Mystery, a love triangle, cross-cultural conflict, and a foreign setting—what more could you want in a summer read? And for us internationally aware Georgetown students, Second Person Singular’s author, Sayed Kashua, is yet another of its attractions.
Kashua is an Arab-Israeli living in Jerusalem, saturated in the mix of cultures that makes up modern Israel. Kashua has written two other novels (Dancing Arabs and Let It Be Morning), writes for the Israeli weeklies Haaretz and Ha’ir, and is the creator of the popular sitcom Arab Labor, a satire of Arabs trying to fit in in Jerusalem. So Second Person Singular seemed full of promise, not only for the new information and angle it could give to a part of the world I don’t know very well, but also for the author’s great reputation.
But man, sometimes, even when everything seems like it’s meant to be, the chemistry just isn’t there. It was just plain boring. I kept waiting for the characters and plot to jump off the page, twirl me around and engage me, but they refused.
Rather than alternating between the third person and the first person, between a crass, nameless lawyer and more endearing, but still distant photographer, maybe the author should have followed the command of his title. Recognition, agitation, scuffle, perhaps a final endearment with second person singular—with you, the reader—that’s what Kashua missed.
In that way, Second Person Singular is like a high budget movie—impeccable set, the best of the best actors—that totally flops because it’s just not good. The characters aren’t very believable; the plot doesn’t draw you in.
One of the two protagonists is not evil enough to be an enemy, but egotistical enough to force distance. An Arab-Israeli lawyer falling out of love with his wife in their posh Jewish neighborhood buys a book in a used bookstore and finds a note written in his wife’s handwriting, saying that she waited for him. Following an explosion, the unnamed lawyer decides that his wife is about to leave him for “Yonatan,” the note’s addressee and the subject of Kashua’s first-person narrative.
It’s off-putting how intensely he responds to this note with no proof whatsoever, and I think that’s what Kashua intended. His Israeli characters stereotype Arabs: “They’re unpredictable and can be aggressive. Honor is desperately important to them; in fact, it’s all that matters to them. Even the ones who seem the most enlightened are still, in some very basic ways, primitive.”
This is the image Kashua gives us in his third-person nameless lawyer. “He” is gross, over the top at times, but it’s just not compelling or meaningful. Reflection on this point feels totally forced. The other protagonist, Amir, is theoretically easier to connect with—he compensates for the lawyers lack of feelings, at least. But he just doesn’t pull you in.
Still, Kashua is able to provide political and cultural context that is necessary to understand at least some of the layers he creates for those unfamiliar with Arab society. Moreover, he does it in an unobtrusive way—he doesn’t define words and he isn’t a tour guide. He’s just telling the story in a way that anyone can understand.
The novel’s highlight occurs when Kashua directly addresses the reality of working in an unfair system. He says, “The lawyer was fastidious with the details, just as he had been during the trial itself, even though he knew full well, as did the accused and his family, that the man would be sentenced to multiple life sentences and that his only chance of release would be in a prisoner exchange with the Israelis.”
This is one of many pointed but subtle revelations that are worth amassing. It was a trip, a submersion into daily life for an Arab in Jerusalem, something I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. So I wanted to like it, I really did.
But if you’re looking for compelling, educational, modern fiction from Israel, there is so much more (and probably more interesting) where this came from. Israeli-Palestinian Anton Shammas’ Arabesques is one of the most famous modern novels on Palestinian life in Israel, Israeli Haim Be’er is known for her magical realism focuses on Israeli women and family life, and Ghassan Kanafani’s classic collection Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories is a perfect foundational piece for exile Palestinian literature, though a little outdated. These are better choices for summer reads, and Kashua’s TV show, Arab Labor, is a fun option, too. Don’t worry, they’re allowed to unionize.
