On the Secret Life of Saeed

This book is absolutely wild, in the same vein as Voltaire’s Candide — explicitly so. Saeed the Pessoptimist lives through a surreal run of events he can never quite make sense of; there are multiple “Saeeds” (one serving as a foil to ours), multiple “Yuaads,” Communist conspiracies, and winding brutality. Our Saeed is a Zionist agent who has no idea he’s one — at least, I can’t tell whether he does — and though he supports the Palestinian people and has friends in the Communist movement, he’s an unwitting fool who throws them all under the bus. For me the finest moment comes when the 1967 war ends and Radio Israel demands that Palestinians fly the white flag. Saeed, living in Haifa, flies one at his house, and is hauled in by the “big man” and sent to prison. He’s floored — he was only doing what was asked. “No,” he’s told, “the white flag is for the Palestinians of the West Bank; flying it in Haifa implies you see the city as occupied territory.” Saeed insists that isn’t true, that he doesn’t see it that way at all — though I’m not sure I’m wholly convinced. Habiby keeps the momentum going right to the end, which few comic writers of this style manage; Saeed is a lot like Hašek’s Švejk in The Good Soldier Švejk, but Hašek is far less able to carry it through to the finish. This is essential Palestinian literature.