Relationships in A.B. Yehoshua’s “The Lover”, Essay Example

‘The Lover’ is an early fiction of A.B.Yehoshua, which was written and published during the 1950-1960. It was more than just a novel, a literary marvel, a narration of the strained relationship between Israel and Palestine; a diversified convocational inter-relationship sketched in black and white characters…to manifest the broader sense of rivalry between the two most ‘intimate enemies’ of the world. The author paints his characters post the Israel War of Independence in 1947, and depicts the horror and psychological trauma of the times. He weaves his characters in a typical yet realistic fashion, intertwines their emotions, and celebrates the emotional motifs within the social strata, only to establish the shades of grey that propels the venom between the Jews and the Arabs. He also seems to give a synaptic judgment to these thoughts by imbuing an Arab voice in his story. He wanted to highlight both sides of the coin, both their varied interest and both their cultural knots…somehow his portrayal exhibits an underlying, inexplicable bond that grows bitter and yet doesn’t get diminished. The Arabs and Jews hate each other, fight against each other but find it hard to rupture and sever all ties between them for some unknown, unavoidable circumstances or reasons.

The characters in the novel are unhappy and asymptotic…they are living their lives in internal mental hostility and are trying to cope with it. Their portrayal gives an obvious hint to the sabbatical ethos of the Jews and the Arabs, an extraneous inborn feeling to hatred which has no justification or realistic grounds… They hate each other because they are thought to do so, not because they want to do so. The hatred and ill feeling towards each other was like an inheritance, an ancestral gift that the generation finds difficulty to interpret and unleash. The Sephardic roots of Yehoshua tells the story of a mainstream Ashkenazi family, who had been striving hard to accept the turmoil of the time and overcome the skepticism. He scripts a rich commentary between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, the two most important Jewish sects.

The characters of the novel around which the story revolves are: Adam, an affluent garage owner; Asya, his wife, who teaches history in a high school; their teenage daughter named Dafi; Na’im, an Arab boy aged fourteen, who looks after the garage of Adam; Veducha, a ninety three year old Sephardic grandmother; and Gabriel, her grandson.

Adam: The well to do garage owner, Adam, is one of the protagonists in the book. He is a simple man, a good father and a silent lover. He had the benevolence and upright humility to understand the love of his wife. Adam was aware that his wife was purged in love with a man named Gabriel. He was not an atheist, nor was he shunned by jealousy, but by mere natural love for his wife, which made him go in search for her wife’s lover. Call it his wisdom or his grace, that he accepted her wife’s lover, a Sephardic man into his household. He even did not resist him from gaining free access to his home, with a extra set of keys given by his wife. It was during the traumatized times, pre war, that he sent Gabriel to go and meet the officials so that he has a clear case and does not fall into trouble. However, after that Gabriel disappeared and Adam thought that he was responsible for his plight. He suffered from guilt and finally goes out to search Gabriel, ‘The Lover’. Adam is also a good father…though sleepy he sits by the side of his daughter Dafi, consoling her and helping her go to sleep. Basically he was not the type casted orthodox father, not the stereotypical type inspiring and invoking Judaism, Zionisism. He was conscious of the war and the struggle, but his involvement was limited. It was much in contemplation to the television reports and broadcasts; he was not in active politics or criticism. Rather he was worried about large numbers of cars that flocked his garage, how to help and manage his garage and his family during the war. His emotional involvement with his workers is also noteworthy, especially Ni’am , who reminded him of the five year old son whom he lost   in a road accident. Moreover, most of the workers of Adam are Arabs, and his deep emotional bonding with them has no scars of differences or impartial vehemence.

Dafi: She is rebellious in nature and represents the young ‘Jew’. Being raised in a household with sublime political existence, Dafi has a bundle of queries about real chores of hatred between the Jews and the Arabs. She knows the struggle, the war, the numerous terror that inflicted the country…but she knew or felt no substantiate cause or feeling that could prejudice or deepen her hatred to the Arabs. She is shown to suffer from insomnia and walked down the streets at nights. There is a inalienable and undecipherable urge within her that makes her life complicated. Finally when she meets Ni’am, the worker in her father’s garage, with whom she could substantiate and evaluate her own peripheral complications. Dafi is also shown to be curios Arab-Israeli problem and asks Ni’am about it… ‘Do you hate us very much?’…Ni’am replies, ‘hate who?’, ‘Us the Israelis’, replied Dafi. He answers ‘we are Israelis too’, ‘No …I mean Jews’, and he answers:

‘Not so much now’ (pp 185-186). She finds her love and her console in the Arab, Ni’am in spite of the obvious hatred between the two sects.

Niam: Ni’am plays a marginal character in the novel. He is an Arab who reaches and lives in a Jewish world. But however the warmth and the true inter relationship, interactions makes him to paint a different picture of Jewish sentiments and cultures. The inborn inculcated mindset, regarding the Jews, and how they were a sojourn and hostile entity, and how they were born to end the Arabs … seemed to Ni’am an over glorified, taboo sentiment that has affected the lives of hundreds of Jews and Arabs. Their mutual hatred knows no reason, no bounds and  logic. Ni’am seems to be influenced with the Jews… being an Arab boy,  he recited the poetry of Bialik by heart, and could also narrate poems of Jewish martyrdom, Jewish national independence and their political struggle. He also pointed out to the empty Arab youth, who lacks a goal and vision in their lives. He criticizes them for following a lifestyle of complete emptiness, blindly resorting to temptations of girls, movies, clothes and cities. Ni’am finds himself in the midst of turbulent dilemma…one that of love and warmth that he has received from the family of Adam, the new transition from an Arab village to a city, his Palestinian sentiments ( his brother being the leader of a militant group, gave his life) and his shelter with a grandmother who had long lost his grandson. However, he is brave and adapts himself to the changing circumstances. The author gives him and Dafi, the torch, the power of illumination to change a society, an era of mutual mistrust… at the climax when an Arab and a Jew becomes one both physically and mentally. He is relieved from the Arab milieu and also not estranged in a Jewish struggle. He was free to choose people close to his heart was not abstained by prejudicial dogmas of the era.

Veducha: The strong Sephardic woman, who was still strong and stable at the age of ninety three. She was a woman of substance… a character who is used as a metaphor in the analysis and the paradigm of the era of Arab-Jewish conflict. Her life spans the duration of Jewish settlement in Palestine from 1881-1973 and she epitomizes as the mother and the guardian to the three men who touch their lives. She is the earth, the native soil and the coveted land…and the three men are different gentry who toil over her with varied logic and sentiments; Adam, Ni’am and Gabriel. She was worried and was unhappy about her lost grandson but that did not deter her to shower her love on the ‘Arab’-Ni’am. She was happy to find out that her grandson was alive, but suffered a setback to hear that he had joined the group of orthodox Jerusalem. Indeed she personifies as the basic foundation of Jewish presence, her live was an accolade of the ups and downs of the destabilizing relationship between the two entities.

Thus the characters try to sketch the past, present and the future of the Arab-Jew relationship and also try to hint at the impeccable fate of the two cultures. With people from different generations and their perspectives, he unfold the melodrama and the apathy of the generations as Adam and Asya represent the era of 1948, while Dafi and Ni’am represent the post 1967 era.