A Man Like Me – Children of the ghetto 3
Publication Date: 2023
Publisher: Dar al adab
Country of Publication: Lebanon, Beirut
Pages: 504
Rajulon Yoshbihouni: Awlad al ghetto 3
As in the first two parts of this trilogy, A Man Like Me mainly follows one narrative thread: the end of the love story between Adam Dannoun, an Israeli citizen from Palestine, and Dalia Ben Tsavi, an Israeli of Polish and Iraqi descent.
At the book’s opening, we find Adam in the shock of Ma’moun’s revelations: That he was not his mother Manal’s son. That Ma’moun had found him as a baby, clutched to the breast of a dead woman laying under a tree, during the “march of death”, on a dreadful summer day of 1948. Thousands of Palestinians were thrown out of Lydd, onto the road to nowhere. This is when Ma’moun saw the baby, picked it up, and returned to Lydd, where he gave it to Manal. At first, Adam could not believe this story which seemed to come straight out of a novel. But a strange apparition – or was it a dream? – leads him to a small book stall in New York, where he finds a book by a Palestinian Protestant pastor, telling the story of this march of death, and evoking the baby on the breast of his dead mother. So there was a baby. At that exact time and place. And that baby, if he is to believe Ma’moun, is him. Who is he, then, he wonders as he looks at himself in the mirror? The question suddenly takes on many different meanings. And the answer to this layered question comes through the multitude of people Adam met throughout his life, in New York or in Palestine. From Juliano Mer-Khames, the director and actor, and his Freedom Theater in Jenine, to Khalil (the male nurse and main protagonist of Khoury’s novel “Gate of the sun”) and his last battle in Jerusalem, to Rashid Hussein, the iconic Palestinian poet who emigrated to the USA, and of course Dalia.
In this third volume of the Children of the ghetto, Elias Khoury seems to have reached the heart of Adam’s story, disentangling the threads of Adam’s personal identity. Mixing fiction and reality, Khoury provides some elements to solve Adam’s riddle. And the answer seems to echo all around Adam, bouncing off the faces and stories of all the people he met. It is as if Adam Dannoun, in his efforts to write his story and pinpoint who he was, had destroyed himself. Or, as if Adam disintegrated after the end of his love story with Dalia, who somehow, was the one to keep all the pieces together.
A tribute to love and to Palestinians, “A Man Like Me” is a fluid read, in the eloquent, modern, yet simple language that characterizes Elias Khoury’s writing. The reader is led from story to story, holding the thread of Adam’s own narrative that is skilfully weaved in.
Translated by Jonathan Wright
Who are you?
I sit in my little apartment in New York, completely alone. I can’t even see my reflection in the mirror. I can see a white haze shaped like the face of a man who looks like me. I have to believe this man’s claim that he is me.
Adam bin Hassan Dannoun chose exile for countless reasons, but I have my doubts about the things he says. He can say what he likes, appropriating other people’s voices and retelling the story of the link between his being in exile and the sense of alienation he felt in his home country.
But I know that the prospect of living in exile opened up for him suddenly when he met Noam Hesherman, his friend and colleague from when they were students at Haifa University, and agreed to join him at the Palm Tree restaurant in New York. There’s only one reason why he was so enthusiastic about moving to New York, and that’s Dalia, the woman who had an Iraqi mother and a Polish father.
Or let’s say he decided to move when his relationship with Dalia, which had lasted ten years, came to an end. When Dalia disappeared from his life, all his ties to that “here” were severed and he had to move on to “there”.
Under the shower that scorching July morning he felt that the water running over his skin had washed away his feelings, as if love were a text written on pieces of paper and the ink dissolved when water touched it.
He saw the inky stains of love all over his body. He turned the tap on full and the ink ran into a small blue pool on the bathroom floor. He dried himself and got dressed with a feeling that he had lost weight. He wanted to go to the café by the sea to have his morning coffee to the steady rhythm of the waves.
He had a cup of black coffee, lit a cigarette, and looked far out at the blue sea. In the distance he could see his own face in the frothy white surf that ran up the sandy shore and then dispersed.
A sudden sorrow made all his joints ache and he felt that his sense of lightness was just an illusion. A sadness came over him and he was like someone who has lost their shadow. At that moment Adam felt death creeping up on him.
He well remembered how that love had started to sweep him off his feet. He and Dalia had never grown tired of reminiscing about those first moments when they met in Eshaya’s bar and how their eyes had marked out a force field of desire with help from words that resembled silence.
Archipelago, United States, English, 2026
Actes Sud, France, French, 2027
Editora Tabla,, Brazil, Portuguese, 2027
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