TEHRAN-The Persian translation of “The Book of Ramallah: A City in Short Fiction” edited by the Palestinian author Maya Abu Al-Hayat has been released in the Iranian book market.

Samaneh Kadkhodaei Marghzar has translated the book and Andisheh Molana Publishing House has brought it out, Mehr reported.

The book collects ten short stories by ten Palestinian authors, who range from emerging to globally acclaimed, and their overlapping portraits show a mirage of an independent Palestinian city, surrounded by checkpoints that are all too real. It is a place where the characters’ sanity and autonomy are always under threat, where their stories are constantly in question. The authors come from different backgrounds and generations, whose fictions are crafted in diverse styles, from romantic realism to satire to the surreal.

The collection, which was the winner of the English PEN Translates Award in 2020, features writings by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, Anas Abu Rahma, Liana Badr, Ahlam Bsharat, Ameer Hamad, Khaled Hourani, Ahmad Jaber, Ziad Khadash, Ibrahim Nasrallah, and Mahmoud Shukair.

The collection opens with an introduction that gives us a short history of the city. Unlike nearby Jerusalem or Bethlehem, Ramallah doesn’t have an iconic history. Editor Maya Abu al-Hayat writes that, for a long time, Ramallah was a small Christian village. Founded as early as the 16th century, it stayed largely under the radar until it rose to sudden importance during the Oslo Accords, when it was declared “Area A” and placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

After the accords were signed in 1993 and 1995, several writers in exile, including Mahmoud Darwish, returned to the city. Mourid Barghouti came for the visit he chronicled in his lyrical memoir “I Saw Ramallah”. However, the promised autonomy did not materialize. To many writers, Abu al-Hayat notes, Ramallah has come to represent the “glimmer of hope that isn’t real”.

Ramallah is a relatively new town, a de facto capital of the West Bank allowed to thrive after the Oslo Peace Accords, but just as quickly hemmed in and suffocated by the Occupation as the Accords have failed. 

Perched along the top of a mountainous ridge, it plays host to many contradictions: traditional Palestinian architecture jostling against aspirational developments and cultural initiatives, a thriving nightlife in one district, with much more conservative, religious attitudes in the next. 

Most striking however--as these stories show--is the quiet dignity, resilience, and humor of its people; citizens who take their lives into their hands every time they travel from one place to the next, who continue to live through countless sieges, and yet still find the time, and resourcefulness, to create.

In their quiet way, the characters in this collection struggle for control over their lives and the world around them. They fight against social conventions, the vagaries of memory, and the restrictions of Covid-19. But most of all, they fight for autonomy within the Israeli occupation.

Many of the writers in the anthology play with this earlier period of hope and compare it to the reality of living close to Jerusalem and the power the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have over the region. In the opening story, “Love in Ramallah,” the drama focuses on a checkpoint outside the city and a soldier coercing a young girl to kiss a strange man. Unless she does so, the bus transporting Palestinians is not allowed to leave. Though Ibrahim Nasrallah’s story ends on a line of humorous dialogue, the tension in the story is real and dangerous.

Similar situations exploring the power dynamic between the Palestinians and Israelis occur throughout the book. In Liana Badr’s “A Garden That Drinks Only from the Sky,” a woman recounts in dreamlike prose the closing of a checkpoint, seemingly dooming her relationship with her lover. Such heartbreaking scenes are often reinforced by the violence of the IDF, making life in Ramallah sometimes feel hopeless and broken.

Yet this is only part of the story. The collection is more than just instances of desperation and despair. Several of the stories are tender and humorous and full of breathtaking moments of wonder in everyday life. Others like Ahlam Bshrat’s “The Horse’s Wife” offer a dose of surrealism, whereas Maya Abu Al-Hayat’s “Badia’s Magic Water” explores the heartbreaking situations of unmarried pregnant women in Ramallah.

Ramallah is a small city, but as home to many of Palestine’s cultural and educational resources, it attracts people from all over Palestine and beyond. The Ramallah of this collection feels something like a big bus terminal, with people coming and going, confused about whose seat is whose, and where often travel is shut down entirely. And yet there are also moments of wicked humor, tender love, and elevating grace.

Taken as a whole, the cultural richness of the city and its environs brim in every description and utterance. All ten stories inform and entertain: they have something to say. 

Born in Beirut, Maya Abu Al-Hayat is a Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem, but working in Ramallah. She has published two poetry books, numerous children’s stories, and three novels. 

Her books have gained worldwide recognition, and some of her stories have been translated into different languages. Abu Al-Hayat also worked as an actress and ran the Palestine Writing Workshop. Abu Al-Hayat played a prominent role in children's literature, writing, and presenting television programs for children and was distinguished by her writing of children's stories.

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