the notion of the city of Haifa in two novels: Ghassan Kanafani's Returning to Haifa (1969) and Emile Habibi's Saraya Bint al-Ghoul (1992) and with references to Habibi's short story "Um al-Rubabika" or "The Mother of Junk," (1967). The city is seen through the eyes of two of her sons: One was forced to leave her during the brutal onslaught of the terrorist Jewish organization Haganah along with the British troops in April 1948; the other stayed behind, witnessed both her destruction and reconstruction and later became a spokesman for a minority and a second-class citizen in his own country. Haifa was mapped, and re-mapped through the memories of both absent and present sons. The first one revisited after June 1967, but only for-a day and during similar circumstances to the ones that forced him to leave her. His city, now, was totally claimed by foreigners from around the world. His infant child, left behind at a moment of disaster in 1948, was adopted by a Jewish Polish family that took over his own house. The second one who stayed behind after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 became a witness to the daily violence directed against his own people and the large scale urban development projects which were meant to change the historical monuments and character of his city.

Although the narrative is essentially Palestinian, the memories of the absent and the present sons are quite different in texture and tone. Kanafani's absent narrator uses a realistic style, recalls historical events and confronts issues, such as self examination and responsibility. Habibi's present protagonist avoids direct and realistic style. He employs a popular myth in order to unmask the history of the disaster that has befallen his city and to assert the rights of his own people. But no matter how the city is reconstructed through memory, Haifa emerges as a mixture of queen and slave. Its inhabitants, whether they left, of stayed, have been deeply injured; nevertheless their identity is strengthened as Palestinians even when their city had been reconfigured and reconstructed for the narrative of other foreign people.

GHASSAN KANAFANI'S HAIFA

In Returning to Haifa, Kanafani depicts the city during two decisive moments in its history. (8) The first is on Wednesday, 21 April 1948, when the British authorities collaborated with the terrorist Jewish organization, the Haganah, in forcing the Palestinian inhabitants of Haifa to leave their city on board of British crafts to other shores. Palestine at the time was still under the British mandate. The expulsion of the Arab population took place less than a month before the proclamation of the establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian soil. Thus the Arab history of Haifa that goes back more than one thousand and three hundred years was wiped out. The second moment described by Kanafani is 30 June 1967 after the expansion of the Jewish state in less than twenty years whereby the whole of Palestine was now occupied in addition to parts of Egypt and Syria. These two decisive and frozen moments in time are linked to the story of Said S. and his wife who were forced to leave their city, their house and their five months-old baby in it on Wednesday 21 April 1948 during the chaos that enveloped Halla. (9) The couple who took refuge in Ramallah for twenty years have become now under Israeli occupation in 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza. At the end of June they were allowed for the first time to visit Halla for a day.

The city of Haifa as it is depicted in Kanafani's novel is a topography, a place on the map, a stage where violent events took place in the twentieth century. It has specific geographical features: the mountain, the steep stairways that go down to the sea, the endless orchards, and the narrow alleys. These features remained the same as Said S. had known them in the past. But the memory brings now new information about names, people, and events. As the protagonist drives north with his wife across Marj Ibn 'Amer then ascends the coastal highway towards the southern entry of Haifa he hears the sea and feels the blazing sun in June. The names of the streets as they used to be in 1948 come back to him. Palestinians from the past appear in his imagination. The Khuri family, for instance, looms large. They used to own a building south of Stanton Road near Kings Street. In that building, and on the day the inhabitants were forced to leave the city, there were resistance fighters who most likely were killed. Said's house was in a rural setting on al-Jalil mountain, at the bottom of a hill in a district called Halisa. His wife, Safiyya, is originally from the country. They had a baby called Khaldun. In their living room a picture of Jerusalem and a Damascene carpet decorated the walls. Everything seems confused in the protagonist's mind. But suddenly the past explodes in front of his eyes. April 1948 becomes very vivid.

We do not know what Said did for a living in 1948, nor do we know anything about his social background. What we know is that he once owned a green car, a 1946 Ford model and a house. This means he is not a peasant, of a poor city dweller. On 21 April 1948 British soldiers forced him along with his wife and a large number of Palestinians to evacuate Haifa, put them on board small British crafts and took them to Acre. The Jews were in control of the high hills connected to Herzl Street. The commercial center located between al Halisa and Allenby Road was their military backbone. Said was turning at the end of King Faysal Street going towards the harbor in order to take the road to al-Nasnas valley when he suddenly encountered armed soldiers and heard an explosion followed by shooting from the Carmel hills. Arab districts were shelled. Shops began to close. People were trying desperately to go back to their bornes. But they were forbidden by the British who were due to leave the city in three weeks. In a surrealistic scene Kanafani described how Said was trying In vain to take different routes to his borne, and how his wife was looking for him in the chaotic streets. There was only one road open that led to the harbor and the British crafts. It became clear to him that the British army was collaborating with the Zionists to evacuate Haifa from its Palestinian inhabitants. People were falling like flies inside the boats. Within three days the city fell into the hands of the Haganah. Said's version of the events is confirmed by Evrat Kushen, the Polish Jew who occupied Said's house and adopted Said's baby with his Polish Jewish wife. According to Kushen, shooting began from the Hadar. On Wednesday, 21 April, Colonel Moshe Karmateel (Carmel) was in charge of three military units, which could move quickly from Hadar HaCarmel and from the commercial center. One of these units was supposed to invade the Halisa, the bridge and Rushmiya Valley towards the harbor. Another unit was supposed to move from the commercial center to block all roads except the one leading to the harbor and the British crafts. The Jewish terrorist organization, the Irgun was in charge of al-Nasnas valley. It became also clear to Kushen that the British soldiers were collaborating with both the Haganah and the Irgun. Indeed he saw them several times together patrolling many areas. He questioned the dubious role of the British Major-General H.C. Stockwell who informed the Haganah about the date of his troop's withdrawal from Haifa in advance in order to give them an advantage over the Palestinians. Kushen, a holocaust survivor, bad come to Palestine with his wife at the beginning of April 1948 from Milan, Italy. He never heard about Haifa before, nor did he know anything about its history. He bad not met one Palestinian in his life till one year and a half after the city had fallen. Only after 8 days from the eviction of Said and his wife from Haifa, Kushen received the keys to Said's house and was given the option to adopt Said' s son.

In short, Haifa in April 1948 was an occupied city ruled by terror. In it there were three distinct groups: The Palestinian Arabs who constituted the majority of the population, a Jewish minority that recently migrated to Palestine with the intention of colonizing it, and the British army that controlled the whole country. Is it possible then to define the city in this context as a castle in which a person is protected from his enemy, of as a symbol of perfection and civilization? Who is to blame for the protagonist's exile and the dispersion of his people in different parts of the world? Others, himself, of both? How did the city look like when he was a child and a young man? How does the city look like now? Who are its dwellers?

Said's first impression of Haifa was that the city did not change much. "We could have made it better," he said to his wife. Obviously he was trying to dispel the imperialist claim that the Jews migrated from civilized countries to Palestine, and that they were able to make the desert bloom. For Said the whole matter was a myth. '"Why do you think the Israelis let us now visit Haifa?" He asked his wife. "Because they are humane? No. This is part of the war. They want to tell us: Please come in and see for yourselves how we are more civilized than you are. You must accept to become our servants, to admire us. But you saw for yourself. Nothing had changed in Haifa. We could have made it much better" (Kanafani 344). Said's relationship with Halla is very complicated. During the time he lived in exile in Ramallah he had enough time to evaluate his responsibility as a citizen and a father and to reconsider the role he played as a Palestinian in changing the meaning of Haifa as a city. The fortified castle which was meant to protect its inhabitants, only if they defended it, was quickly transformed into a slave. Once Said entered Haifa he was notable to say a thing. He felt ashamed. He knew that the city, his house and his son would denounce him. His wife shared his feeling. She never stopped crying. It was not only the English, or the Zionists who were responsible for the couple's tragedy. The crime was committed "before twenty years ago," Said tells his wife. "We must pay the price. It was committed the day we left our son" in Haifa. "But we didn't leave him," Safiyya protested. "Yes, we did. We should have not left anything behind," he insisted (Kanafani 385). Khaldun, the Palestinian became Doy, the Israeli. When he finally met his biological parents he simply stated that he was Jewish, that Miriam and Evrat were his real parents, and even after he discovered the truth nothing had changed for him. But the final blow carne when Dov accused the helpless couple of paralysis and backwardness. "All of this would not have happened had you behaved as civilized people," he said. "You should not have left Haifa. If that was not possible, then you should not have left a baby in his cradle. If that was not possible too you should not have stopped trying to return" (Kanafani 406). The journey back to Haifa was necessary for Said S. to discover the truth. Before that he did not know the meaning of home, child, or country.

Unlike Joseph Conrad in his novel Lord Jira (10), Kanafani does not discuss the nuances of the notion of "proper conduct" during catastrophes. For him Said was a person who did not understand the meaning of responsibility, and unless he changed, there would be no hope in resolving the tragedy that had befallen him and his people. This explains why he made Said understand now the necessity of resistance. When Dov's brother, the Palestinian in Ramallah, decided to join the fida'iyeen he had the blessing of his father.

Haifa was a stage on which many events took place: the happy and the sordid. But Said S. told us only about the tragic history and the bloody conflict that had not been resolved. After his expulsion from the city he was forced to think about his identity and place in the world. In the past, he was a lazy dreamer who wandered in the city without knowing where, or why. But now Haifa is beyond his reach. He is unable to walk in its streets or boast about his home, family, work and culture.

In an article published in the 1830s, Walter Benjamin depicts the flaneur who wanders in the city streets. People mistook him for a merchant. Others thought about him as a Jew. Whenever he saw a crowd he would mix with them, but would not say a word. This is how he lived in the world as a spectator. This is how he behaved all his life. He just looked and watched. (11) Although Said S. can not be accurately described as flaneur, yet he shares some of his characteristics. He is anti-hero, a lazy dreamer who is destined to wake up in a frightening way. Before 1948 he was a spectator. But now, after he lost Haifa, he realized the danger of such a stance. In a moment of bitter recognition he tells his wife: "I am searching for the true Palestine which is more than a memory, more than a child. I am searching beneath the rubble. But look what I found, nothing but more rubble" (Kanafani 411-12).

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF HAIFA

Herzl (1860-1904), a Hungarian-Austrian Jew and a journalist was the first president of the international Zionist organization in 1897. He dedicated his whole life to realize the Zionist dream in colonizing Palestine and establishing a Jewish state without showing the slightest empathy towards its original inhabitants, of their lawful rights. He visited Haifa in 1898 and realized its importance as a possible Jewish city in the future, mainly because of its harbor on the Mediterranean Sea, and its wooded Carmel Mountain. In less than fifty years his dream was realized. (12) The Arab inhabitants were expelled and replaced by Jews from around the world.

Haifa had been an Arab city since the 7th Century. But Western encyclopedias and travel books write about it as an Israeli city. At times, they may refer to its history during the Crusades, Ottoman rule, or Napoleon's invasion; or to the construction of the Hejaz railway, the harbor, and the airport during the British Mandate. But whatever information they include of exclude, the city of Haifa appears as a Jewish city since time immemorial although it became as such only in 1948. (13)

Haifa in the distant past was a fishing village. Its first known inhabitants were the Cananites who were Semitic. The Greeks called them later Phoenicians. It is believed that the Cananites came from the Arabian Peninsula. On the shores of Haifa, the Philistines who came from the Islands of the Aegean Sea between Greece and Asia Minor clashed with the ancient Egyptians 1191 BC. They lived on the coast from Gaza to the mountain, introduced iron and gave the country its name. Then the ancient Hebrews arrived followed by many other nations, such as the Assyrians, the Caldanians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Haifa became an important city with the spread of Christianity. Both prophets, "Ilias and Yusha," taught people how to become Christian in the place that was called later on "al-Khudr" or "the green man" and "the school of the prophets" near the lighthouse. Jesus and his mother Mary blessed the city on their way from Egypt to Nazareth. Saint Paul also passed by Haifa on his third journey coming from Acre. For centuries, many mystics lived on Mount Carmel. During Roman times the city was located to the west in tal al-samak. To the east of it a church was built. After the Arab conquest in the 7th century Haifa was less important than Acre, of Yafa. (14) The Venetian ships attacked it in 1110 and massacred its inhabitants. (15) In 1046 the traveler Naser Khisru (Nasir-i Khursaw) mentioned it and described its sand which was used by jewelers. He also referred to the construction of special ships in the city. The traveler, al-Idrisi also described Haifa in 1160. Al-'imad al-Asfahani mentioned the castle built by the Crusaders in the south of the city and how the Muslims defeated them in 1188, but the Crusaders came back in 1191 and rebuilt it after Saladin ordered his troops to vacate the town and destroy its castles. King Louis IX was very much interested in fortifying Haifa. In 1265 al-Zahir Baibars conquered it again for a while. But Haifa was not free till the total defeat of the Crusaders and the fall of Acre in 1291. It is obvious that coastal towns, like Haifa, were very important for the Crusaders in order to keep their supply lines open to European ports. The Mamlukes, the rulers of Egypt at the time, understood this fact and they destroyed the cities so the Crusaders would not be able to come back. "Haifa is in ruins on the coast." This is what al-Qalqashandi, who died in 1418, wrote in his book Subh al-A'sha. In 1516 Haifa came under the rule of the Ottomans. But the reconstruction of the city did not begin until the second half of the 16th century, its inhabitants were always afraid that the Crusaders would return. They never encouraged European merchants to do business with them as the people did in Beirut of Sidon. In the middle of the 18th- century al-Shaykh Zahir al-'Umar built a new Haifa in the south east of the city, surrounded it with a wall and had a tower erected. Now the city had two gates. A castle overlooked the southern entry. Later on his sons built a mosque along with other monuments.

In 1767 the Carmelite priests built their convent on the top of the mountain. Soon there after, Europeans began to come again to the city under different guises, as military armies, pilgrims, tourists, of missionaries. The aim was supposedly to spread education among the Arabs. Then a new group appeared whose intention was to colonize the city. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Haifa on 15 March 1799. His headquarters were located on the top of the mountain. The convent became a hospital for the French soldiers and those who were inflicted by the plague during Acre's siege. Before retreating to Egypt, Napoleon burnt the place. But the Ottomans rebuilt the convent. Then Haifa came under Egyptian rule as did the test of Syria. Ibrahim Pasha entered the city too, but did not stay there for long. The French poet Lamartine visited Haifa and wrote about its beauty. In 1868 Germans established a colony in Haifa and had their schools, factories and independent institutions. In 1909 a new Jewish suburb appeared overlooking the Nasnas Valley where Arab Jews and Ashkanazi lived together. These suburbs multiplied till they surrounded the Arab neighborhood. Years later from Hadar HaCarmel came the first Jewish shots against the Arabs below in order to force them to leave the city. In 1898 the German Emperor William the Second visited Haifa and on 23 September 1918 the British occupied the city after the First World War. Haifa had also played a role in the imagination of the Baha'is. In it the founder of the Baha'i sect was buried. The gardens of the golden Baha'i Shrine were magnificent. When the Baha'i religion spread all over the world, Haifa was claimed not by a small sect in Iran, but by a large number of people around the world.

Even the name of Haifa had taken different shapes and rhythms. Once she was Sycaminum in the Jewish-Christian tradition, another time was called Caiphas, of Caiffa during the Crusades. The Torah does not mention Haifa. But there is a reference to it in the Talmud as Hifah, which means harbor. But it was always known among the Arabs as Hayfa (Haifa). Its name remained so even after its population were replaced by Jews from Russia, Poland, Germany and other countries.

Said S. never thought about this complicated history of his city. Perhaps this was becausee his people always accepted strangers to live side by side with them. His political consciousness and maturity came quite late. He did not understand the tragedy of his people until he lost Haifa.

LINGUISTIC AND POLITICAL IRONY IN RETURNING TO HAIFA

Linguistically, the city is associated with law, human rights and justice. But the irony in Kanafani's city lies in the absence of all these norms. Haifa in 1948 was a chaotic place full of warring parties with conflicting agendas: British troops trying to dominate a foreign country; terrorist Jewish organizations carrying their offensive operations in a bid to create an exclusivist state, and a small number of native Palestinians desperately fighting to defend their property and identity. The city of the dictionaries is normally peaceful and prosperous and its inhabitants respect the law. But that of Said S. is overwhelmed by chaos and atrocities. The irony lies not only in the concept of the city as such, but also in the imperial myth which claims that colonialism is something positive, it helps the colonized become civilized. What actually happened in Haifa in 1948 would not only disprove this theory but also show its dangers in creating new and more complicated problems for both colonizer and colonized. In this sense, Kanafani's novel comes close to Joseph Conrad's novel, The Heart of Darkness, (16) which clearly exposes the imperialists who send idealistic young men to the Congo under the banner of changing the wretched condition of the natives and creating progress and prosperity for all. But once these men arrive there they discover the falsity of these claims. They embark on a mission that not only destroys the natives but also themselves.

Even the name of Haifa seems to be puzzling. Yaqut al-Hamwi, who died in the year 1229, wrote in his classical geographical dictionary Mu'jam al-Buldan (17) that the name of Haifa was derived from al-Hayf, i.e., the injustice. We do not know the reason for naming the city as such, nor who would have given it such a name.

During the short historical period in which Haifa's population had changed between the late forties and the early nineties of the twentieth century, the city appeared in different guises to different travelers. Paul Theroux, for instance, saw Haifa as a colony, a garrison, and a city without any specific religion. There were soldiers everywhere and the new buildings seemed to be imported from somewhere. They were quite strange, not blending harmoniously with the old ones. Many people were "gruff." The tone of their voices was quite aggressive, not only with visitors, but with each other as well. There were obvious differences between Eastern and Western Jews. Commenting on a street's name Theroux remarks: "About ten years ago ... [Tzionut Street-Zionism Street] had been called United Nations Street, because at the time Israel had been befriended by the UN and this was one of the ways they showed their thanks.... But in 1981 a resolution was passed by some countries in the General Assembly, equating Zionism with racism. The Israelis were so annoyed they changed the name of Haifa's United Nations Street to the hated word Zionism" (Theroux 371).

Theroux speaks about Haifa at night as a ghost town and describes the level of anxiety among it inhabitants as very high. He relates the story of a Palestinian journalist by the name Hani Abed who was blown up in his car by the Israeli secret service when he turned on the ignition key. Then in a chilling passage Theroux quotes the Hebrew newspaper Ha'aretz, which celebrated the murder citing the Scriptures: "Hani Abed... got the punishment coming to him, 'for they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind,' ..." (Theroux 378).

This horrible vision of a city that imported its inhabitants and buildings from around the world and threatened the remnant of its native Arab population is balanced by an optimistic outlook. Haifa might be a scary town, but it has clean restaurants. It offers light and appetizing food, such as salads, fish, hummus, fresh fruit and juices. Olive oil is a staple ingredient in dishes here. Of course, these dishes are what the majority of Arabs eat in the Mediterranean region. Palestinian diet is rich in vegetables and fruit. Meat dishes are not abundant as in the West. One does not drink orange juice from plastic bottles. Oranges are freshly squeezed. But if the Jews coming from Western countries had inherited this type of food from old Haifa they have certainly introduced to the new city, according to Theroux, libraries full of books and magazines from every part of the world, in addition to various museums and classical concerts.

In the midst of this contradictory vision of a city the shadow of the Palestinian writer, Emile Habibi, who was born in Haifa and continued to live in it even after the establishment of Israel looms large in Theroux's mind. "Leaving Haifa and passing the populous bluff of Mount Carmel that dominates the city, it was impossible not to think of Habiby. He had written about those specific heights a number of times in his novel Saraya the Ogre's Daughter (translated by Peter Theroux, 1995). In another part of the novel, Mount Carmel is remembered by the narrator as the wilderness of his childhood 'still a virgin forest, except for its lighthouse, which was, in our eyes, closer to the stars in the heavens than to the houses of Wadi al-Nasnas ... The wild melancholy of al-Carmel took our breath away'" (Theroux 386). Unfortunately, Habibi's Mount Carmel has changed forever by the new settlers from Europe. It is full of "apartment houses" and "fenced-in mansions." The trees have been cut, and the mountain is almost dead now. The physical change that took place in Haifa and was mentioned in the writings of both Theroux and Habibi was not even noticed by a troubled and exiled Palestinian, such as Said S. For him the city did not change, except for its inhabitants and the names of its streets.

Perhaps we could say that the injustice which is associated with the linguistic term of Haifa, still casts its shadow on whoever comes close to the city. Ironically, the author of Returning to Haifa who was born in Acre in 1936, witnessed its fall into the hands of the Zionists at a tender age of 12, then left Palestine in 1948, was assassinated, exactly like the journalist Hani Abed, but in Beirut in 1972 by the Mossad. This terrorist act meant not only to wipe out Ghassan Kanafani as an individual writer and a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but also to erase the Palestinian memory and inhibit Palestinians from ever visualizing of documenting the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland of the fall of their cities, such as Haifa, Yafa, Acre and Safad into the hands of terrorist Jewish organizations.

EMILE HABIBI'S HAIFA

In Habibi's Saraya the Ogre's Daughter, the Palestinian, who remained in his city after it became Jewish, is mainly concerned with his survival and the survival of his family under Israeli occupation. Essentially autobiographical in nature, the 1992 book, was published in Arabic in London, and was described as 'khurafiyya (fiction). Haifa, the real historical city is now transformed into a myth. A young and intelligent girl called Saraya was forcefully taken by a demon to his palace on the top of the mountain. She was known for her long beautiful hair. Distraught for her abduction, her cousin went to find her. "Saraya put your hair down so I could reach it," he would cry. The girl heard him. She let one of her braids down. Using her hair as a ladder, the cousin climbed up the window. She hid him. Once the demon came back she put something in his drink to make him sleep. Thus she was able to escape with her cousin and return to her village. (18) The author related this myth because he too was in love with a girl in his youth. But his political and literary concerns made him forget her. Only when he became an old man that the girl began to haunt him in his dreams. So he started searching for her.

Habibi's Haifa is now a garrison flooded by searchlights after dark. Yet it is full of mermaids and myths. One still sees its trees, its caves and the rocks on which lovers once sat. One hears its torrential sea. There is the apparition of "Hawla," an old woman who appears to travelers at night. But there is also Saraya, the eternally young and beautiful girl, who ascends the hills followed by the narrator. A sudden shift in narrative mode becomes ominous. The newcomers who have appropriated the land are now busy reshaping its nature. One hill, for instance, is transformed by the Israelis into a Jewish holy site. It overlooks a deep large valley. On the opposite side stands the remnants of al-Qareen, a Crusader Castle destroyed by the Muslim leader, al-Zaher Baybars. Saraya appears now and then to the lonely fisherman whose net is surrounded by sharks coming from everywhere. Haifa appears as an eerie, depopulated city on the sea.

Habibi seems to be afraid to speak clearly about the changes that have taken place in his city. For this reason perhaps, he tends to mix myth with reality. But at other times he makes a connection between past and present hiding behind vague expressions, or masquerading as a young boy from Acre telling his readers that the Palestinians have opened their doors to strangers throughout history, taught them new skills, Arabized them and made them civil. Badran, the young boy from Acre believes that all the natives in his city are hybrid. He was among the few people who dived into the sea for sometime till the war of 1948 had withered away. His city was always a multiracial melting pot. The names of its inhabitants revealed their foreign origin. He, for instance, is called Badran al-Rumi, his Christian neighbor is called Siljaq, deformed into Silbaq. There are Ifranji families, some Muslims, some Christians. Bakr, Abu Bakr and Bakrawi are all blond who have nothing to do with the East except they are Muslims (Habibi 56). The narrator relates the story of 'Isa the Palestinian diver who alluded the Crusaders' ships during the siege of Acre in 1190 to that of Badran today, as if he wishes to tell us that the policy of depopulating cities, of destroying Palestinian houses will not succeed in the long run. Some natives will always survive and preserve their own tradition and culture. Their skills will be inherited by a new generation. The Palestinians will always plant olive, orange and mandarin trees and be known as skilled fishermen and divers. In the ancient past they distilled crimson colors from certain shells strewn on the coast. From the sands they made glass (Habibi 24). Before 1948 Palestinian women peasants extracted salt from the sand and dried it. They would leave their village Shafa 'Amr in the middle of the night, head to a place called mallahat near the river, then come back home before dawn with donkeys laden with sand bags. They would extract the salt, boil it in huge pots, then put it on the roofs to be dried by the sun (Habibi 68).

In the past, the Palestinians did not only Arabize the strangers' names, but also refined their cuisine and taste. Now Palestinian food has become part and parcel of the life of the new Jewish immigrants to the city. "The Palestinian fishermen and the Jews of Arab origin, were the first ones to introduce grilled meat to the Ashkanazi and help their Slavic noses appreciate the smell of barbecued meat" (Habibi 41).

But soon this optimistic view of the Palestinian ability to reshape others gives way to despair. The tragic changes that took place in Haifa since 1948 did not only include names of streets, holy sites, historical monuments, people, but also Mount Carmel, the hills and the forests. 'Ayn al-Sa'ada, for instance, at the entrance of Haifa, has become Check Post (Habibi 59), the Lovers Street is renamed in Hebrew as the Deers Lane. But deer is no-where to be seen after the disappearance of the original inhabitants. In the past the road that had pine trees on both sides, now looks different. In a bitter irony the narrator tells us that God's chosen people have given Him back the trees. Now there are only private cars (Habibi 107-108). The Israelis have not only cut the pine trees, but also drained the water of the Carmel and made the mountain die. In the past philosophers and mystics took refuge there. Others such as Saladin, Usama Ibn Munqidh, Baldwin, Napoleon, Zahir al-'Umar and various pirates passed by. The place used to be fertile. Water gushed from the rocks (Habibi 108). Now the whole area was drained, including the Arab highschool. An Israeli water company made the Palestinians thirsty during the months of Sha'ban and Ramadan (Habibi 87). Is Haifa then two cities? One with no water for the Palestinians? And one with water for the Jews?

The tragic changes in Haifa, the eviction of Palestinians from their land, the destruction of their villages and cities, the erection of new Jewish settlements, the cruel treatment meted on those Palestinians who remained behind by the Israeli military authorities, and the constant tampering with nature and historical monuments, all of these things made the narrator cry: "I wish I was never born" (Habibi 96). It was the historian Ibn al-Athir who originally wrote this sentence in his book Al-Kamil after witnessing what the Mogul did in Iraq during their invasion of that country in 1220 and after Hulagu captured the city of Baghdad in 1258 (Habibi 95-97).

Habibi's Haifa represents the real horror. It is a stage on which human tragedies were enacted. Jawad, the narrator's brother, for instance, left Palestine when he was 48 years old. He returned to see his family when he was already 84 but was notable to stay with them more than a week. The narrator's old mother crossed Mandelbaum Gate searching for her son Na'ira in Damascus. She knew once she left she would not be allowed to return. After four months at the beginning of the 1950s she died. No one knows what happened to Uncle Ibrahim after the catastrophe. An aunt became deaf. She continued sweeping her house day and night in the village of Shafa 'Amr till she died in 1952. Another aunt stayed with the nuns. She lost her mind completely, and then she died at the end of the 1950s. A third aunt was taken on a stretcher to a plane flying to the USA in order to see her son over there. But the Israelis returned this sick woman back to the airport to search her more thoroughly. They took off her clothes and aggressively questioned her. The horror she faced "made her 20 convinced that she was a terrorist, daughter of a terrorist and aunt of a terrorist" (Habibi 136-137). In April 1948 during the year of "liberating the land from its natives" the narrator was working in Jerusalem when 'Abbas Street fell (Habibi, 125). Then the Israeli government came to bury everything Palestinian (Habibi 129).

The relationship between Haifa and its inhabitants who left of remained after 1948 is very complicated. The problem is compounded by the estrangement between the Palestinians themselves. He who left Haifa did not think at the beginning of those who stayed behind. The latter suddenly felt they belonged nowhere, and became an oppressed minority in a foreign state.

In the short story "Um al-Rubabika" of "The Mother of Junk," which Habibi wrote after the war of 1967 when Palestinians in the newly occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza) were allowed to visit cities that became Israeli since 1948, there is a painful dialogue between the narrator and a woman in Wadi Street in Haifa. The woman collects everything left behind in vacant Palestinian homes: old chests, trunks, everything, as if she is trying to find that treasure she is looking for. "I am not alone anymore," she shouted. "With your treasures?" I asked. "No," she yelled "with the owners. They are returning." . .. She lowered her gaze, then she asked me shyly: "Didn't you meet the wandering ghosts?" "What do you mean?" I asked her. "Men, women from Gaza and the West Bank, from 'Amman, even from Kuwait are crossing our alleys in silence, looking up at balconies and windows. Some are knocking at doors asking politely to be allowed in, only to have a quick look and to drink some water. Then they leave. Those who live in the houses now look at them with pity, others with utter contempt. Some let them in; others don't open 21 the door. There are Palestinians who don't knock at doors. They look around for a dark looking person in the street, stop him and ask him: Was it here that the house of so and so stood? The man would think hard. Then he would say: 'I was born after that old uncle.' You know, these wandering ghosts don't visit me. They have not heard about my treasures." (19)

Kanafani's Said S. is a wandering ghost in the eyes of this woman who plundered the carpets from 'Abbas Street in 1948 and moved in the palace of Abu Ma'ruf, the owner of the shop in the Shwam bazaar in Haifa (Um al-Rubabika 44). She speaks about these ghosts with pity, but at the same time she buys their belongings from the stolen goods depot and sells whatever she can in order to survive. Although Habibi did not specify her identity, she is obviously Palestinian. She had resolved to stay with her invalid mother when her husband and one of her children left Haifa. Israeli authorities facilitated the business for a man who stole the goods from empty Palestinian houses, and vacated a place for him close to a police station. No one comes close to this place, except this woman. "No Arab, of Jew wanders around here. One for piety, the other for fear. And the auctioneer swears in all the languages known in the Mediterranean basin that his own house was destroyed, that he has nothing to do with the destruction of Palestinian homes on the hill" (Um al-Rubabika 44).

Who is this woman, the mother of junk? Is it possible to accuse her of theft in a city that has become akin to a dead corpse surrounded by birds of prey? Morals here are not important anymore. The key word is survival. Palestinians, including the narrator, look at this woman in different ways. Some claim "she is known for being a thief;" others say she is the queen of the Valley for her eternal smile and hospitality to visitors, of for her secret life and persistente to remain in this area, perhaps for some love affair, or for her love for those who left the city. She regularly visits Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, carries food for them, washes their clothes. She keeps tons of diaries, poems, love letters left by those who do not live anymore in the city. These things she never sells to anyone. She reads them and cries when she is alone. Through the narrative the mother of junk becomes a symbol of 22 degraded Haifa, the mother who was left alone exposed to rumors from every side. But she will never leave her sons.

The stolen goods depot might not be discovered by an American traveler, such as Paul Theroux although it is part and parcel of old Haifa and one of its museums. It has coffee cups, kubba stone mortars, tooth brushes, toilet papers all left behind in 1948 and arranged in rows next to the books of the famous philosopher al-Farabi, all awaiting buyers.

Said S. remembers only two tragic moments in his life. But the narrator in Saraya remembers all moments, sweet or sour. He recalls everything he learnt in Palestinian schools about the history of the city. At times we hear him speak about his childhood memories both in the village and the city, on his lost love, on al-Burj school to which he went as a young boy, on the reason for calling the school as such, on Haifa's Arab history when in 1760, Zahir al-'Umar al-Zaydani built a large tower overlooking one of the hills of the eastern Carmel in order to deter the attacks of pirates coming from Malta of southern Italy. Napoleon Bonapart stayed in this tower in 1799 after he was unable to penetrate Acre's walls. In the year 1837 Ibrahim Pasha stayed there for a night or two on his way from Egypt to Lebanon and Syria. In primary school they taught him that (Habibi 85). Palestinians called the place the peace tower of Abu Salam. This what made the narrator/author call his son Salam at a later stage. We also hear about another state highschool which still stands in Haifa on the west side of Jabal Street. It was newly built when the narrator attended it as a teenager. We laugh when we read what he had to say about his memories in Wadi al-Nasnas, or about the building of the church by workers from Horan, Syria, or the boys' songs on clerics, be they Christian or Muslim. At that time the feeling was that religion belonged to God, but the country belonged to all (Habibi 87). The joy in remembering those days is mixed with sorrow for what happened to the city and its inhabitants. "I have asked a solitary oak tree in the lovers valley for an answer. An old Jewish man in my age scolded me by saying 'If I did not know you and know that you only write I would not have let you enter my private garden'" (Habibi 79). The oppressed 23 Palestinian does not comment on the term "private garden," but the reader instantly understands the narrator's social and political position in the new Jewish Haifa. The city is not his anymore. Before the six -day war, for instance, the Israeli authorities allowed Christian Arabs who are not involved in politics to travel to the holy sites in Jordan during the Christmas holidays. The Muslims had a worse deal. They were permitted to meet their relatives during their religious feasts behind barbed wires. Once they returned home they would be bleeding from beatings or from bullet shots. The Israeli authorities always claimed there were people there without permits (Habibi 170).

On the surface, Habibi's Haifa seems to be an oppressed slave, a prisoner in a cage, exactly like her sons. But in reality she looks like Saraya, the eternally young, free and beautiful Palestinian girl. No one can imprison her, or oppress her. If Said S. in Kanafani's novel has discussed the issue of responsibility and accused himself and other Palestinians who walked aimlessly in Haifa's streets and did not know its significance till they lost it, Habibi's narrator does not deal with that clearly. His sarcasm is directed to the "new state," the "new cities" and "the new language," which perverted all concepts. Depopulating Palestine from Palestinians is referred to as a "liberation war." Habibi has a magnificent power in playing with words. He adds, "It is the war of liberating the land from its own people" (Habibi 125). The narrator and other characters in his book did not have to undertake a journey to discover themselves. Their sheer presence in Haifa witnessing the tragic changes that took place had helped them understand something about themselves and the factors that led to the fall of states throughout history. Haifa here does not deny her own sons. Although her mountain is dying, her shores are guarded by Israeli soldiers and their search lights at night in order to prevent her old sons from infiltrating, Haifa is still young and vibrant. She forgives those who have not defended her. When she appeared in the guise of a mermaid to the narrator he whispered: "I felt as it I had killed my own sister who had come to me asking for protection. I tried to wipe out that sting from my conscience" (Habibi 43).

The city as a civilized place ruled by just laws is not to be seen neither in Kanafani's, nor Habibi's works. Injustice is what distinguishes it. Kanafani cries out loud from the safety of exile, whereas Habibi whispers in Haifa in fear of the Israeli authorities: "Darkness chokes me; injustice makes me dumb" (Habibi 40).

CONCLUSION

Kanafani's city in Returning to Haifa is synonymous to country, home and lost son. In the narrative it acquired the meaning of mother and radiant beloved who was left alone at a time of need. No one defended her. In the past she protected her sons for they protected her. In spite of his difficult circumstances, the protagonist is responsible for her radical transformation from a free woman to a slave. He did not know himself, nor did he understand his responsibility towards her. The discovery of this fact came only after twenty years of absence from his birth place. Those who conquered her in 1948 are now writing a new history and highlighting their own narrative. What is he to do? He is an old man now. But his other son, who was born outside of Haifa, will work with other Palestinians in exile to defend her dignity and free her from imprisonment and slavery.

One would imagine that Kanafani's city, a combination of a free woman and a slave, will differ from Habibi's, for Kanafani lived in exile and was relatively free to imagine her and reconstruct her within the deepest recesses of his mind, whereas Habibi remained with her, worked with her oppressors and witnessed what was happening to her for decades. But one discovers that Haifa, in spite of variations in detail by both authors, remains one and the same city. It is true that Habibi does not speak out loud, nor does he offer a clear solution to repair the present. Yet he depicts her as a lost beloved, of a murdered sister. He knows that she will come back, not only in his dream, but in reality. She would be free, happy and unlike this city in which he lives now where strangers have made her a slave and transformed her natives into prisoners. Habibi's protagonist was never a spectator. He attempted to free himself, but his daily struggle with survival prevented him from seeing the ultimate truth. In a rare moment of vision, Haifa, his old and forgotten love, surfaces again in his life, but in the guise of Saraya, the eternally young and beautiful Palestinian girl. The vision does not lead him to take up arms against the enemy, rather to write down a mixture of a mythical and factual history of Haifa. His aim is to highlight the necessity of memory and remembering.

Kanafani was killed by the Israeli Secret Service in Beirut in 1972, whereas Habibi was awarded the literature prize by the State of Israel in 1992. Yet both writers, in spite of their different biographies and solutions to the Palestinian question, saw Haifa's dual nature, a combination of paradise and hell, a stage on which beautiful and tragic events took place. But in their minds it will always be the lost radiant beloved.

The city must be read, Walter Benjamin wrote. It has an inside and an outside reality. It is not possible to have one face. (20) The flaneur who walks in cities follows various strategies. He comes close to things, observes them, analyzes them, but also denudes and destroys them. Reading becomes possible at the moment of death. But unlike Benjamin who does not believe that there is a place for the story-teller, or the wise man in a modern city, the center of forgetfulness, Habibi, in particular, proves that the story-teller is the one who holds the future keys, and who is capable of opening the eyes of the young generation in a city drugged by forgetfulness. Kanafani's Said S. lived the moments of the past. Then he remembered those moments when he found himself again in front of the city. But Habibi and his other characters lived the past and the present at the same time, for they know the Arab monuments of old Haifa or whatever remained of them.

The surface of the city is very different from its hidden reality. Modern Haifa, as it appears to some strangers is the pinnacle of barbarism disguised in a civilized attire. The city that had opened its doors to progress as symbolized by its harbor, transportation network, factories, foreign colonies, and missionary schools, experienced nothing but a new oppression. The enlightenment project which emphasized reason had become an irrational project controlled by new myths. Palestinian villages were erased from the landscape. Monuments were buried to give place to new ones. A new history book for the city and its imported citizens was written. The old inhabitants were either killed, or deported. Those who remained behind became second class citizens even when they were allowed to represent a minority in the parliament, or given a prize by the state.

For the flaneur to discover the truth he must live in hell exactly as Kanafani's and Habibi's protagonists did. To enter this hell is like a dream. One must wake up at the end. Said S. left Haifa, then entered it, then left again. There were long moments of waiting before the discovery. Habibi's characters, who entered the city and remained imprisoned in it never left. They kept dreaming and waking. Their eyes got used to the darkness. Their memories of the past and their difficult experiences in the present illuminated their path and exposed the falsity of the modern history of the city. The story-teller, the historian in this context, takes it upon himself to collect whatever has been buried and show it to the world in order that the joy and sorrow of his people will be always alive.

ENDNOTES

(1.) The American Heritage Dictionary. "City." 4th ed. Boston, New York: Mifflin Company, 2000, 339. Also see the definition of "citizen, civil, civility and civilization," 339-340.

(2.) See "city" in The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner. Volume III. (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1989), 252-254. Further references will be cited in the text in parenthesis.

(3.) Ibn Manzur. Lisan al-'Arab, vol. 13 (Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.), 402-3.

(4.) Al-Bustani, Butrus. Muhit al-Muhit. (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnan, 1977), 843.

(5.) Charles Molesworth, "The City: Some Classical Moments" in City Images: Perspectives from Literature, Philosophy, and Film. Ed. Mary Ann Caws, (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1991), 13-14.

(6.) Jane Augustine "From Topos to Anthropoid: The City as Character in Twentieth-Century Texts" in City Images, p. 74. For further definitions consult Burton Pike, The Image of the City in Modern Literature (Princeton University Press, 1981).

(7.) Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), 352. Further references will be cited in the text in parenthesis.

(8.) Ghassan Kanafani "'A'id ila Hayfa' (Returning to Haifa) 1969 in al-Athar al-kamila , vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Tali'a, 1972), 337-414. Further references will be cited in the text in parenthesis. Translation into English is mine. For a biographical note on Kanafani (1936-28 1972) consult al-Mawsu'a al-Filastiniya (Palestinian Encyclopedia), vol. 3 (Damascus, 1984), 403-4 and Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, vol. 2, ed. Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 426. Note that Barbara Harlow has translated Kanafani's novel as "Return to Haifa" in Palestine's Children (London, Cairo, Washington: Heinemann, Dar al-Fata al-Arabi, Three Continents Press, 1984), 99-138.

(9.) See Walid Khalidi "The Fall of Haifa" Middle East Forum, vol. xxxv, No. 10 (December 1959). Also consult Khalidi's introduction and commentary in Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948. (Washington: D.C. : Institute of Palestine Studies, 1991). For the Zionist views see Jon and David Kimche, Both Sides of the Hill: Britain and the Palestine War (London: Secker & Warburg, 1960). For modern Israeli views on the fall of Palestinian cities consult Ilan Pappe, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-51 (London, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., 1992).

(10.) Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. (New York: Bantam Books, 1965).

(11.) Walter Benjamin, The Spectator (Addison & Steele) 1832, 1:17-18, quoted by Peter I Barta in Bely, Joyce, and Doublin: Peripatetics in the City Novel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 6.

(12.) For Arab studies on Haifa see May Ibrahim Seikaly, Haifa: Transformation of a Palestinian A rab Society 1918-1939 (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 1995). Husayn Ighbariya, Hayfa al-Tarikh wa al-Dhakira (Haifa History and Memory) (Haifa: Jam'iyat al-Tatwir al-Ijtima'i, 2001).

(13.) See, for instante, what was written on "Haifa" in the Encyclopedia Americana International Edition by Gary L. Fowler, vol. 13 (Danbury, Connecticut: Scholastic Library Publishing, Inc., 2004), p.685. The reader will have no clue about Haifa's original inhabitants. The New Encyclopedia Britannica Micropaedia, vol. 5. 15th edition (Chicago, London, 2005) does not even refer to the role of the British in the fall of the city into the hands of the Haganah in 1948. For a detailed document on the treatment of 29 Palestinians left behind after the establishment of the state of Israel see Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel, trans. Inea Bushnaq (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).

(14.) Al-Mawsu'a al-Filastiniya, vol. 2 (Damascus: 1984), 298-309. For a general history on Palestine consult Philip Hitti, History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine, 2nd edition (London and New York: Macmillan & St. Martin's Press, 1957). Also consult Mustafa Murad al-Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin (Our Country Palestine), 2nd ed. vol., 1 (Kafr far', Filastin: Dar al-Huda, 1991).

(15.) Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition (London & New York: Macmillan & St. Martin's Press, 1970), p. 640 and "Hayfa" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, B. Lewis, et al, editors (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 324.

(16.) Dean, Leonard F. ed. The Heart of Darkness: Background and Criticism. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1964).

(17.) al-Hamawi, Yagut. Mu'jam al-Buldan, vol. 1: Palestinian Cities. "Haifa." Texts are selected by Abd al_Ilah Nabhan with commentaries. (Damascus: Wizarat al-Thagafa, 1982) 203.

(18.) Emile Habibi, Saraya Bint al-Ghoul (London, Cyprus: Riyad al-Rayyes, 1992), 11. Further references will be cited in the text in parenthesis. Translation into English is mine. For a biographical note on Habibi (1921-1996) see Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, vol. 1, Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey editors (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 259 and the Encyclopaedia Britannica On Line. Year in Review. Obituary Habibi, Emile (1996).

(19.) Emile Habibi, "Um al-Rubabika" (The Mother of Junk) in Sudasiyat al-Ayyam al-Sitta (Beirut: Dar al-'Awda, 1969), 48-50. Further references will be cited in the text in parenthesis. Translation into English is mine. Note that the wandering ghosts described by The Mother of Junk in Habibi's short story had also appeared in Israeli literature. The writer and journalist Oz Shelach described the reaction of some Israelis to the appearance of the evicted Palestinians in Israeli cities after 1967 in his book Picnic Grounds: A Novel in Fragments (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2003). See "An Original." "A professor of philosophy inhabited a large old house in Baqa'a, which had all the usual properties of large old houses in Jerusalem: stone walls, arched ceilings, an original, still-bearing walnut tree, an original underground cistern, and a well on which the garden was maintained in dry years. His reputation as a broad thinker was 30 amplified by a proven ability to out-argue his colleagues in their own fields. For a while children were allowed to play in the garden, but in the summer of 1967 the professor followed the example of the famous millionaire S and ordered a tall stone wall to be constructed around the house and garden to prevent the original inhabitants from visiting." 25.

(20.) Note that Walter Benjamin is one of the most important modern theorists on the city. He coined the term flaneur and studied him extensively. A flaneur is a figure who wanders about in cities presenting them to us through his eyes. Benjamin spent most of his life in two cities: Berlin where he was born in 1892 and Paris to where he fled in 1933. When the Nazis occupied France, Benjamin took his time before he tried to flee to Spain. But it was late. He committed suicide in September 1940. The city, according to Benjamin has dual characteristics: something wonderful that one likes, the other is horrible that makes one disgusted. He did not only write about his childhood in Berlin and life in Paris, but he also wrote about other cities he visited, such as Naples, Moscow, Weimer, Marseilles and others. See for instance Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert, Rolf Tiedemann, editor, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000). Also consult the 5th volume of Benjamin's complete works which is about Paris. "Passagenarbeit," in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. v, ed. Rolf Tiedemann et al (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974). The book was translated into English as The Arcade Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999). For secondary sources see Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press & Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996).

Samar Attar has taught English and Comparative Literature throughout the world. Her next book, The Influence of Ibn Tufayl on Modern European Thought is forthcoming.