Days of Dust

Barakat is a sociologist who spent some time, as the central protagonist of the novel does, working with Palestinian refugees in Amman immediately after the 1967 war. His experiences are reflected here fictionally based on anecdotes he collected from said refugees. The book is quite powerful and merely follows day-by-day the six days of the conflict as seen through the eyes of a wide array of Arab and Palestinian eyewitnesses in a sort of Magnolia/Babel/21 Grams-ish web of lives interconnecting. The steady descent of the morale of the characters and their confidence in their rulers plays out quite deftly throughout the novel, and it reads quite fluidly (I finished it in about 2 hours). It is quite torturous with some rather disturbing scenes of napalm runs and street-to-street fighting some of the characters involve themselves in. This is a book by an Arab and expressing quite openly an Arab perspective on the events which in Europe and the United States has been somewhat muted. There is very little Israeli presence felt, save for some brief interactions between a Swiss nun tending refugees and a young Israeli soldier. This is mostly a chronicle of Arab reaction, disgust, and an intense, introspective look at the Arab geist of the time. Highly recommended.

Since we live in the West, we get the West's version of history. Halim Barakat, a lebbonese christian offers us an amazing fictional look at the Six Days War that not only crystilizes non-Israeli sentiment on the issue, but created a form of Arabic revolutionary literature when first published. Barakat's work is persuasive, fiery prose, intercutting several characters but mainly concerning itself with Ramzy (or "symbol") his autobiographical main character. This book is one of the more powerful 180 pages I've read, and the introduction by Edward Said is really great. The book occasionally lurches toward self indulgence, but considering that Barakat is not a novelist by trade, I think this is excusable. By this book. Read it. Change your mode of thought.