Living on Islands

​​It is Yom Ha'atzmaut, Independence Day in Israel. The television shows images of six-year-olds playing with real machine guns and being taught how to use radio equipment by army officers; proud grandfathers perch their grandsons on Merkava tanks for family photos.

Elsewhere in Israel, a Palestinian pensioner devotedly ploughs the soil around one of the olive trees in his garden. For him, Yom Ha'atzmaut is not a day of celebration. On the contrary, it is the anniversary of al-nabka (the catastrophe), when the majority of Palestinians were forced into exile.

This highly symbolic extract from the film Telling Strings may seem somewhat unsubtle, but the film made by Anne-Marie Haller and the Palestinian musician Kamilya Joubran about her family in Israel is anything but clichéd.

Despite some weaknesses, Telling Strings is one of the strongest and most beautiful documentaries about Palestinians in Israel to be filmed in recent years.

The positive side of Palestinian society

The film highlights the positive characteristics of Palestinians - their peaceable, down-to-earth nature, their humour, and their pragmatism - and the positive aspects of Palestinian society that are often overlooked by the media in the light of the excessive violence perpetrated by minorities. The film shows that Palestinian culture is varied and humane, but also tragically threatened with extinction.

Moreover, the film's protagonists serve up incredibly clear-sighted and incisive political analyses. Anyone who thinks that the Middle East conflict is simply too complicated to understand, will know better at the end of Telling Strings.

The plot of the film is straightforward: the singer Kamilya Joubran, who used to be the front woman of the Palestinian folk music group Sabreen and is now a solo artist based in Switzerland, returned to Israel for an Easter visit in 2006. She was accompanied on the trip by director Anne-Marie Haller and a camera team.

Joubran spent a few days in her native town, Rame, watching her 75-year-old father make a new oud for her. She also interviewed a number of musician friends and talked to her parents and brothers.

Born in the wrong country

Most of the conversations are about what it is like to be a Palestinian in Israel. The complete lack of illusion and the intellectual clarity of the people taking part in these conversations is fascinating. Although all of the interviews were spontaneous, not a single word is superfluous and every sentence is well-considered.

​​The fact that none of the interviewees have any illusions whatsoever is very striking: "The Zionists had planned the foundation of the state well in advance," says father Elias Joubran in one of the interviews. "At the time, the Arabs were completely incapable of planning; and they still are. They just improvise and deceive each other." He soberly concludes: "We may be second-class citizens in Israel, but at least I am still living in my own home. Anything is better than being a refugee."

In another revealing interview conducted at his workbench, Joubran sarcastically remarks: "I was born into the wrong family, the wrong district, the wrong country. But it doesn't matter. This workshop has been my world for over 50 years."

He goes on to say that it is the rhythm of making musical instruments that keeps him going. "I select the wood and from that moment on, I am in a state of tension that carries me along until the moment I finish the oud or the bouzouki. Then I move on to the next instrument and the whole process starts over."

Music as an escape

It becomes clear that music is both an escape and a therapy that helps people deal with the abnormal situation in which they find themselves. During these conversations, the camera gently moves away from the speakers and quietly focuses on things that encapsulate Palestinian life: breathtakingly beautiful scenery, the love of the fields and gardens, the pleasure that is taken in the simple things of life … coffee, cigarettes, a chat on the sofa.

Viewers who are not very familiar with Palestinian culture will at times be perplexed by these images, especially when, for example, without any explanation the camera focuses on prickly pears, pizzas, and biscuits. In cases such as this, it would have been helpful to get the mother to describe the great symbolic value the prickly pear (subbara), thyme pizza (Mana'isch), or filled biscuits (Maamul) have for dispossessed, exiled Palestinians the world over.

Language, music, and food are sometimes the only things that connect the members of the Palestinian diaspora to their lost homeland. This film demonstrates this fact in a most impressive manner. The significance of these images will, however, be lost on those who do not know very much about the minutiæ of Palestinian life.

The gulf separating two communities

Despite the fact that Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis live in close proximity to one another, the gulf that separates them is worryingly wide. When Kamilya drives north from Tel Aviv at the start of the film, she ignores a row of flags bearing the Star of David along the coast road. They are not her flags.

The majority of Israelis in the documentary are members of the military. Although there are several predominantly Jewish villages in the immediate vicinity of Joubran's home town of Rame, Jewish Israelis barely play a role in the family's everyday life. It is as if the Palestinians in Israel are living on islands. This is a trend that has been reinforced by the wall. That being said, for the protagonists of the film, Israel is their home; there is no question about that.

The film ends with Kamilya Joubran's return to Europe. She carries the oud that her father made for her in a metal case on her back. The instrument is a valuable piece of Palestine that she will carry with her wherever she goes. It would have been nice to find out more about Kamilya Joubran herself. Maybe in the next film …

Martina Sabra

© Qantara.de 2008

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan

Qantara.de

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