FICTION Let it be Morning By Sayed Kashua, translated by Miriam Shlesinger Black Cat, 270pp. $13.A MAN RETURNS to the bedroom he once shared with his two brothers in his childhood home.
"I look around the room I left ten years ago. Nothing's changed, except for the fact that nobody lives in it." It is no journey of nostalgia. The narrator has too many problems to dwell overly long on sentiment. Arab-Israeli journalist Sayed Kashua, who is well-known in Jerusalem, has attempted what could be seen as the near-impossible - making the chaos of daily life in the war-torn Middle East almost clear to the outsider. Kashun's narrator is also a journalist, but one who has seen his once-promising career disintegrate. It seems the very fact that helped establish him, that of belonging to the Arab-Israeli minority, has now gone against him owing to political change.
"But I wasn't fired. The newspaper continued using me as a reporter in the West Bank, mainly because I was the only one who could deliver the goods, who could go into the Palestinian cities and villages and come back with stories. But ever since then they'd been keeping an eye on me. Every sentence I wrote was inspected . . . Some of the journalists in the Hebrew press - non-Zionist left-wingers - allowed themselves to lash out against the occupation and against the restrictions imposed on the Palestinian inhabitants, but I no longer dared. The privilege of criticising government policy was an exclusively Jewish prerogative."
This is a direct statement, yet if Kashua has intended to write an angry polemic this is about as close to that as it gets. Let it Be Morning is, for all its topicality, a story about one man's efforts to salvage a life, his life, and his ability to control it. Back home living with his parents in his native Arab-Israeli village is not all that romantic. There are tensions; his young wife, whom he doesn't really know all that well, is dealing with their baby and her teaching job. The domestic detail is well handled; the narrator soon emerges as likeable and a bit depressed. His voice is candid, and he is dealing with the reality of the moment as well as his memories of his earlier life. His parents have rallied and built him a home. "My parents cashed in a savings account and they're putting it all into the house now, so I can move in. That's the way it is around here: good parents build homes for their children."
So, considering this could have been a most political book, an earnest polemic similar to that of Mohsin Hamid's 2007 Booker contender, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Kashua has instead decided to let the human story take over. His narrator is dealing with his home life and his return to the village, while also mulling over the career that may have floundered but has left him with as many insights as he has opinions.
If it all hangs together it is thanks to the conversational tone - it is Amos Oz's Fima without the humour and comic exasperation - as well as the skill of the translator who has succeeded in conveying a narrative flow. "Everyone watches Al Jazeera when there's a new war on. Later, people get tired of it, because all the wars on television look the same lately. Someone had better come up with something new on the next war. We can't take it anymore, it's too boring staring at a black or green screen."
Just in case anyone is unclear about his views, the narrator continues: "I'm not too crazy about Al Jazeera. From the little I can see, they spend hour after hour talking with experts and commentators, broadcasting news that everyone's heard already, news that most of the Arab world is used to hearing and likes to hear. They never mention the names of Arab leaders, never do any investigative reporting about rulers or important figures in the Arab world. They don't want to upset anyone, least of all the oil magnates in the Gulf, with all their money - the money which, when all is said and done, pays for these channels. It's pretty pathetic, really; the big name that the channel has made for itself is a hoax."
Having been a news insider, he is now a freelance hoping for a story, checking for messages and e-mails that don't arrive. His daily life increasingly looks to survival. The electricity is cut off, and then the village loses its water supply. Once the water stops flowing, the sewers block up and the situation becomes very unpleasant. Food supplies are also threatened and the narrator decides to buy up as much food and water as he can. All of this is readable and plausible. Once the neighbours discover who has been buying up all the local food, tempers flare.
Interestingly, Kashua does not attempt to present the Arab-Israeli village as a haven under fire. The tensions are obvious and, as the narrator observes, much of the trouble is being caused by local criminals who, having attacked the soldiers, are then - wrongly, in his opinion - treated as heroes.
First published in Hebrew in 2004 and in translation in Canada and the US two years later, Let It Be Morning is a readable, accessible performance from a writer intent on looking at the human stories behind the international headlines. Shortlisted for this year's International Impac Dublin Literary Award, Let It Be Morning is convincing domestic realism from the viewpoint of one family's daily life.
Nothing overly dramatic happens, aside from seeing how quickly neighbours can become enemies. On a wider level, this low-key narrative suggests that Sayed Kashua knows that the most effective way of making a point is by letting the story tell itself..
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
