Short Story Review || The Land of Sad Oranges (1962)
"The perspective of a Palestinian as they and their family are dispossessed in the wake of the 1948 War."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
In the palm, a pruning skin ravaged by the elements. The searing stones over which love has been buried may one day see branches bloom anew. The orange whose colour once shone the daybreak of melody, a kindred kindness from Mother Earth, will one day, too, christen the lands where bowed the hands of home have laid down to pray.
“All along the way, there were orange groves. A sense of fear and anxiety spread over everyone. The car moved with difficulty over the wet soil, and from a distance, we heard the sound of gunshots as if bidding us farewell.”
To speak without a voice requires courage. The whisper of the wind is never so loud as when it moves through hollowed spaces, a tunnel long enough to propel a beseeching to God to turn His cheek to the Son. Yet, turn Himself He does not.
I suppose, in some sense, a person might feel emboldened by God’s refusal to intervene, for surely, He must have confidence in His people that they might bring peace to the land which he offered them as a home. No garden is as precious as the one He holds in his palm, watered by the tears He sheds for those whose blessings were bombed by the deliverance of the unchosen.
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I have come to this story with a silly pointed tooth striking the nerve in my mouth. The autumn has made crisp the air in my city. Everything around me is dying. It is a beautiful sight to behold—the end of the cycle of life. Trees whose sturdy structures have enlivened the parks for decades roll into the backdrop of tormented grey skies, tinged with the pink of innocence that tomorrow, life may return.
This tooth that gnaws, teasing the tender part of my jaw, weakens the awning that reminds me of the will of the people whose fruits bear joy to the doomed darkness of my winter.
On such a night as every other that has preceded it, I remember the orange of my summer. The comfort of the skin whose pores grooved deeply like the river, promising eternal companionship like the forty-day wanderer soothed by the blaze. With these memories, I wandered through the internet in search of what I knew I needed most: a story.
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In times such as this, one must remember the roots of the trees that guide us skyward. Trees never grow alone. The interwoven roots of the gargantuan guardians of the earth keep our home afloat. Their support of one another through centuries of horror, love stories, & crucifixions may serve as clear reminders for those who believe themselves greater than the land that birthed them & the sovereign godparent of the garden of this Eden.
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In essence, this is a story about a Palestinian family evacuating Palestine in 1948 following the invasion of military forces, which resulted in the forced displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians. The narrator is a child, one who watched their home diminish in the distance as blasts from human beings deemed their people beyond all measure, the chosen people of God, come to the earth to bastardize the human experience. Although the young voice is never named, their chronicle of the refugee experience as they enter Lebanon with another child & their parents represents a tale as old as the species’ ability to keep time.
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You may find this review to have made its way to you at a time that feels opportune. What better moment to speak on history than when it is being revived identically? What I would like this piece to translate is that no time is better than the free moment one is granted to appreciate what it means to be alive.
No one person should suffer or view the reincarnated despair of ancestral turmoil in the skyline of their lifespan. Stories that explore historical events are of crucial importance to humanity as they keep us humble. Are we not meant to remember, never to forget, what we have done?
Readers will find this story poignant in as much as the orange that dries & moulds in the bedroom of the patriarch represents the burning of loss from a blaze set by a people whose theology dictates compassion as crucial to their practice.
In this familiarity with the dual experience of humanity, one will find that the author understood something that refused to perish: the quaintly bruised truth of our species & one we selectively disregard when it does not serve our self-aggrandizing purpose.
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It is awful in no worse way than can be performed by tendons & interossei to bear witness to horrors done to those whose prayer wanders to a star. No matter the constellation, my views remain consistent. In the prayers I send to a moon who visits me when she has time, I whisper to her notes from the underground where she cannot roam in the hopes that to the sun, she might pass along the message of armistice among men.
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The patriarch of this tale represents the succulent core of the narrative. Whereas the story itself follows the young narrator & their life’s altered state, learning about the maturity of despair & the wise evidence that accompanies truths, the patriarch drives the plot forward.
Without him, the family might have perished in Palestine. Without the father, to long for what once was, to remind the children of the fruit of their lives & the beauty that comes to season through the blessing of the land, tomorrow for them would be as empty as the soul of today.
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Veteran readers will note the underbelly of what the child cannot grasp. Although the adults in this story have done what they could to distract the children’s gaze from the fires set by men of monstrous intent, the orange is not enough to clean the air of smog; it too will encumber the pollution of the carrier of death & the destroyer of worlds. This fact is not stated in clear, crisp ink, but it is known.
For the adults, there will be no return to normalcy. The truth of their circumstances, the moment they were abandoned to the forces of colonial evil, they knew that what was once their home, a place where they drew inspiration to be closer to God, where their children roamed under orange-tinged skies, with the ocean soothing them through the pilgrimage of their lives, might never again be such a place for them, or others.
The despondent nature of current exercises of defence lingers in between the story’s centre & its plea. The reader will not be granted the hope that the characters might have once felt, that their home might be unburdened by the grasp of those for whom home is a place of safety & peace.
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While reading, I could not help but visualize the child at the helm. What I want readers to remember is the essence of what one seeks when folding palms over drums, tapestries, pews, under chins, & on the shoulders of those before them. Children walk this earth with us. This is their home & the gallivanting tremor of adulterated barbarism, when not checked with care to the lessons inscribed in great texts meant to guide in goodness, will leave the home of these children in ruins.
Surely, the narrator could have told the reader more of what they felt, but why bother? Utilizing an orange as a representation of the world where sustenance grows, where the purest form of heavenly bounty is collected, allows readers the opportunity to forgive the story for its simplicity. That being said, no story is without its faults. Regardless of personal investment in a people or geography, readers may note that the author seldom makes clear where the narrator came from & why they went with their friend.
Supposing that the narrator is now grown, as at times their speech seems mature & reflective, readers will note that the depth of their experiences is withheld.
Certainly, one might forgive Kanafani for his decision to require readers to effort their inquisition. Rather than plateau the cakes with crude icing for a reader who may have been under the rock which I described earlier, Kanafani longs for the insightful individual who may have the answer long awaited by his characters—children who have had to flee their homes.
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Should the world, one day, cease to spin & the Almighty part the clouds as so many stories posit, what might He say to us, soaked in the blood of one another?
The God I was raised with was once a cruel beast who longed to torment the soul who followed His shadow without hesitation, begging them to carry a knife to the throat of those who were most beloved. I wonder whether His experience with moral complexity might insight the stranger without a face to wash the mirror, which they have left plastered with grime in an attempt to soften the reek that grew callous within.
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By reading this story, one may endeavour to expand on the vast experiences of the human species & their definitive desire to create a God in flesh & bone who cannot be broken by the wails of a child. Perhaps the author has forgotten what it felt like to hold an orange in their hand as the peroxide of superstores has bastardized the hum of peace once known by him in his youth.
Maybe the reader will regard the fruit they have left to rot on their countertop as a metaphor for their reflection or as a divine comedy seven layers circulating, a cacophonous laugh at their expense.
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In my memories of summer, the soothing palm extends the orange that grew far from me. My home was of strawberries, raspberries, apples & plums. I think of them now as markers of my warmth towards the world. The neighbour who adorned each of my fingers with fresh little golden red fruits before I wandered back home created the space in my mind where love could never die.
These fruits so lusted & pure, like the first light on new life. These moments are important in the life of a child, for when they have grown, as you & I have long since done, they might not fold in the face of the cowardice that threatens to cull the flavour from the leaves on which the nectar of life blooms.
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Ultimately, readers who are hopeful for a story that is graphic & descriptive of the experiences of Palestinians in 1948 will be disappointed by this story. Kanafani seems to have been intent on memorializing the essence of an experience he would have struggled to meet again.
The story’s flow is seamless & although the narrator confuses themselves with the fearful child & the numbed adult, their reflections serve a purpose; they posit the solution that returns to knock on the door of their people, those who live across the river, & up the stream, those plagued by the malice that is of our species’ making.
When concluding with the orange, one may never truly regain the sentiment of longing that accompanies the gun. Who is the reader to say what is right or which decision is outstanding in accessibility & equity? Are people chosen by God, or is God Father to all people? Should the angel have fallen, or was he cast to the earth to serve humanity a lesson in respecting that which is unseen among them? Will the land recover from the frost inflicted by unseating hearts, or will it perish like the clamour that ruminates such as the manifesto, coiling in its cell, waiting for the sun?
If you would like to read this story, please visit this link — « The Land of Sad Oranges » by Ghassan Kanafani
C. 💌