Samir
El-Youssef is a Palestinian, born in Rashidia refugee camp in Lebanon.Like Mr Kashua, Mr El-Youssef is interested in exploring
present-day scenarios rather than the refugee camps’ myths that the old
Palestine will be reborn.Mr El-Youssef co-authored “Gaza Blues”, a well-received
collection of short stories, with an Israeli author, Etgar Keret.His first novel, dedicated to a British Jewish novelist, Linda
Grant, is a slim but potent meditation on memory and exile.
“The
Illusion of Return” is rich in double meaning: the first illusion is
that the Palestinians can ever return to their home villages, many of
which now lie buried under Israeli housing estates and industrial parks.The second explores the question of whether anyone can properly
revisit the past, even if just in their own memory.
The narrator meets his friend Ali at London’s Heathrow airport, after a
gap of 17 years.Both are
haunted by the past in Lebanon: the narrator’s beloved sister Amina
killed herself, while Ali became an Israeli collaborator.The first-person narrative cuts back between the past and
present, which sometimes results in too much “telling” rather than
“showing”.But Mr El-Youssef’s
vivid portrait of life in wartime Lebanon, and the temporary refuge
provided by friends, is poignant and evocative.It is left to Bruno, an elderly Holocaust survivor, to help Ali
find some inner peace.“Life”,
he says, “is a one-way journey: there is no going back.”
