HAYATI: My Life--A Novel. (Book Reviews).

Miriam Cooke. HAYATI: My Life--A Novel. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000. 152 pages. Hardcover $22.95.

Hayati or "my life," an endearment in Arabic, uses artful prose to create stories shaped by the complexities of human interaction giving readers insights into lives of Palestinians. The novel--a montage--is written in chapters that vary from a single paragraph to several pages. Within the framework are three generations of strong women made even stronger by events they experience. However, the opposite is true for the men. Caught in continuous Israeli oppression, war, and violence their masculinity is traumatized.

The individual stories are superimposed one on the other piecing together the past and showing why present-day tensions continue to exist. What holds readers to the novel are the first person narratives connected by personal struggle and grief. Their haunting voices tell stories revealing the lack of compassion and empathy Israelis and the world hold toward Palestinians. Readers need in-depth knowledge of the Middle East and especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts/wars/ to fully understand and appreciate the novel.

Hayati opens with Assia telephoning from Kuwait in 1990, speaking to her daughter in Jerusalem. She tells Maryam, "Pray for us" (p. 3). We then hear from Maryam in 1960 overlooking the Mount of Olives, when the twelve-year-old asks her mother to help with a homework assignment. Her mother does not want to explain the terrible events of the last fifty years--it is too painful.

However, Maryam soon learns of the horrors Palestinians have endured. Her grandparents once entertained poets and artists in their salon, discussing the merits of T. S. Eliot. But later, these and other well-educated, refined people suffer because of the British Mandate. "Everybody knew that the British were ruthless" (p. 74). Palestinian homes destroyed. Palestinians displaced. Her grandfather killed. Grandmother imprisoned.

Supporters of the resistance, Assia and Basil flee the massacre of Deir Yassin and an infant son is killed in the crossfire. Usama is shot dead in Basil's arms. Death forces a wedge between his parents. Basil, although an accomplished engineer, cannot find work. "The vibrant, brilliant man I married had changed beyond recognition" (p. 17). "Whereas Usama's death had marked my face, it had branded itself on the soul of his father" (p.17).

Palestinian men leave their homeland and journey to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and the Gulf looking for work. The Palestinian women, who stay, sell family heirlooms to recent Jewish immigrants just to buy food. "And finally, the Seljuk cream--colored dish inscribed with burnt sienna letters laced around the edge that the antique dealers had repeatedly wanted to buy...it would indeed be a bad day when she sold it" (p. 22).

Assia and Basil remain in Jerusalem. Assia works, she establishes a children's day-care center to support the family. Maryam is born. A second daughter, Afaf cannot or will not speak. Art becomes her expression revealing a desperate desire for connection. Afaf is another wedge that further separates her family. Her grotesque paintings foretell the future. They are prophetic pieces- eyes weeping, children throwing stones, and corpses strewn about. "All strangely swollen. Wounds with blood pouring out of them and into the thirsty earth" (p. 35).

During the summer of 1967, after the "Six-Day" War, Assia, Basil, and Afaf travel to Kuwait hoping to find a cure for her muteness. Arriving in Kuwait, they face humiliation as unwanted guests. "Each time I saw a group of my people being pushed around, humiliated and they would not lower their eyes, I felt this way. And when I looked at Basil, I saw the old light in his eyes and I loved him again and felt sad again. What were we doing here?" (p. 64). Maryam remains in Jerusalem with her grandmother.

The years pass. Through multiple voices we encounter other Palestinians, who experience the establishment of the PLO, the humiliation of an Israel invasion of Lebanon, the Intifada, the fran-Iraq War and continued hopelessness.

Hibba, Maryam's cousin, lives in Baghdad and works in advertising, but realizes her skills are used to support Iraqi propaganda. Aziz Hibba's married lover, serves in the Iraqi army. In desperation he kills an elderly man who reminds him of his father. He wants to obliterate the past. He rips out an old man's eyes. "I was so close that the blood out of the exploding eye spattered my khaki" (p. 105).

Hibba is weary of Aziz's fabricated war stories and medals he has purchased in the suq. "I've tolerated this rubbish year after year" (p. 135). Aziz brutally assaults Hibba. She leaves for Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem Maryam is teaching Arabic literature at the Hebrew University, and falls in love and marries Arik, a pro-Palestinian Israeli. Both idealists, they dream of Israel as a place where people live together peacefully. "I hoped to make my Israeli students understand and eventually respect and admire the culture of a people whose existence their government was tiymg to erase" (p.89). A daughter Jamila is born--she is hope for the future. Arik, an Israeli army officer, is forced to lead a military campaign against the Palestinians. Maryam wonders if she has married the enemy, "Do what?! Kill my people?" (p. 85). Until she realizes that her husband has plans for his men to mutiny. He waits until the unit is inside Lebanon--marching to Beirut Five years later, Jamila sees her father.

Branded a traitor, Arik is first jailed with common Israeli criminals, then political prisoners, and finally the Arabs. Three years after his release he is finally able to talk about the vicious acts of rape he suffered in the Israeli prison, "...they did...one after the other...after the other..." (p.100). Maryam puts her arms around the "...suddenly small man, feeling for him the tenderness of a mother but also of a daughter for her helpless father" (p. 101).

Hibba joins Maryam in Jerusalem. They discuss Afaf's early paintings--both saw the violence. "Over the years these images came true, if you can say that images come true" (p. 111). Afaf painted the future. "The drawings were so explicit, it was though Afaf had traveled forward in time and found these horrifying images" (p. 112). Maryam recalls--a black canvas. Hibba remembers it hanging on Afaf's wall in Kuwait among canvases of brightly colored flowers. "Two heads. One in profile, the other from the back. A woman and a man. Almost as though they were making love, but not quite" (p. 112).

It is 1990 and the invading forces arrive in Kuwait. Afaf is at first frightened by Aziz's uniform. "He seemed lost as though looking for a place to hide. I sat with this stranger as though with a neighbor, a friend, my friend My first friend. And then he kissed me" (p. 83). Assia returns to find them huddled in the dark room. "The calm exploded and then everything went black" (p. 151).

"Mother, are you all right?" "Why did you kill him?" (p.149). Afaf is speaking. Aziz is dead. The painting--Afaf's black canvas--has come true. Assia places a telephone call to Maryam. The novel ends where it began. "Pray for us" (p. 147).

Carolyn Han lectures at Hawai'i Community College and spends academic breaks traveling the Silk and Incense roads writing poetry and stories.