Minor Detail
by Adania Shibli
translated by Elisabeth Jacquette
2016, reprinted 2020
I mentioned last time that I was in the middle of slowly reading a literary novella. That book was Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. In its slim hundred pages, Shibli tells two stories - first a faithful piece of historical fiction about a real event, and second a narrator who seems much like Shibli herself who tries to learn more about that event. Since the narrator's search in the second half is set in motion by her reading a real newspaper article from 2003, I suppose it qualifies as historical fiction as well, or at least, very historically-situated contemporary fiction.
I should mention now that the event at the heart of Shibli's book was the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl by a unit of the Israeli military in 1949. According to the Haaretz article, 20 soldiers, including the unit leader, were court-martialed and imprisoned for this.
I should also mention that I only heard of Shibli at this time because Shibli was going to receive an award for Minor Detail at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, but on October 13, the Fair announced that were canceling the prize-giving ceremony this year, and Shibli and her German translator's talks were also both canceled. So I requested a copy of the book from a local library, because I wanted to know what had made the people behind this decision so afraid. Having read it, I don't think they could've been afraid that Shibli would be some sort of firebrand. I'm worried they were afraid that she would inspire empathy for Palestinians.
My empathy does not operate on some kind of zero-sum logic. I have lost none of my feelings for the Israeli civilians killed or the hostages taken on October 7. I will say that my empathy for Palestinian civilians has increased since then, both because so so many have been killed by Israeli bombs and soldiers (and presumably by lack of food, clean water, and adequate medical care) and because I have been learning a lot about what the conditions in Gaza and the West Bank were like before this latest war.
Let me state that I am opposed to killing civilians to achieve political goals. I'm not all that fond of the idea of killing soldiers either, to be perfectly honest. But if you're looking for someone who'll say that you're right, and your side should be allowed to kill their children, then I don't even care which side you're talking about, keep looking. You're wrong.
So, Shibli's novella is compact, and highly symmetrical. The first 52 pages tell one story, set in 1949, the second 52 tell another, probably set in 2003. Important events occur at the halfway point of each story. And each of the protagonists makes a fateful, consequential mistake without realizing it very early in their story.
The protagonist of the first half is the unnamed Israeli unit leader who will eventually authorize his soldiers to rape the girl and who will eventually order her killing. Shibli grants him no direct interiority, narrating in the third person, but we stay very closely fixed on him and his activities during this section. The story starts with his unit's arrival at their new base, where they set up camp and are ordered to patrol the surrounding desert and kill any Arabs they find.
I should mention now that the event at the heart of Shibli's book was the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl by a unit of the Israeli military in 1949. According to the Haaretz article, 20 soldiers, including the unit leader, were court-martialed and imprisoned for this.
I should also mention that I only heard of Shibli at this time because Shibli was going to receive an award for Minor Detail at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, but on October 13, the Fair announced that were canceling the prize-giving ceremony this year, and Shibli and her German translator's talks were also both canceled. So I requested a copy of the book from a local library, because I wanted to know what had made the people behind this decision so afraid. Having read it, I don't think they could've been afraid that Shibli would be some sort of firebrand. I'm worried they were afraid that she would inspire empathy for Palestinians.
My empathy does not operate on some kind of zero-sum logic. I have lost none of my feelings for the Israeli civilians killed or the hostages taken on October 7. I will say that my empathy for Palestinian civilians has increased since then, both because so so many have been killed by Israeli bombs and soldiers (and presumably by lack of food, clean water, and adequate medical care) and because I have been learning a lot about what the conditions in Gaza and the West Bank were like before this latest war.
Let me state that I am opposed to killing civilians to achieve political goals. I'm not all that fond of the idea of killing soldiers either, to be perfectly honest. But if you're looking for someone who'll say that you're right, and your side should be allowed to kill their children, then I don't even care which side you're talking about, keep looking. You're wrong.
So, Shibli's novella is compact, and highly symmetrical. The first 52 pages tell one story, set in 1949, the second 52 tell another, probably set in 2003. Important events occur at the halfway point of each story. And each of the protagonists makes a fateful, consequential mistake without realizing it very early in their story.
The protagonist of the first half is the unnamed Israeli unit leader who will eventually authorize his soldiers to rape the girl and who will eventually order her killing. Shibli grants him no direct interiority, narrating in the third person, but we stay very closely fixed on him and his activities during this section. The story starts with his unit's arrival at their new base, where they set up camp and are ordered to patrol the surrounding desert and kill any Arabs they find.
The leader is a meticulous man who is very careful about cleaning himself of sweat and dirt, shaving, and keeping his uniform neat. On the first night, he's bitten on the leg by a snake or spider or something. The wound is nasty, becomes infected, and starts necrotizing almost immediately. You could almost feel sorry for the guy.
After several days of discipline and routine during which the soldiers find nothing and the leader's wound gets worse and worse while he stoically and steadfastly ignores his own obvious health crisis, one morning their patrol of the desert discovers a family of herders. The soldiers kill them all, and their animals, except for a teenage girl and her dog, who they take back to camp. The leader calls the camp together, tears off the girls' clothes, orders her publicly cleaned with a hose, and her hair cut and dipped in gasoline to prevent lice. He then gives the other soldiers permission to rape her. That night he also rapes her, although his wound impairs him. The next day he orders her execution.
In the second story, we're introduced to a young Palestinian woman who has just read about this crime in the news. The day the girl died was on this young woman's birthday, 25 years before she was born. (I'll note that Shibli was also born in 1974.) The narrator works in an office, and tells us she is basically happy, although she's also anxious, and she worries that her morality is becoming defective. For example because when Israeli soldiers bomb the building next-door to her office to kill three men inside, she is more upset about being late to work about about all the dust in the office than she is about the deaths, and she recognizes this isn't how she wants to feel.
So, this narrator, who talks in the first person, who seems generally kind and chatty, tells us that she read the story in the news, but wants to understand something of what the girl felt. Not to read the event from the perpetrators' perspective, but to empathize with the victim. She calls the reporter, and he tells her the museums and archives where he found his information. Because she can't leave the neighborhood, she gets one coworker to lend her her ID card and another coworker to rent her a car, and she sets out to go to the museum. Almost by accident, she buys some gum from a beggar girl while she's stopped in traffic at a military checkpoint.
When driving, she has to consult several maps, and keeps comparing the current Israeli map to a map of the region from 1947, and she keeps noticing and despairing about the villages that are no longer there. She takes a roundabout route to the museum because she thinks the most direct path will have too many checkpoints in the way. She arrives at the museum at the halfway point in the story. She sees uniforms, guns, jeeps from that time, but no information she thinks will help her.
After several days of discipline and routine during which the soldiers find nothing and the leader's wound gets worse and worse while he stoically and steadfastly ignores his own obvious health crisis, one morning their patrol of the desert discovers a family of herders. The soldiers kill them all, and their animals, except for a teenage girl and her dog, who they take back to camp. The leader calls the camp together, tears off the girls' clothes, orders her publicly cleaned with a hose, and her hair cut and dipped in gasoline to prevent lice. He then gives the other soldiers permission to rape her. That night he also rapes her, although his wound impairs him. The next day he orders her execution.
In the second story, we're introduced to a young Palestinian woman who has just read about this crime in the news. The day the girl died was on this young woman's birthday, 25 years before she was born. (I'll note that Shibli was also born in 1974.) The narrator works in an office, and tells us she is basically happy, although she's also anxious, and she worries that her morality is becoming defective. For example because when Israeli soldiers bomb the building next-door to her office to kill three men inside, she is more upset about being late to work about about all the dust in the office than she is about the deaths, and she recognizes this isn't how she wants to feel.
So, this narrator, who talks in the first person, who seems generally kind and chatty, tells us that she read the story in the news, but wants to understand something of what the girl felt. Not to read the event from the perpetrators' perspective, but to empathize with the victim. She calls the reporter, and he tells her the museums and archives where he found his information. Because she can't leave the neighborhood, she gets one coworker to lend her her ID card and another coworker to rent her a car, and she sets out to go to the museum. Almost by accident, she buys some gum from a beggar girl while she's stopped in traffic at a military checkpoint.
When driving, she has to consult several maps, and keeps comparing the current Israeli map to a map of the region from 1947, and she keeps noticing and despairing about the villages that are no longer there. She takes a roundabout route to the museum because she thinks the most direct path will have too many checkpoints in the way. She arrives at the museum at the halfway point in the story. She sees uniforms, guns, jeeps from that time, but no information she thinks will help her.
She drives to the Israeli settlement with the same name as the site of the crime, and visits the archive there. She learns that the original settlement was destroyed by the Egyptian army in 1948 and it was rebuilt on this new site a few years later. So she's in the wrong place. She takes a brochure, and realizes that it has a website, suggesting she could have learned all this from home.
She goes out to the site of the original settlement, the scene of the crime, but finds nothing, learns nothing. She stops for gas and spills some on herself. She comes back to the settlement and an Israeli man rents her a room for the night. In the morning, she should go home, but continues driving around the area, and stumbles on some Israeli soldiers doing a training exercise, and in that moment, she finally learns what the girl felt.
Although this book is short, the writing is dense with detail. Shibli gives very different narrative voices to the two halves, but then connects them through the repetition of imagery, and the structuring events.
She goes out to the site of the original settlement, the scene of the crime, but finds nothing, learns nothing. She stops for gas and spills some on herself. She comes back to the settlement and an Israeli man rents her a room for the night. In the morning, she should go home, but continues driving around the area, and stumbles on some Israeli soldiers doing a training exercise, and in that moment, she finally learns what the girl felt.
Although this book is short, the writing is dense with detail. Shibli gives very different narrative voices to the two halves, but then connects them through the repetition of imagery, and the structuring events.
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