Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba

by Basma Ghalayini (Editor), Mazen Maarouf (Contributor), Selma Dabbagh (Contributor)

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?

Covering a range of approaches – from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever.

Translated from the Arabic by Raph Cormack, Mohamed Ghalaieny, Andrew Leber, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Yasmine Seale and Jonathan Wright.

WINNER of a PEN Translates Award 2018

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Speculative Fiction, Middle East, Fantasy

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2019

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating new collection from Deep Vellum, with an excellent introduction by Basma Ghalayini. It is impossible to understate the importance of the Nakba - the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine - for the Palestinian people. In this collection, 12 Palestinian writers situate short stories in the year 2048 - a century after the Nakba. There is a mix of genres, with a prevalence of dystopian and science fiction. Ghalayini's introduction is perhaps the highlight of the work, touching on the current landscape of Palestinian literature. There is a tendency for Palestinian fiction to look backwards, grappling with the past and present as having the most immediate salience for the Palestinian experience. This collection, then, is an effort to bring some writers out of their comfort zone and engage in a collective imagining of the future. Like many collections, the results are mixed, but the project as a whole is quite interesting and at times poignant. Previously published by Comma Press in the UK, kudos to Deep Vellum for bringing this to the US market.

[Sahar · Rating 4 out of 5]

“𝗖𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗲𝗲? 𝗜’𝗺 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗺𝘆; 𝘄𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗺𝘆, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘅𝘆𝗴𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲.”⁣⁣ 🇵🇸
⁣⁣
What do we envisage the year 2048–a hundred years after the Nakba—to look like for Palestine? Twelve talented Palestinian writers were posed with this extraordinary challenge, and the outputs of this exchange have lead to a fascinating and engaging collection of short stories. Hauntingly creative and chillingly dystopian in nature, many stories incorporate elements of sci-fi, fantasy, hybrid humanity and menacing futuristic tech. 📡⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Literature on Palestine—both fiction and non-fiction—centres on the reality of life on the ground for Palestinians, and so it should, for how can one fantasise about a reimagined future for one’s people when the situation in the present is so catastrophically dire? A lot of the fiction pertaining to Palestine isn’t really fiction at all; it is the story of every Palestinian family. It is for this very reason that I must commend the writers for producing a work that, for just a fleeting second, takes a step back from the current reality and hones in on the future and what that might look like. The writers use their unbound imagination and creative prowess to conjure up a world in which the situation is both better yet worse, wholly different yet still so painfully the same. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Ponder upon the following from one story titled ‘Application 39’ by Ahmed Masoud:⁣⁣
⁣⁣
“𝗧𝗵𝘂𝘀, 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗚𝗮𝘇𝗮 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝗯 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗢𝗹𝘆𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀…” 🇵🇸⁣⁣
⁣⁣
How do you think this story will end?⁣⁣
⁣⁣
The works that stood out to me the most in this collection were:⁣⁣
⁣⁣
🦜Song of the Birds – Saleem Haddad⁣⁣
🗝The Key – Anwar Hamed⁣⁣
⚠️Final Warning – Talal Abu Shawish⁣⁣
📝Application 39 – Ahmed Masoud⁣⁣
⁣⁣
4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣

[Bogi Takács]

Updated to add: I'm now doing twitter threads on a story-by-story basis.

Song of the Birds by Saleem Haddad -
https://twitter.com/bogiperson/status...

Sleep It Off, Dr Schott by Selma Dabbagh -
https://twitter.com/bogiperson/status...

N by Majd Kayyal, tr. Thoraya El-Rayyes -
https://twitter.com/bogiperson/status...



I thought this was a great collection. Review in a few days, G-d willing!
____
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library (who ordered it on my request, thank you!)

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palestine re-imagined a century after the Nakba, which marked the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel; Palestine re-imagined via the prism of sci-fi fiction, the fantastical tropes of sci-fi fiction serve to heighten the horror of the stories they are depicting, in which the Palestinian characters are systematically dehumanised beneath the behemoth of the Israeli state, in the many iterations in which it is depicted in the collection of stories.

 Particular highlights include 'Sleep it off, Dr. Schott', which depicts the burgeoning romance between two hybrid human scientists, one Israeli and one Palestinian beneath a sea of Rachel Weisz comparisons and conversations about the rights and wrongs of the conflict. The way in which the story coalesces the artificial emotions which the two characters are implanted, with the real emotions both characters feel as they explore their individual pasts and the present burgeoning of their relationship exemplifies the artificial constructs which conflict creates around human emotions. Another highlight is 'Digital Nation' in which artificial intelligence supplants its human masters and creates a Palestinian state which is able to achieve its aim of independence, or of 'Application 39' in which a pair of bumbling pranksters manage to succeed in an application for Palestine to host the Olympics, only for the story to end if farce and tragedy as a peaceful march is turned into a massacre by over-zealous robots, designed to view Palestinians as enemies.

As with magical realism, the horrors depicted beneath all of this fantasy are the only ways in which to depict the surrealism of a world enveloped by belligerence and hatred, a world in which, as with the story 'Vengeance' the desire for revenge only serves to trap people in a never-ending cycle of violence from which there is no escape. 

[Zana · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up.

Buddy read with Mel!

Truth be told, I wasn't really a huge fan of this anthology. Nothing seemed concrete or even slightly logical. I did like how creative some of the stories are though.

But Mel said something that made me look at this in a different way. She said that because of the current situation between Israel and Palestine, it might be why a lot of these short stories don't have concrete endings.

I'll take that interpretation.

Below are summaries and reviews of each individual short story:


Introduction by Basma Ghalayini
5/5 stars

Mel is rating the intro, so I guess I'll rate the intro too. After all, there were several poignant quotes I highlighted.

For an intro, the editor really got to the meat and bones of Israeli occupation in Palestine and its influence on Palestinian literature. Ghalayini compares the main themes of SFF, saying that "it is a luxury, to which Palestinians haven't felt they can afford to escape. The cruel present (and the traumatic past) have too firm a grip on Palestinian writers' imaginations for fanciful ventures into possible futures" (Ghalayini 9).

Another passage I love is the second to last paragraph.

"Not that the disguise of science fiction would be that drastic a costume change for Palestinian writers, especially those based in Palestine. Everyday life, for them, is a kind of dystopia. A West Bank Palestinian need only record their journey to work, or talk back to an IDF soldier at a checkpoint, or forget to carry their ID card, or simply look out their car window at the walls, weaponry, and barbed wire plastering the landscape, to know what a modern, totalitarian occupation is--something people in the West can only begin to understand through the language of dystopia" (Ghalayini 11).

Song of the Birds by Saleem Haddad
4/5 stars

Aya sees her dead brother, Ziad, in what might, or might not, be her dreams.

I was originally thinking of giving this 3 stars, but after talking it over with Mel, I'm definitely increasing it to 4 stars. This short story is both intriguing and devastating. Without giving away any spoilers, there are strong hints of The Matrix here. Both Mel and I would love to see this a fully-fledged novel. It's creative with using sci-fi tropes that sci-fi readers might be familiar with.


Sleep It Off, Dr Schott by Selma Dabbagh
1.5/5 stars

Layla, a recorder, is tasked to record illicit conversations between Dr. Kamal and Dr. Schott.

Mel and I had no idea wtf was going on in this short story. We were both frustrated at the lack of a main plotline or the reason for why anything happened.

The only thing I got from this was that Dr. Schott's DNA test showed that he wasn't "Jewish" enough so Israel didn't want him. Dr. Kamal was Palestinian. They were both working on the hyperloop for some kind of Palestinian scientific haven? Dr. Schott worked for Dr. Kamal and he was acting inappropriate towards her, hence why Layla's job was to record their conversations. Schott's behavior was cringe and uncomfortable, and at the end, Kamal implied that she liked him too?

Nothing made sense. Anyway, on to the next one.


N by Majd Kayyal, translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes
3/5 stars

N, the narrator's son, is studying in a parallel Palestine where Israel owns the entirety of Palestine. The narrator, on the other hand, lives in the other Palestine.

I think Mel liked this story better than I did. I didn't really understand what was going on because it read like several viewpoints rambling about their lives in Palestine vs. a parallel universe where Israel owned everything.

The idea was there and the vibes were there, but I'm not sure if it was executed well. I would've preferred a more straightforward narrative.


The Key by Anwar Hamed, translated by Andrew Leber
3/5 stars

The MMC's five-year-old daughter, Edina, keeps hearing the front door being unlocked, even though no one's there.

This started out as a great horror/thriller, but it ended so abruptly. There was no actual conclusion. I did like the creepy, suspenseful vibes though.

A couple of highlighted passages I liked:

"'Such a small country. A slender island in an ocean of hatred!'"

"'Residents of the camps in neighbouring countries are the core problem, however. They want to return to towns and villages that are no longer there. They dream of a world that no longer exists and cannot be restored, even if we agree to the idea, in principle. Even if they return, they will not find what they are looking for. But their stubbornness will not die--they pass it on to their children and grandchildren.'"

"My grandfather collected pictures of them clutching rusty keys to houses that no longer existed. But he wasn't mocking them, like others did. He felt a vague anxiety towards them, though he realised he was powerless to do anything about it. My grandfather feared those photographs of people holding keys more than any arms deal being signed by neighbouring countries."

Digital Nation by Emad El-Din Aysha
4.5/5 stars

Israel's telecom networks are hacked to broadcast in Arabic as Palestinian activists use technology to their advantage.

I think this is my favorite short story in this anthology (so far). Mel and I both really liked this one. It's very sci-fi thriller and kept me reading. I love how this is such a hopeful story despite the subject matter and situation. Is this an example of hopepunk? If so, I might be a convert (speaking as a hardcore grimdark lover).


Personal Hero by Abdalmuti Maqboul, translated by Yasmine Seale
3/5 stars

Abd al-Qadir, a Palestinian Arab nationalist and fighter, rises again.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this story. I think Mel liked it a lot more than I did. The beginning and middle made no sense until the ending (which was very hopepunk and pretty cool). But by then, I was too confused to actually absorb the hopepunk vibes and take it all in.

'I kept hearing about you, reading about you. I heard that, as a child, you bought a gun and paid for it yourself. That you ripped up your diploma as soon as you received it from the head of the American University in Cairo, in front of all the important people. I remember what you said: “I have no need of a diploma from your school, a colonial and missionary institution. I have won it, but it has not won me.”'

Vengeance by Tasnim Abutabikh
5/5 stars

Ahmed gets a job working for Yousef Abdulqader, who fixes futuristic prosthetics. But unbeknownst to Yousef, Ahmed has nefarious motives.

This story is pretty simple and the backbone isn't anything we've never seen before, but oh boy, I ended up loving this! The futuristic sci-fi twist with the addition of Palestinian familial history really sealed the deal for me. I love it when authors use their knowledge and experiences with tropes we're all familiar with as readers.


Application 39 by Ahmed Masoud
4/5 stars

Ismael and Rayyan play a prank: apply to the IOC on behalf of Gaza to host the Olympic Games.

I love the hopepunk vibes in the beginning here, but man, the ending... It reads so realistic. Like reality, the story was fun and then it wasn't.


The Association by Samir El-Youssef, translated by Raph Cormack
3/5 stars

Zaid, a journalist with the Daily Diwan, investigates the death of a historian, Professor Omar Hijazi, in a futuristic Israel/Palestine where studying the past is illegal.

Loved the premise (Israel and Palestine pass an agreement to "forget" the past and move on, and studying the history of the war is forbidden). It started out as an interesting murder mystery that felt like it was slowly building on the premise, but it ended too abruptly for me to give this story any more than a passing thought.


Commonplace by Rawan Yaghi
3/5 stars

Adam, a drug dealer in futuristic Palestine, deals with the aftermath of his sister's torture and subsequent coma.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. On one hand, it's a bittersweet story about sibling love, but it also ends on a strange note that's very open-ended. Depending on your outlook on life, it's either hopeful or depressing.


Final Warning by Talal Abu Shawish, translated by Mohamed Ghalainey
3/5 stars

Residents in Ramallah and settlers in a nearby Israeli settlement come together when everything electronic goes dark.
 
This was a take on a classic sci-fi movie/book trope where aliens tell humans to do x, y, z, or else the aliens will kill them. I'm not sure if I really liked this, but I do like the hopepunk vibes though.


The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid by Mazen Maarouf, translated by Jonathan Wright
3/5 stars

What the hell was this long short story??? Something about an irradiated Palestinian living in a cube being watched over by a hitman with diabetes and a dude who's obsessed with his grandfather and his grandfather's Luger??

Mel and I were so lost. It read like the writer was either tripping on acid or drank multiple cans of old school 4loko.

Anyway, I was weirdly intrigued and amused by the whole thing.

[Kalin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book along with the Speculative Fiction in Translation group; here's our discussion thread.

There's something deeply disturbing about the prevalent tone of these stories--something that adds a sinister spin to the intro's claim that in Palestinian fiction, "Israelis hardly ever feature, as individuals, and when they do, they are rarely portrayed as out-and-out villains"--but I don't want to spend time exploring and formulating it right now. I'd rather focus my efforts on this seminar on nonviolent communication, with all the conflict transformation tools it provides. (Actually, I'm about to watch and discuss it with a group of friends in November and December; if you're close to GMT +2 and would like to join our online sessions, drop me a message.)

My reading notes:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories plus a novella, written by Palestinian authors, but in English and translated. They are all linked by a common theme, “what Palestine should be like in year 2048, a hundred years after the Nakba (or ‘catastrophe’)?”, when eighty percent of Palestinians (over 700,000 people in total) were expelled from their lands but the newly founded Israel. I read it as a part of monthly reading for October-November 2021 at Speculative Fiction in Translation group.

I usually go story-by-story in my reviews, but here the general theme is already set and an approach of each individual story may spoil it. So, instead I mention overall ideas: Palestinians living in a virtual reality; in a parallel universe; in their sleep; inviting Olympic games to one of the ghettos; Israelis building a perfect defense but going mad because of their internalized fear…

Almost all stories are by the very setup are local, it is not Earth in 2048, just Palestine in 2048 and Israelis are mostly presented in a negative light, either as an uncaring military-industrial complex, which more than in one story, kills Palestinians, who are innocent, or as some arrogant individuals.

The final (translated) novella maybe the most weird The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid – a collection of stories linked by the last living Palestinian (others are killed by guess who) and people around him, and I liked it for quite an unusual storytelling.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048...

... and none of them gives a realistic answer. The stories involve science fiction, fantasy, and other weirdness including virtual reality and parallel worlds.

I appreciated almost all of the stories. The story by Mazen Maarouf was the weirdest. I like weird, so may look for his other work.

[Cait · Rating 4 out of 5]

complete isolation is the secret to eliminating the present. isolation from the other, isolation from the self, isolation from existence. the isolation of schrodigner's qitt inside the box (was it a qitt or qitta? in english, the word cat doesn't even tell you if it is male or female, that is how isolated it is).

🗝️

he used to talk about our responsibility—even if we were the victims—towards the humanity of our enemies. fuck the humanity of our enemies, I'd say. that if we liberated ourselves without liberating the israelis from zionism it wasn't a liberation at all, and all that bullshit...that bullshit. that this victory, he thought, was essentially a hi-tech, scientific apartheid.

🗝️

"it's a matter for the cosmos. but fear not. there will be some resolution to this dark assault. there always is. the history of science fiction tells us: nobody comes this far without either a fat that they never win, or to teach us something about ourselves that we desperately need to learn."

I think my personal favorites were "song of the birds" by saleem haddad and "digital nation" by emad el-din aysha. thank you again to emma for alerting me to the existence of this collection!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked up my hold from the library, I immediately flipped to the back and Googled every contributor, hoping against hope they were all "safe" in the midst of Israel's war on Gazan civilians. While most are in the diaspora abroad, one contributor (per social media handles I found) appears to be living in a refugee camp, or on the run somewhere from the merciless onslaught. Hidden beneath the seemingly safe presence of any member of the Palestinian diaspora, though, is the fact that most have countless family members in Gaza who have been killed, creating a cataclysm of suffering that is shaking the world....

This collection is set 100 years after the Nakba, in 2048, and imagines Palestinian futures. They are not hopeful. In one, inspired by the true epidemic of Gazan youth suicides, teens look to death as an escape from a Utopian simulation of historical Palestine. In another, Israeli settlers are driven mad by the dispossessed returning and putting their house keys in the lock. In another, Israel and Palestine exist in adjacent realities powered by an inability to coexist in one. It is my hope against hope that one day, Palestinians will have the freedom to imagine better futures -- and exist in a better present than what the world has given them.

[Shaffira · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Palestinian refugees are, in this sense, like nomads travelling across a landscape of memory. They carry their village in their hearts, like an eternal compass where ‘north’ is always Palestine. They pass this compass down to their children, who sketch in the details on an ever-fading map — the hills and trees and wadis — from their own imagination. Every day spent away from Palestine, in the life of a Palestinian refugee, is one that they believe brings them a day closer to their return.”

In 1948, Israel declared itself as a state as more than 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their lands — this devastation was later called by Palestinians as “Nakba” or the catastrophe. This book is an anthology of twelve science-fiction stories by Palestinian writers that imagines Palestine in the year of 2048, exactly a hundred years after the Nakba.

As the editor explains, “When Palestinians write, they write about their past through their present, knowingly or unknowingly. Their writing is, in part, a search for their lost inheritance, as well as an attempt to keep the memory of that loss from fading.” And so, this book is a breakthrough of a kind, in the way it attempts to re-create and re-write the future of the Palestinian experience.

I’m not a fan of science fiction in general, but this book makes an interesting exploration in imagining Palestine and its people, in all the high-tech glory of the future. As the technology descriptions often escaped and fazed me, the stories were the strongest when they evoked powerful imageries to explore themes of loss and longing, collective memory, borders, war and peace.

In the most haunting story, “The Key”, its writer Anwar Hamed based his plot on a real-life anecdote: when Palestinians fled their homes in 1948, they left with their keys in their pockets, believing that it was only temporary and they could return home after a while. They never did, and many of them held on to the keys to their front doors for the rest of their lives. In the short story, the Israelis of the future are plagued with nightmares of “ghosts” trying to open their doors with an invisible key.

To this end, I’d like to quote the words of the editor, Basma Gayalini: “Everyday life, for [those based in Palestine], is a kind of dystopia. A West Bank Palestinian need only record their journey to work, or talk back to an IDF soldier at a checkpoint, or forget their ID card, or simply look out their car window at the walls, weaponry and barbed wire plastering their landscape, to know what a modern, totalitarian occupation is — something people in the West can only begin to understand through the language of dystopia. Hopefully, most readers in the West will never know what this kind of occupation feels like first-hand. But feel we must, all of us — even if that has to start with metaphors and allegories — if there is ever to be any hope of peace.”

3.5/5.

[TaraReadsBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible, well thought-out short stories that mix genres like sci-fi, dystopia, and horror. Very interesting to see how each writer chose to tackle the question of what would Palestine look like in 2048, 100 years after the Nakba. Still thinking about many of them.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

What’s really telling about this collection of Palestinian science fiction stories, all but one of the twelve set in Gaza, is the powerful sense of dystopia. Even those that seem to imagine some sense of utopia – marked by in most cases nothing more than peace and mundane daily life – ultimately turn on the continuation of the Occupation; it’s as if, for this group of authors at least, even the option of imaging a future world can’t escape the power of the circumstances of the current world.

As an aside: I began reading this collection just before Israel began its 2023 assault on Gaza in the wake of the Hamas attacks on settlements in southern Israel, the brutality and ‘soft target’ focus of many of those actions seeming to reflect a failure to understand the State including the distinction between the State and its subjects and the consequent weaknesses, failures, of Hamas’s political analysis (which is not to undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian grievance and struggle but to critique that faction’s – Hamas – analysis and actions) and the effects of the increasingly widely promulgated equation of Judaism (a religion) and Zionism (a theory of nation state building). At the same time, the Israeli response seems to reflect the reactionary character of its present government and its neo-fascist myths of territorial-racial purity while in control of the apparatus of a settler colonial state (but that’s for another venue). I can’t help but note however, that that context has no doubt framed my reading of the collection.

What was also telling, for me, is that none of the stories envisaged genocide either, at least not by military means – several envisage symbolic annihilation through concealment. One, perhaps the most interesting of them (‘The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid’), envisages genocide by bacteriological means until the last Palestinian has absorbed all of the pain of destruction, and their death risks its release back into the world maintained by the Occupation; it’s a richly built story of vengeance, wrapped up in a form of superhero narrative.

All the stories take place in the same year – 2048, 100 years since the Nakba, the ‘catastrophe’ that was the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 after the UN’s agreement to the borders of the new state of Israel, carved out from the British Mandate of Palestine. In her introduction, Ghalayini notes that Palestinian literature is heavily dominated by historical fiction, by tropes pointing to a search for a lost inheritance, an absence of an ‘enemy’, and what she notes as a generational disjuncture centred on a “cultural disconnect felt between different sets of refugees” (p xi). Most of those tropes persist here, often framed by a sense of misrecognition or a persistence of fantasy of (hoped for) security.

One story stood out for me though – partly I suspect because of my ‘day job’ as a sport studies scholar, but also because of the particular form of the dystopian-State imagined. In Ahmed Masoud’s ‘Application 39’ two men find themselves hauled up before the political leadership in part because they had submitted, as a ‘joke’, an application to host the Olympic games in Gaza, and in part because the IOC had awarded Gaza the games. It’s a sharp piece of political satire, with powerful commentary on the risks of disrupting the balance of (il)legitimacy in inter-state relations.

All in all, however, this is a powerful set of stories, opening up a genre (as Ghalayini notes) seldom seen in Palestinian literature, while also providing compelling insight into the contemporary Palestinian imaginary. Sobering, sharp, impressive.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a very promising 1st few stories my interest waned considerably to such an extent that I couldn't even finish the final piece.

[Cici · Rating 4 out of 5]

So neat to see how these stories were so different yet they all felt so cohesive. Even more interesting to see some of these stories—written in 2019—really parallel the current day. (Really a 3.5/5)

[Aizat Affendi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Palestine +100” is a bold and innovative anthology that invites readers to imagine the myriad of possibilities of a Palestinian future (in this case, 100 years after the Nakba or "Catastrophe" of 1948 where 700,000 of Palestinians were displaced by Zionist groups). The short stories explore themes of memory, resistance, and the resilience of the human spirit. Some of my favourites were "Song of the Birds", "Digital Nation", "Application for 39" and the last one, "The Curse of The Mud Ball Kid" which to me was quite the grotesque, yet poignant, story!

[F]

January 9:
The review it out, fellas :)

October 11:
Reread Palestine+100 to organize my thoughts and finish my review and is anyone surprised that I am definitely going to be handing in my review late? Because I certainly am not :)))

October 3:
Just finishing reading this book. First time that I have been asked to review a text for a journal! Will post a link to it when I finally write it :)

الحمدلله

[Ayala Levinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very sureal to have been reading this book now, while Gaza is being destroyed and the worst dystopia is unfolding. In every story some major event happened and this isn't"predicting october 7th" but just foreseeing the foreseeable. The last and longest story was amazing and disturbing to read while a war on Palestinian children is on.

[Joey Ayoub · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Future Palestinian Present

This piece was initially published on Mangal Media on August 25th, 2019.
https://joeyayoub.com/2019/09/03/the-...

There is a concept coined by the Lebanese writer Walid Sadek which denotes a present endlessly postponed by the lack of pasts and futures. He calls it ‘the protracted now’. Since discovering it in his The Ruin to Come, Essays from a Protracted War, I have been carrying this concept around with me, like an overweight suitcase that I’d rather check in at the nearest counter than shove it in the overhead compartment as I fly over fictional borders that harm real people. During the flight, it is checked in and, in those few hours, past and future exist in perfectly linear forms as places I leave from and places I go to. This, of course, does not last. The plane lands, the border acknowledges me with its usual disdain and I pick up my suitcase. And, just like that, the protracted now is back.

Reading the science fiction anthology Palestine+100, edited by Basma Ghalayini and written by 12 Palestinian writers, I couldn’t help but feel that the writers were also carrying an overweight suitcase with them. Theirs is a different protracted now, however, brought about not by a lack of a coherent past (as might be argued in the Lebanese case) but, on the contrary, from the past’s overwhelming presence. As Ghalayini explained in her introductory words, this relationship with time is why science fiction is not a common genre among Palestinian writers: “The cruel present (and the traumatic past) have too firm a grip on Palestinian writers’ imaginations for fanciful ventures into possible futures.”

This makes Palestine+100 all the more remarkable. Set in 2048, 100 years after the Nakba (Arabic for Catastrophe), the mass expulsion of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs (around 80% of the population) by Zionist forces during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, the contributors of Palestine+100 have imagined different scenarios for what that year might look like. The uniqueness of their different visions speaks to both their skills as established writers and to the inherently uncertain nature of a Palestinian future.

We start the book with Song of the Birds by Saleem Haddad and are immediately grounded in reality as the story is written in memory of Mohanned Younis, a 22-year old Palestinian writer from Gaza who asphyxiated himself in 2017. In Song of the Birds, set one year after Ziad, Aya’s brother, hanged himself, we see a family broken by suicide. Aya soon finds herself dreaming of Ziad, and progressively realises that her dreams aren’t just dreams. We experience Aya’s realisations as her dreams are revealed to be at least partly based in reality: In one dream, she sees children lying lifeless on the beach with a punctured football nearby, a likely reference to two events during the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza. This, in turn, makes Ziad’s appearances in Aya’s dreams all the more pertinent, as he reveals the nature of the world around her.

Song of the Birds could be categorized as ‘postwar’ science fiction since ‘the conflict’, by all appearances, has ended. But it is the very nature of some of these stories that the very category of ‘postwar’ is questioned. Is the conflict over? What does it mean? What happened to the Palestinians? What’s Israel? These are questions that are not always answered in Palestine+100. At the same time, they are not meant to be answered. Rather, the writers can be seen as experimenting with a reality-defying impossibility, namely a Palestinian future. These past few years seem to have increasingly consolidated the Israeli drive to erase the Palestinian past and present. If the state succeeds, what of the Palestinian future?

One story offers a possible answer: The Association by Samir El-Youssef (tr. Ralph Cormack). Here, we see memory turned into a weapon in the context of a 68-year-old historian’s murder. Set 20 years after the so-called 2028 Agreement ended the Eighty Year War, a journalist named Zaid decides to investigate the murder after reading about a piece of paper lying next to his body with a small circle drawn on it. As he investigates, he finds the circle a few more times and encounters some people dissatisfied with the Agreement. The fundamental logic underpinning the Agreement is that forgetting is better than remembering. The phrase “Don’t talk about what happened before” is repeated by everyone in Israel/Palestine, although it should be noted that neither ‘Israel’ nor ‘Palestine’ is mentioned in this story. Only cities (Jerusalem, Gaza), streets (Shohada Street) and bars (Bar Mokhtar) are mentioned by name. This speaks to the local/universal (so-called glocalization) quality of Palestinian literature, and perhaps good literature more broadly.

The ‘eighty years war’ – 1948 to 2028 – reminds me of ‘the events’, the term used to describe the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990, and the refusal to talk about ‘what happened before’ reminds me of the ‘no victor, no vanquished’ formula imposed on Lebanon’s population after the war. If no one won, who lost? If no one lost, who won? If no one lost and no one won, what was/were the war(s) about? 28 years after the end of the Lebanese civil war, these questions are still strongly discouraged. In The Association, events that happened between 1948 and 2028 in Israel/Palestine can’t be discussed, and a historian finds himself murdered for that reason: he is among the few who dared to explore what happened before 2028.

In this world, the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza lasted 20 years – 2007 to 2027 – so, presumably, the lifting of the blockade, and whatever replaced it, was part of the 2028 Agreement. The truth of the blockade is proclaimed by a group, Jidar (which means ‘wall’), described as among “dozens of different extremist groups”. Another group, Jozoor (‘roots’) is concerned with the “history of land reclamations”, a reference to the on-going (as of 2019) destruction of Palestinian houses by Israeli occupation forces. Another group, Mathaf (‘museum’), focused on preserving the memory of the occupation. Another group still, Harb (‘war’), emphasized the “mysterious” operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge, the respective Israeli names to the 2008–09 and 2014 wars. That they are described as extremists speaks to the militarization of history that the Israeli government is so dependent on today. More importantly, they describe themselves as opponents to the Agreement in the name of memory. Why, they ask, should peace come at the cost of losing the right to remember? These groups’ details are lacking, pushing the reader to wonder what kind of peace is afraid of facts. More importantly, just as novelists use historical events to shine a light on the present, the authors of Palestine+100 explore possible futures for the same reason. If we accept the protracted now thesis, this makes a lot of sense. Science fiction here expands the boundaries of what is imaginable, thus unshackling Palestinian writers from the choice between security and peace.

If what Ghalayini says is true, namely that Palestinian authors (she listed Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Ghassan Kanafani) have “all felt obligated” to remember the Nakba because “they have a cultural duty to remember it”, doesn’t that present an obstacle to the creativity of writers? Ghalayini argues that the past “is everything to a Palestinian writer; it is the only thing that makes their current existence and their identity meaningful.” But after reading Palestine+100, I can only conclude that some of the writers seem to have different answers. Ziad, the main character in Saleem Haddad’s The Song of Birds appears to challenge that idea. Ziad tells his sister Aya that we, the Arabs, “are trapped in the rose-tinted memories of our ancestors” and that our generation in particular ‘is imprisoned by our parents’ nostalgia”. Here, Palestinians’ dependence on collective memory makes them vulnerable, and that vulnerability has been harnessed by the state of Israel to create a simulation of a liberated Palestine. Most notably, people cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not. To write, to remember, because one feels a duty to do so can be exhausting, and there’s nothing wrong with recognizing that the occupied, the exiled and those in-between can also fail. But even in failure, a way out is possible. Ziad tells Aya to pay attention to the song of the birds as their loops can expose the simulation.

It is notable that alternative realities feature so prominently in this collection. In Majd Kayyal’s N (tr. Thoraya El-Rayes), Israel and Palestine occupy the same geographic space. However, it is not a One-State Solution that Kayyal portrays, but a world where two alternative realities co-exist. One can even travel between the Israeli world and the Palestinian world, but only if one was born after the Agreement. As in The Association and The Song of Birds, the Israelis and Palestinians in N live in a post-war world. We don’t know when the Agreement was passed in N, but we do know one of its conditions: “Both parties shall refrain from commemorating the hostilities that occurred between them, or any part thereof.” Here, too, the past is rendered taboo. From a Palestinian perspective, this is an Israeli attitude best exemplified through the widespread denial of the Nakba among Israelis.

Speaking of Israelis, their relative absence in most stories will, I suppose, be the most surprising aspect of this book to many readers. Palestinian fiction regularly features Israelis and, contrary to popular belief, often does so with great nuance. Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa, first published in 1970, is arguably the most famous one: Mariam, the Israeli woman living in Said and Safeyya’s former house is portrayed as a complex person, ashamed of how Palestinians were treated. This was, and perhaps still is, the best-kept open secret of Palestinian literature: The “Other”, the Israeli, is not unknown. To borrow from James Baldwin, the Israelis never had to look at Palestinians, but Palestinians have always had to look at Israelis.

But being aware that individual Israelis inhabit complexity does not change the fact that the state of Israel has been in the business of erasing Palestinian history since 1948. To this day, the Israeli Defence Ministry goes through Israel’s national archives to remove historic documents related to the Nakba, even violating the country’s own laws to do so. The goal is fairly straightforward: by removing archival evidence, historians’ footnotes become claims that can be contested by the state, both in the realm of politics and of law. Yehiel Horev, head of the Defense Ministry’s security department from 1986 to 2007, said so himself: “When the state imposes confidentiality, the published work is weakened because he doesn’t have the document.”

Thus, the Israeli state continues its war on the Palestinian past through censorship and on the Palestinian present through violence. This gives science fiction a creative potential that has yet to be truly explored: that of creating a new imaginary. The Palestinian future is the only temporal realm that the Israeli state cannot shoot, bomb, or erase. Whether or not this imaginary ends up stuck in the protracted now, it is too soon to tell. But by creating these new imaginaries, the writers allow readers to temporarily escape the protracted now. In those imagined moments, political hope is possible as linear time is restored. The past can be past without dominating the present, and the present can be acted upon to create a better future. The question remains, however, whether that overweight suitcase that we are forced to collect upon arrival can ever be discarded. Are new imaginaries enough to unshackle Palestinian politics from the Israeli-imposed protracted now? I suspect not, for new Israeli imaginaries would also be required.

[Aina · Rating 5 out of 5]

PALESTINE +100 is a fascinating, poignant collection of science-fiction stories set a century after the 1948 Nakba. It feels unreal reading these dystopian stories in light of what’s happening right now, yet similarities in the present and the predicted future feel eerily relevant. Will a lasting peace be achieved, or will technology be another form of oppression? The stories feature imagined high-tech advancements, realistic virtual reality, drone swarms, aliens, and even a superhero.

My favourite stories:

Vengeance (Tasnim Abutabikh) - a man seeks vengeance for a longtime grudge but nothing is as it seems
Application 39 (Ahmed Masoud) - Two friends pull a prank by applying for Gaza to host the Olympics with unintended consequences
Digital Nation (Emad El-Din Aysha) - hackers use technology to cause a digital uprising in a quest for a liberated Palestine
The Key (Anwar Hamed) - a father worries when his daughter starts hearing things at home
The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid (Mazen Maarouf) - a boy dreams of being a superhero but his wish is granted in an unexpected way

Highly recommended!

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[2TReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great collection of short stories, speaking to the legacy of memory, displacement, and home. The authors creatively utilised advanced tech to imagine futures that are all too feasible.

‘Sometimes, home is simply a matter of changing your perspective.’

This collection features stories that run the gamut when it comes to extrapolating a future for the Palestinian people and each are unique yet similar in the technology that will be created and advanced, the new ways in which walls will be built, the evolution of containment and collaboration.

But what is at the heart of all of these stories is memory of place and time. What was and is being taken, when it started and a hope for when it will end. The authors have all utilised "advanced tech" and the myriad ways in which it can be used to perpetuate violence, dispossesion, and disregard for the humanity of a group of people.

The resilience and esteem for their heritage that the Palestinian people have is inherent in every story, with emphasis placed on the passing down of historical memory and the weight it bears. How the memories of grandparents and great grandparents fuel the drive of resistance of young Palestinians today.

What stuck with me is the ways in which each story depicted acts of passive and active resistance.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many times that these stories fly off in unexpected directions but the dream like aspect of the collection is part of the message I think. Reading it will likely prompt further wild ideas in your own mind of how things might evolve. It's a collection that came out before the current Gaza genocide yet in more than one place the authors imagined events during our current decade that haven't been far off the mark.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great collection of speculative fiction about what Palestine would be like in 2049 written by Palestinian authors. The first story was utterly spectacular. And really disturbing, showing the effects so well of generational trauma.
None of the other stories I liked as much. But still overall a wonderful collection and I'm really glad I found it.

[Tasha Ford · Rating 3 out of 5]

'When Palestinians write, they write about their past through their present, knowingly or unknowingly. Their writing is, in part, a search for their lost inheritance, as well as an attempt to keep the memory of that loss from fading.'

[Celine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️rounded up. I thought this collection of stories captured so many different effects of the trauma associated with the Nakba. The authors use elements of sci fi in really interesting ways to explore future states that speak to the past and consider what might be possible in the future given tech advances and AI. Having access to the elements of sci fi to go beyond our current “reality” was very powerful. Some of it was very dark and some I didn’t fully understand but for the most part I enjoyed it. My fave stories were Song of the Birds, Digital Nation and Application 39.

[Soph Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

little mixed but overall an important collection.

[Lindsay Saligman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science fiction isn’t really my thing but I found the concept of this book interesting enough to give it a try.

I found the stories to be hit or miss. Something that struck me about the collection overall was how humanly and sympathetically the Israeli characters portrayed, even though the amorphous government in the stories did horrible things.

My two favorite stories were the first (about the Gaza suicide and freedom of digital return) because the idea of creating a world made of collective memory and the impossibility or keeping the bad memories from seeping in seemed to mirror the present in an eerie way. I also liked the last story (about the mud ball kid), because of the magical realism and how it managed to hit home in a striking way despite having so many elements of fantasy.

I think overall that’s what I did appreciate about the book, despite its shortcomings: that it used technology and fantasy as a way of conveying the present through analogy, which allowed an outsider like me to see it differently.

[Lagatta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved: song of the birds, the key and digital nation.

[Bram Medelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this after October 7th 2024 really drive home the point that October 7th stands on a timeline that started all the way back in 1948. I started reading this not to learn all the historical facts but to feel and imagine what the situation is like. These stories, as well as the insightful introduction, were very emotional to read. The generations of pain and unfulfilled dreams of going back home are heavy to grasp. It does give me the courage to speak out against the still ongoing grave injustices in Palestine.

From the introduction by Basma Ghalayini

"Hopefully, most readers in the West will never know what this kind of occupation feels like first-hand. But feel we must, all of us - even if that has to start with metaphors and allegories - if there is ever to be any hope of peace."

[Tahoora Hashmi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was honestly a whole struggle to get through this book. It might be because I wasn't in the right mood but here is what worked out for me and didn't work out for me.
I am assuming (as it always is) some of these stories probably sound more appealing in the original Language because I realllyy struggled to understand certain stories at times. While it was easier to understand what the author's stances were, it was hard to decipher what the stories were about (in certain cases). At the same time there were stories that beautifully portrayed the emotions and relationships of a person in a setting inspired from the current state of Palestine and Israel. There are certain stories that are definitely going to stay with me for a longer period of time and maybe something I'd want to go back to. So maybe one day when I'm in a different mood I'd give it a chance again but not so soon.