The romantic character is generally only one of many elements used by the novelist to create a story. Other elements include plot, descriptions, point of view, narrative techniques, etc. However, the reader is spontaneously inclined to ignore all this and to see in a novel only the story of this or that character. A certain effort is in fact necessary to free oneself from this spontaneous reading and realize that the fictional character – even if he is both the protagonist and the narrator – is only one of the components of the story: like the plot, descriptions, etc., it is contained in the story and subordinated to its logic.

We can nevertheless imagine a reversal of this relationship of subordination. In The Thousand and One Nights, all the tales (with the exception of framework story, that is to say the story of King Shahrayar) are not only told by Scheherazade (and therefore contained within her), but also subordinated to the story of this character: she tells them so that her husband the king does not kill her. However, Scheherazade remains outside the stories she tells: being only an extension of the frame story, she plays the role of a rather arbitrary device which serves to connect all the tales.

But suppose that in order to escape death, Scheherazade had begun to recount episodes from her own life, what kind of story would we have then? The supposition is not gratuitous, because this is more or less the case of the Children of the ghetto,  trilogy by Elias Khoury the second part of which, Stella Maris, has just been published in French in a beautiful translation by Rania Samara.

Adam, the narrator of this trilogy, is an Israeli Arab who poses as a Jew. His origins are confused with the Nakba: he was the first newborn from the Arab ghetto of Lod, where the Israeli army, after having conquered this city, killed hundreds of its inhabitants and expelled tens of thousands, and imprisoned the Palestinians who remained on site.

Of his childhood in the ghetto, he only has a few scraps of memories left. What little his memory has retained, Adam wants to erase. His goal: to be no one, to become invisible, to shed his memory and his identity. Free yourself, therefore, from Palestine and the tragic destiny of its people. For most of his life, he presented himself as a Jew – not just any Jew, but as a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, as if by forging this new identity, he still wanted to keep a trace of the old one. After all, he is literally a ghetto kid.

Adam crosses existence like a shadow without reality. He is completely passive and abandons himself during the events so that they can do with him what they want. He only took two decisions throughout his life: leaving the home of his mother at the age of fifteen and, in his fifties, emigrated to the United States following a romantic disappointment.

In New York, where he works in a falafel restaurant, someone he knew as a child reveals certain details to him about his origins. Adam’s entire past then resurfaces. The many memories he had worked so hard to erase overwhelm him. It is a veritable flood which risks, if not killing him, at least dislocating his Self and driving him mad. He has only one way to survive: to become a sort of Scheherazade and tell in writing the countless stories that he did not know, until now, were contained in him.

The story he wrote (and which constitutes the three volumes of the Children of the Ghetto trilogy) is an attempt to answer this question which never ceases to haunt Adam: who am I? What he discovers little by little is that he is nothing but this almost endless proliferation of fragmented, disjointed stories, which have neither beginning nor end, and which encompass the stories of a multitude of other people, even the History of two peoples, the Palestinians and the Israelis.

This fragmented narration is obviously one of the well-known characteristics of Elias Khoury’s style. However, in Children of the Ghetto, the novelist has in some way radicalized his formal experiments by completely reversing the relationship of subordination between story and character: he made the first an attribute of the second. Adam is not one of the many elements that make up the story; on the contrary, it is the story in its entirety – that is to say the quasi-infinity of stories that compose him– that allows Adam to define himself, and therefore to say who he is.

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In its original French version below:

Élias Khoury : quand le personnage détrône le récit

Le personnage romanesque n’est généralement que l’un des nombreux éléments utilisés par le romancier pour créer un récit. Parmi les autres éléments, on peut citer l’intrigue, les descriptions, le point de vue, les techniques narratives, etc. Pourtant, le lecteur est spontané- ment enclin à ignorer tout cela et à ne voir dans un roman que l’histoire de tel ou tel personnage. Un certain effort est en fait nécessaire pour se dé- gager de cette lecture spontanée et se rendre compte que le personnage de fiction – même s’il est à la fois le protagoniste et le narrateur – n’est qu’une des composantes du récit : à l’instar de l’intrigue, des descriptions, etc., il est contenu dans le récit et subordonné à sa logique. On peut néanmoins imaginer un renversement de ce rapport de subordination. Dans Les Mille et Une Nuits, tous les contes (à l’exception du récit-cadre, c’est-à-dire l’histoire du roi Shahrayar) sont non seulement racontés par Shéhérazade (et donc contenus en elle), mais également subordonnés à l’histoire de ce personnage : elle les raconte a son afin que son mari le roi ne la tue pas. Toutefois, Shéhérazade reste en dehors des histoires qu’elle relate : n’étant qu’une extension du récit-cadre, elle joue le rôle d’un dispositif plutôt arbitraire qui sert à relier l’ensemble des contes.

Mais supposons qu’afin d’échapper à la mort, Shéhérazade s’était mise à raconter des épisodes de sa propre vie, quel genre de récit aurions-nous alors ? La supposition n’est pas gratuite, car tel est à peu près le cas des Enfants du ghetto, trilogie romanesque d’Élias Khoury dont le deuxième volet, L’Étoile de la mer, vient de paraître en français dans une belle traduction de Rania Samara.

Adam, le narrateur de cette trilogie, est un Arabe Israélien qui se fait passer pour un juif. Ses origines se confondent avec la Nakba : il fut le premier nouveau-né du ghetto arabe de Lod, où l’armée israélienne, après avoir conquis cette ville, tué des centaines de ses habitants et expulsé des dizaines de milliers, enferma les Palestiniens qui étaient restés sur place.

De son enfance dans le ghetto, il ne lui reste que quelques bribes de souvenirs. Mais même ce peu que sa mémoire a retenu, Adam veut l’effacer. Son but : n’être personne, devenir invisible, se délester de sa mémoire et de son identité. Se libérer, donc, de la Palestine et du destin tragique de son peuple. Durant la plus grande partie de sa vie, il se présentera comme un juif – non pas n’importe quel juif, mais le fils d’un survivant du ghetto de Varsovie, comme si, en se forgeant cette nouvelle identité, il voulait quand même garder ne serait-ce qu’une trace de l’ancienne. Après tout, il est littéralement un enfant du ghetto.

Adam traverse l’existence comme une ombre sans réalité. Il est complètement passif et s’abandonne au cours des événements pour qu’ils fassent de lui ce qu’ils veulent. Il n’a pris que deux déci- sions dans toute sa vie : quitter la mai- son de sa mère à l’âge de quinze ans et, la cinquantaine dépassée, émigrer aux États-Unis à la suite d’une déception amoureuse.

À New York, où il travaille dans un restaurant de falafel, quelqu’un qu’il avait connu dans son enfance lui révèle certains détails sur ses origines. Tout le passé d’Adam refait alors surface. Les nombreux souvenirs qu’il s’était tant acharné à effacer le submergent. C’est un véritable déluge qui risque sinon de le tuer, au moins de disloquer son Moi et de le rendre fou. Il n’a qu’un seul moyen de survie : devenir une sorte de Shéhérazade et raconter par écrit les in- nombrables histoires dont il ignorait, jusqu’à présent, qu’elles étaient conte- nues en lui.