First Well

by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, جبرا إبراهيم جبرا

With a Proustian attention to details, Jabra, a prominent Arabic author who died in Iraq in 1994, recaptures his youth in British-mandated Bethlehem and Jerusalem, where he attended Greek Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, and "National" schools. There are a lot of firsts here: first fights with school playmates, first school indoctrinations about serving "the idea of Arabism" and "the Arabism of Palestine." Some readers may be offended by Jabra's casual, uncritical reference to Jewish ritual murder: "Our mothers continually warned against those Jews, saying they kidnapped children in Jewish festivals, in order to slay them and mix their blood in the dough of unleavened bread."

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

120 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

See: جبرا إبراهيم جبرا

Reviews

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

If all you know of Palestinians is downtrodden people in refugee camps or hardened terrorists, know that there are several outstanding memoirs of pre-1948 life written by Palestinian Christian and Muslim Arabs and Palestinian Jews translated into English. Jabra's is one and it's beautifully translated by Boullata, another writer. Originating from a poor family in Bethlehem, the account takes the reader up to the 1930s when Jabra is in his teens. Many things will be unfamiliar to Westerners: a 14-year-old uniformed postman, the strictness of the schools, studying calligraphy and having a written language not the same as the one you speak. Other things are true everywhere for the poor: the frequent moves (at one point inhabiting a ruined khan, or Ottoman caravanserai), the resourcefulness of the mother and grandmother, and the special vulnerability to the wiles of charlatans. The physical strength of Jabra's father reminded me of my own father's. "You can always depend on me" his father tells him after a memorable rescue. Yet his father's health is failing when only in his thirties from the sheer abuse of hard work. Standout parts for me: the massive ancient books in Syriac. Learning the church melodies by ear, since notation did not exist yet. The joy and singing during the olive harvest. And Jabra's evocative descriptions of the natural world:

"Spring evenings in Bethlehem when we played or sang or told stories were noisy with legions of swallows, playfully flying in circles, swooping down on the roofs of houses, then rising to the open skies. We followed them with our eyes as they changed directions, and turned, and circled, and changed the direction of their flight again and again for reasons unknown to us. Not one ever collided with another as they wheeled and filled the skies with jubilation. Their joy entered our souls, and so we too exhibited intense movement and noise: we ran and jumped; we sang and shouted. Sometimes I lay down on the grass-covered ground to watch the thousands of swallows as they tossed among the clouds like waves. I tried to count them, and failing, I tried again and again."

Jabra, a poet, writer and artist, recounts several verses of pre Islamic poetry with its melancholy remembrance of things past. Many Palestinian accounts mirror such poetry. But this one carries so much of the happiness of a remembered childhood it avoids the melancholia of a wistful poem Jabra would write in exile decades later: "In the deserts of exile / Spring after spring"...

[sarah :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love a good memoir and this one delivered 🙌 & so beautiful and hopeful to read of palestine before israeli occupation and apartheid

[Duha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its a very interesting, it combines a biography of the author as well as a biography of Bethlehem history, people, nature, and simplicity, It is a must read