Minor Detail is agonisingly tense. The novel is divided in two, following two very different characters and their experiences of a single event: the rape and murder of a young Bedouin woman, at the hands of Israeli soldiers. The first half of the story follows an army officer who, having set up camp in the Negev desert in August 1949, leads his soldiers on twice-daily patrols “to comb the southwest part of the Negev and cleanse it of any remaining Arabs”—the word cleanse establishing the ominous tone right from the beginning. The second character is an autistic Palestinian woman who goes on an illegal and covert mission across the Negev to discover more about the actions of the soldier and his men some forty years earlier in 1949.
The officer is obsessive about detail. He demands that his men “should also be reminded of the importance of maintaining personal hygiene, and shaving daily”. And we follow this man closely in everything he does, no detail is too small. Shibli describes every step of his bathing ritual—the order in which he picks up his jerry can, dampens his towel, washes every inch of his body, and empties the dirty water outside his hut. The imagery of cleaning—cleansing—his body, the girl’s body, and the land of its indigenous people—is everywhere. This man, who is nothing less than a psychopath, is hypersensitive to anything that he sees as imperfection. He finds the smell of the woman repulsive, tearing her clothes off her body and hosing her down before pouring petrol over her head. Again and again, we watch him comb his room for insects, or scour the arid landscape for what he sees as intruders. The only detail he is impervious to is the humanity of the young Bedouin woman.
Early in the narrative the officer is bitten by a “creature” in the night. It is the middle of the night and he can’t see what kind of creature it is, and neither can we. At this moment, the tension in the text goes from moderate to unbearable and you almost have to hold your breath. The venomous bite swells and as it gets infected, the officer’s behaviour becomes more and more irrational. Suffering from dizzy spells and cramps all over his body, he sets out into the desert by foot, alert to the sounds of howling dogs and distant wailing. While all of this is happening, our narrator is counting down, or up—“9 August 1949”, “10 August 1949”, “11 August 1949”, “12 August 1949—until we reach the 13th of August 1949, and the brutal kidnap, assault and murder of a young woman takes place. Shibli repeats the phrase “watching the scene that was unfolding before them”, referring to the soldiers who watch the girl’s humiliation and murder without doing anything. This phrase jumps out because it is all the reader, too, is able to do. The novel’s central questions seems to be about what it means to witness brutality. How awful does a story have to be before you get up and do something about it? What does it mean just to read?
Midway through the novel we jump forward in time to follow a young Palestinian office worker who reads about the 1949 murder in a newspaper and notices that it occurred on her birthday, twenty-five years before she was born. Unlike the soldiers who witness the inhumane abuse of a vulnerable woman, this minor detail—the fact of a shared date—is enough to kick this character into action, and we follow her as she rents a car illegally and drives through checkpoint after checkpoint on a mission to uncover more about the events of the 13th of August. Crucially, we don’t know what she’ll do if she finds what she’s looking for—perhaps just finding, learning, and being aware are important enough.
Minor Detail reminded me of Assaf Gavron’s Almost Dead—and there were more than just topographical similarities, as well as the obvious, fundamental differences. Gavron’s novel is quite funny, while Shibli’s is anything but. Gavron’s novel takes place mostly in big cities, and emphasises the impossibilities of living side-by-side (for Palestinians and for Israelis) in a bustling metropolis, while the action in Shibli’s novel is set against the vast backdrop of dusty and oppressive desert heat. Gavron is Israeli, Shibli is Palestinian.
Both authors narrate key events through the eyes of two very different protagonists, flipping from one side to the other, between two people who are on opposing sides. In both, we follow a young Palestinian as they attempt to travel across deserts and through checkpoints, observing the physical impact that the conflict has had on the landscape—disappearing Palestinian villages scattered alongside new Israeli highways—through the eyes of characters who each have one eye on the past and one eye on the future. In Shibli’s novel, we are actually propelled forward through time by at least forty years and are therefore made acutely aware of both how much and how little has changed. Shibli wants the reader to question what kinds of actions actually make a difference? Is the procession of history unstoppable? Is there any possibility of getting in its way? As Shibli’s novel comes to its bleak conclusion, it seems that history prevails; events do repeat themselves. But what difference does the act of reading make in all of this forward motion?
[January 2021]
t-barnes 