Umm Saad

Umm Saad, "who now stands under the low roof of misery in the high rank of battle, pushing, and continues to push more than everyone else." This is how the Palestinian political novelist Ghassan Kanafani introduced the Palestinian mother when he wrote the novel in 1969. It is as if "Umm Saad" is the point where Kanafani's previous novels intersect. She is the lost character in his previous novels, the implicit hidden behind the lines and intertwined in the characters, only revealing herself when integrated into historical reality. It is as if Kanafani's novels are a mirror of the struggle's consciousness, or a continuous attempt to write an objective equivalent to historical experience, and the equivalent is only complete when the revolution is complete. Is Umm Saad not the ever-possible one who only grasps language when she grasps history? Is the novel's hero not one who speaks their language, and through their language reaches the language of the community, and disrupts the dominant language? Kanafani here rushes to learn from the masses, not seeking a novelistic event nor carving a fictional character. The character is complete, or it is consciousness integrating into practice. Umm Saad, in this sense, is both the model and its opposite, the realistic hero and the evolving vision, meaning she is Kanafani's most complete attempt to express the revolutionary moment in its fervor. Kanafani chooses Umm Saad to declare his class and intellectual alignment, he chooses the refugee camp, and reveals to us the difference between one tent and another, the refugee's tent and the fighter's tent, and rushes into what can be called realistic romanticism.