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SILBERSCHLAG / ARABS IN HEBREW FICTION
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zation led to inevitable polarization: massacres in 1921 with
B renne r as one of the victims in Jaffa, massacres in 1929 and the
concom itant bloodshed o f innocents in Jerusa lem and Hebron ,
hostilities from 1936 to 1939 and four wars o f futility. Eventually
the Arab became the enemy. Already an early writer like Aaron
Reuveni (1886-1971) expressed an awareness o f fear which was
generated by the presence o f the indigenous Arab.
In the first decades o f the century the attitude o f Jew to Arab
ih Hebrew fiction, especially in the work o f Yehudah Yaari
(1901 -
) and Yizhak Shenhar (1902-1957) — reflects general
benevolence. T he Arab is idealized or romanticized. But in the
work o f Isaac Shami (1889-1949), a native of H ebron and an
unsurpassed portraitist o f the Arab in Hebrew literature, the
Arab is ne ither romanticized no r de-romanticized. A neglected
au tho r in Israel, an unknown au tho r outside Israel, he succeeds
in recrea ting Arab characters with matchless ta lent in th ree
stories — a meager ou tpu t quantitatively bu t qualitatively un su r
passed before or after him. Two o f them — “In the Sands o f the
Desert” and “Jum a the Simpleton” concentrate on the Bedouin
and the shepherd respectively. T he th ird ,
Ancestral Vengeance
—
almost a novel in length and the best o f his stories — is more
ambitious. The plot reflects life in placid Palestine at the begin
ning o f the century.
T he festival o f Moses the P rophe t — al-Nebi Musa in Arabic —
is the fulcrum o f the story. T he pilgrimage to the alleged sepul
chre o f Moses — in Je rusa lem according to Arab tradition, some
where in the vicinity o f Mount Nebo in Jo rd an according to
Hebrew tradition — is the essential element in the plot. T he chief
protagonist and leader o f the pilgrims o f Schechem, Nimr Abu
al-Sawarib, who kills the leader o f the pilgrims o f Hebron , Abu
Faris, at the entrance o f the alleged grave of Moses, is depicted as
a traditionalist par excellence. Abu Faris, on the o the r hand, is a
sly plo tter who tries to achieve with trickery what he cannot
accomplish with bravery. At the penultimate moment of the festi
val the assembled crowds face the sepulchre while the standards
o f each town are b rough t into the mosque. But at tha t very
moment Abu Faris’s dapp led steed passes Abu al-Sawarib’s in
fiery gallop. T ha t means: Abu Faris wins p ride o f place for the
Hebronites as he enters the holy sepulchre by force. At tha t
moment Abu al-Sawarib commits murder . Abu Faris manages to
hurl at his killer the insulting sobriquet: whoreson. But Abu