In “Sabra Zoo”, a fresh, new, translucent voice narrates post-invasion Beirut, adding a personal dimension to realistic portrayal of actual events. It is autumn 1982; the PLO has evacuated, leaving behind a city brimming with those rendered homeless or disabled by Israel’s summer-long bombing. A stream of foreign volunteers has arrived to aid the war victims.
The narrator is 18-year-old Ivan whose Palestinian father and Danish mother - both dedicated cadre of a Palestinian resistance organisation - have evacuated to an unspecified destination. Ivan stays behind, leading a double or, as he says, compartmentalised life. On the one hand, he is charged with being a messenger for the underground work of his parents’ organisation. On the other hand, he volunteers as an interpreter at the hospital in Sabra refugee camp, facilitating the foreign medical staff’s communication with patients and their families; occasionally, he accompanies foreign journalists seeking a story. Armed with his Danish passport, Ivan moves relatively easily between the upscale and secure Hamra area and the Palestinian refugee camps.
Ivan has a foot in both worlds, and is initially happy in his new-found independence. He feels useful as an interpreter in the camps, and has fun partying with the foreign volunteers at night, fantasizing about having a relationship with a pretty Norwegian physiotherapist. Only at times he is haunted by the unhappiness that lingered in his family after the accidental death of his younger brother and the challenge of living up to his father’s history of struggle.
But Ivan is of the new generation. While growing up in Beirut, he had automatically followed his parents’ example of working for their people’s cause, he now ponders whether this is really his path or whether he might want to practice his commitment to humanity in a different way. Certainly, he experiences the world in a slightly different light than do his parents and many of those around him, whether Palestinian, Lebanese or foreigners.
For a first and relatively short novel, Hiller’s sense of character development is rather acute. Besides showing how Ivan negotiates the demands and transitions of his double life and evolving maturity, the story unfolds via a set of diverse, life-like characters who reflect not only events in Beirut but local and world reaction to them. There is uneducated but street-wise Samir, Ivan’s father’s former driver, who divides his time between his falafel stand and driving journalists around to get their story (and chasing women in between). There is the ill-fated militant Faris who rushes to defend the camps at the first sign that a massacre is in the making. There are also Ivan’s former classmates at the American University of Beirut, who are benefiting from the post-war situation to head into the business world, following their fathers’ footsteps.
Among the foreign volunteers are the idealists and the cynical - principled, dedicated doctors, loveable but somewhat pretentious international revolutionaries and those who freak out at the first signs of danger. A similar schism exists among journalists; there are those who seek easily packaged, if partial, stories and those who go to where things are really happening, often obtaining footage too graphic to be marketed commercially. The massacre is the crucible which separates out those who came to serve their fellow human beings and/or show the truth, and those who only came as “tourists”, following the action.
In stark contrast to all of the above, there are the bedrocks of the story, those without whom there would be no story: the patients at the Sabra hospital, the men and women who lost their loved ones in the war, the second and third-time refugees and other camp residents who had no choice but to stay in post-war, Palestinian-hostile Beirut. To the author’s great credit, they are portrayed not only as victims but as resilient, lively individuals, resisting their fate with the meagre means at their disposal.
About halfway through the novel, Ivan’s clandestine work gets quite dangerous as some of his former contacts change sides to work for the Israelis. Even more ominous are the signs that are building up to the inevitable Sabra-Shatilla massacre. Ivan feels his newly created life spinning out of control in step with the overall situation. The rest is history: The multinational forces withdraw; Bashir Gemayel is killed; the Israelis invade Beirut and let the Phalangist militias loose in the camps to enact the now notorious massacre. In the aftermath, Ivan must find a way to overcome his despair, and he does so in an unexpected way.
Sally Bland
15 March 2010
