By: Dr. Mohammad Aleem ( Chief News Editor-ICN Group )
Tracing the day-to-day struggle and triumph of a Palestinian boy, Ichmad Hamid, who, later on, turns to be a Nobel Prize winner in Physics.
Ichmad listens to his teacher patiently and gives his advice a due importance. He studies at night when he finds himself free from his tedious and bone cracking work during the day.
He has worked for some time at a slaughter house also. What is the condition of that house and how it impacts the whole village has been suitably summarized in these few lines:
“The chimney from the slaughterhouse and accompanying factories spread thick, oily, black smoke throughout our village. Because we had no sewage system, the filth, grease and chemicals from the slaughterhouse soaked into our soil. Bubbles of carbonic acid rose to the surface, while grease and filth caked the land. Every now and then, the land would catch fire and the whole village would run and put it out with buckets of well-water.” (P- 103)
This situation is almost with the entire occupied territory of Palestine. They live like a second class citizen and most of the time, even worse than a slave, on their own legitimate land which the aggressor Israelis had occupied it forcefully.
Ichmad luckily gets the chance to appear in a competitive exam and he succeeds at it.
And he is offered a scholarship at a Hebrew university. He is the first Palestinian boy who goes there to study. He meets there adverse situations and most of the time, his friends at college spew scorns and humiliation on him, but he bears all with patience and determination for he knew that only this could make him success in his life.
He remembers his father’s word always in every adverse situation. He is always a pillar of strength and force for him.
“You cannot go back and make a new start, but you can start now and make a new end.” (P- 115)
He believes that he will be able to give a good start to his life. And finally he succeeds and he graduates from that university and after his post graduation he gets a scholarship to do his doctorate from an American university where he goes with his fellow science Professor, Menachem Sharon. He was the person who once despised and hated him abhorrently, but later on, when he realizes his talents, he not becomes a close associate of him but helps him in realizing his goal.
In America, they succeed and in the end they reach to the world’s most coveted award, the Nobel Prize.
The story of America is somehow with fewer struggles and passes it like a mild breeze.In those happy moments, a fragrant breeze comes as Nora in the life of Ichmad. She is a Jew.Her parents are quite wealthy and influential people. They work for the greater cause of the welfare of the society, but when it comes to think about the marriage of their only daughter to a Palestinian boy, it becomes hard for them to swallow. Ichmad and Nora marry finally and start living together happily, but its end comes soon in the form of a devastating incident at his village home.
Nora becomes victim of Israeli aggression there. When the bulldozer of Israeli army comes to raze the Ichmad’s house on the pretext of punishing them for joining the militant group of his younger brother, Abbas, Nora comes in the way of that barbaric aggression and she gets crushed.
It is a cold blooded murder and even her influential parents don’t succeed in bringing out the killers to justice. Such is the high-handedness of Israeli army and its political heads.The novel has some other characters also which succeed in ingraining their presence in the mind of the reader quite successfully like Manchem’s second wife, Justice, Ichmad’s second wife, Yasmin and his mother.
They are fine women and seem always doing their thing quite sensibly. Ichmad’s mother is an illiterate, so she has her own understanding of seeing and doing the things, but the other two women are quite intelligent and they have some humble corners in their hearts for oppressed one.
Second most important character in the novel is the younger brother of Ichmad, Abbas who turns a militant, but he doesn’t succeed in reaping any substantial results from it. It shows that you can’t get anything applying violence, but peace and higher education will take you there where you want to reach. But the enemy forces know it well that how to keep these kinds of people away from education and wisdom. They, in a much planned way, deprive them from their good and sound thinking power.
It reminds me the days of the British in India and even at the present scenario here, only a few chosen one goes to good schools and universities and a vast number gets unattended. The worst condition is of Muslims and other such class who are forced to live on the fringes of the society.
But this novel not only narrates the gloom and sadness of one’s life, but good and rosy side also. It also looks a bit idealistic approach and an exceptional case in itself. What if Ichmad was not an intelligent boy and good at his studies as he used to be in the story, then what would have happened? Is there any place in the society for deprived one and for those who are not so lucky to get good talents in their lives? Then, who will take care of those boys and girls?
I will conclude this article on these lines penned by the famous social activist of India, Harsh Mander. He writes on the editorial page of the Hindustan Times on 14th January, 20013.“In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks why the pursuit of justice is universal in human societies and concludes that this is primarily because human empathy, as well as the longing for freedom and reason, is essential to human nature. Empathy involves feeling the pain and humiliation of others as though it was one’s own.” (The Hindustan Times)
The whole Israeli establishment should understand that if they want to succeed in establishing the lasting peace with its Arab neighbors, they would have to come out to them with a big heart and an open mind. Violence would take them nowhere. They can’t rule on Palestinians like this forever.
This novel looks quite relevant for the Indian Muslims also, who, in the current political and social scenario, looks like the downtrodden and deprived Palestinians many thousand miles away from India.
