While reading an account of the October 7 attack by Hamas on the kibbutzim located near the Gaza Strip – which has been under sieged by Israel for decades – and the lament of those who lived there about the loss of a paradise that the community was to be, I was reminded of a short story by Premchand titled Balidan (Sacrifice).
The ways of literature are strange. A poem or a story written in an entirely different time and context surfaces when you are trying to make sense of your present. Lying somewhere in the deep recess of your subconscious, it surfaces suddenly as reality shocks you. At times, it clears the mist. And there are times it complicates what appears simple.
Written in folkloric style, Balidan has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. It does not even talk about the kind of violence that the inhabitants of the kibbutzim faced. It is a simple story which tells you about Girdhari, the son of a small farmer Harkhu. After Harkhu’s death, moneylenders lay a trap for Girdhari in the form of a loan. While the pretext is to help him, when the debt rises, they force him to part with the land.
Girdhari is deeply attached to his land. Every inch of the land is soaked with his blood, Premchand writes. But he has no way to prevent it from falling into the hands of the greedy moneylenders. He is forced to become a labourer. Then he disappears. Those who have usurped his land want to use it. But when they go to the farmland, they see Girdhari standing at the fence. When they try to talk to him, he disappears. It strikes horror in the hearts of those who have usurped the land by deceiving him.
Girdhari guards his land. Or, is it his ghost? Either way, those who had stolen it cannot enjoy the land. The ghost of Girdhari haunts the land and them. The land remains deserted.
This story came to my mind when I read an account of the horrendous attack on the Kibbutz Nir Oz. It is titled “Ruins and memories of a paradise lost in an Israeli village where attackers killed, kidnapped dozens.”
It was supposed to be a paradise – as all kibbutzim were to be. But it turned into a killing field. The “barbarians” had bloodied this beautiful idea. But should it have come as a surprise to the people of the kibbutzim?
One of the community members, who returned after the carnage, reminiscing about his lost life, told the reporter, “Long before the attack…on days when the kibbutz’s air raid siren warned of rocket fire from Gaza, holding on to that dream wasn’t easy.”
The attack was a grave injustice to the dreamers of Nir Oz. But they were aware of the lurking ghosts. The air raid siren, the rocket fire from Gaza and the safe rooms in all the houses in the kibbutz tell you that the dream was uneasy.
Nir Oz overlooks Gaza. Sachar Butler, a resident of Nir Oz, said, “I lost many friends… We worked the fields until the last yard and always hoped that maybe one day there’s going to be something peaceful … between us and the other side.”
The “other side” is Gaza. From where those who wrecked this serenity came.
The story of Nir Oz breaks our hearts. Think about the trauma that Sachar and other survivors of the attack will go through. Occasional rocket fires they were aware of. But they never expected such devastation. It will change them forever.
The barrier between Israel and Gaza. Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons
In Gaza, a stone’s throw away from Nir Oz, Ahmed Abu-Tawahina, the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) explained to Dr Rajaie Batniji, “The idea of trauma makes no sense in the Palestinian context where people live in constant fear. Trauma makes sense in Geneva, where there is safety, stability, and routine. But in Gaza, there is no normalcy.”
Ahmed suggested that an alternative to “trauma” might be “mousiba”, meaning tragedy. Since Gazans live in constant fear and insecurity, they are not typically shocked by violence.
How different are the psychologies of the two neighbours, the kibbutzim and the Gaza Strip?
Dr Rajaie Batniji was shocked to find that violence is so intrinsic to their daily lives that it does not shock the Gazans. Batniji experienced it himself, when he was bidding farewell to his family members:
“In the long farewell on the eve of my departure, my extended family assembled for a group photograph. Children climbed onto their siblings and mothers. Everyone shuffled into view of the lens. Then, the house shook to the sound of an explosion. I jumped in fear. Yet young and old relatives remained smiling for the camera. They were unfazed, despite the knowledge that an Israeli military jet had dropped a bomb somewhere just east of us. My uncle, Abu Nizar, explained their calm: ‘When you are living in hell, and someone turns up the heat a little, it doesn’t change much. You’re still in hell.’
We posed for some more photographs with bounding smiles, and without asking about the death and destruction that surrounded us.”
The world will definitely talk about the lasting trauma of the people of Nir Oz and other kibbutzim – and it must. But why is it that the people of Gaza themselves say that they are beyond it?
It is unjust for some violent men to destroy the possibility of a utopia. But it is also unjust for an entire society to live continuously in mousiba.
Reading about the occasional scare of rockets fired from Gaza, I was reminded of another essay by Salman Abu Sitta. He quotes a member of another kibbutz, Adele. She is upset with the kites and balloons that fly from Gaza and destroy her fields:
“Last year I started a Google Map to show as many of the fires that were started by flaming kites and balloons launched from Gaza, as I could. These tools of arson are launched to destroy that which we, and those who came before us, have built and nurtured. To set our fields ablaze. To destroy the beautiful forests which many of you have paid for over the decades, through JNF. All those trees you planted in memory of loved ones, to commemorate happy occasions, or just to green Israel and ‘make the desert bloom’. They are the targets.”
Salman Abu Sitta is sadly amused at her indignation. He also finds Adele’s cousin, a professor at McGill University, pathetically ignorant when he praises the settlers as “farmers who even under fire continue reaching out to their Gazan neighbors, confusing the world with their remarkable Jewish, Zionist and democratic generosity”.
This is what, according to the professor, Hamas does not understand. He wonders why this kibbutz Nirim is routinely attacked even after most of its members are generous.
Salman tells Adele that the land she is using as a farm was his land: “These are my wheat fields. I told her that I remember as a child being allowed to sit on our combine harvester.” Adele wants proof and he refuses to satisfy her:
“I refused to answer. I could have replied that Abu Sitta name was on Allenby maps when he took Beer Sheba in 1917, that my great-great-grandfather was mentioned by name in an 1845 Ottoman document copied in Cairo and Jerusalem. I could have said that the name Abu Sitta (Father of Six) was coined in about 1720 on account of my early ancestor was a well-known knight accompanied by six companions/guards.
I refused to answer because I do not have to prove my heritage to a settler whose relatives came from the shtetl to the shores of Palestine in a smuggler’s ship in the dead of night.”
Salman feels humiliated when asked to prove his heritage to a settler like Adele.
Adele and other Nirim members are trying to craft a paradise on the graveyard of the dreams of thousands of Gazans who see them farming their land, singing, and dancing on their land, while they are crammed into the tiny Gaza Strip at a density of 7,000 persons per sq km. The settlers are roaming their land at a density of 7 persons per sq km.
In Balidan, the thugs who had robbed Girdhari of his land are haunted by his ghost. In Israel, the kibbutzim will never be allowed to forget the past. They will be reminded again and again that on stolen land, nothing blossoms.
Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University.
