Palestine +100

Stories from a Century after the Nakba

Basma Ghalayini

• Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781646051403
• eBook ISBN: 9781646051410
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Science Fiction
• Index: Literature

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700, 000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?

Covering a range of approaches – from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, and peace treaties that span parallel universes. Published originally in the United Kingdom by Comma Press in 2019, Palestine +100 reframes science fiction as a place for political justice and the safekeeping of identity.

Sleep it Off, Dr Schott

Selma Dabbagh

I’m going to send this on as a voice file to both of you. It is a vocal, digital letter of apology. No, it is more than that. It is a vocal, digital letter of apology with evidence. I have the recordings and I will include them. That is what I do after all. I record things. Like you two, for example.

If you’ve ever been in the Enclave’s basement, you’ll know where I am by the sounds that are being picked up. The drones are a bit more muffled down here and you can hardly hear the netting. It’s just the rattle of the air-conditioning vents most of the time.

Given that this is a letter of sorts, I should possibly be more formal and present my case with specifics, as any scientist should. It’s 15 June, 2048. I’m recording this in the Security Bunkers, Secular Scientific Enclave, Gaza and my name is Layla Wattan. I’m from Deir el Balah. You know Deir el Balah, the camp in the South that’s spilling over into the sea. My family are from Haifa, but by that, I mean my great-grandparents lived there over a hundred years ago now.

As I said, this is an apology; a way of explaining to both of you. I couldn’t explain at the time, because I couldn’t speak. I still can’t get your voices out of my head. It doesn’t help that I keep replaying the recordings. Here’s the one of Dr Schott shouting at me when we finally met, our first and last encounter. The one where he asked who I was.

SCHOTT:

[Shouting] Who is this girl? What are you doing? Mona, why is this woman in the corridor? Give me that!

I can tell you what Professor Kamal said after that, but I think you may prefer to listen.

KAMAL :

She’s a Recorder. Look at her equipment. Who gave you this?

I’d rather you didn’t think of me as being a creep, or a snoop. I’m not even a proper spy. Okay, yes, I was a Recorder, but I really hadn’t known what that meant when I was recruited. I am sorry for the shock I caused you both. I can hear it in your voices. Listen.

KAMAL :

They can’t do this to me. I was granted non-monitored status years ago. Did the General Assembly authorise this?

SCHOTT:

Of course they authorised it. They make up the rules, they can do what they want. What did they tell you about us? Are you going to speak, girl? Why were you spying on us?

The short answer was that I would’ve sold my kidneys for a job in the Enclave. The whole of Gaza is desperate to move here. Not just because the food is guaranteed and it’s about as safe as it gets; if you obey the rules that is. It was mainly because the Enclave was the type of revolutionary idea we were starving for; turning global perceptions of us on their head. I’d watched them build it from my home. The Secular Scientific Enclave; it sounded like heaven to me. At that point, there’d been rumours about the Hyperloop, it was true, but there’d also been talk of the coming of the next Messiah, the return of our lands in ’48 Palestine and compensation. I’d never believed any of it.

For decades, our building methods had consisted of little more than plastering over dirt-packed bags, so for us to see those steel frames and glass panes shoot up to create giant quartz spikes piercing the sky was like wow. Awesome. We watched them grow from our baked-in alleyways overrun with wheelchairs, chickens and petty criminals.

I should explain that the noise out there, back home, was without end or form. It was as though it grew out of the walls and expanded when released. We spoke of the Enclave’s silence as a mystical force and I’d anticipated inner calm to go with it, but when I entered the walls, it wasn’t like that at all. For all of us in security, accommodation was down here in the bunkers. I went for weeks without seeing any natural light. I had electricity and hot water, but after a while, I started to feel like the water, my uniform, even the walls, were all trying to bleach me inside and out.

I knew of you, Professor Kamal, since I was a young. The faces of you and your family were graffitied onto the walls of our camp. Mona Kamal; a legend. We all worshipped you, particularly the women. I knew of your construction of the first generation of Body-Bots in the underground bunker in Rafah; your ingenious use of 3D printers to create robotic limbs for the disabled, creating our own army of semi-indestructible fighters. I’d heard of how this bot army burst through the borders in 2032. I knew that your husband had been killed in the bombardments that followed, that you’d also lost your daughters to shelling.

I wanted to believe that I was protecting you, Professor Kamal. As you’ve probably guessed by now, part of the purpose of my mandate was to find out what the nature of your ‘interpersonal relations’ were with Dr Schott. The General Assembly informed me of its …

ROBOTIC VOICE:

… concern that emotional connections are forming between the Gaza-born Professor Kamal, and one of her co-workers, the Tel Aviv-born (and Guest Visa holding) Dr Eyal Schott, in a way that will compromise their professional integrity and the security of the Economic Hyperloop or Bullet Project. Aural and sensory monitoring have detected distinctive tonal variations, all consistent with romantic empathy. Positive indicators show an ‘erosion of the natural boundaries of professional camaraderie’ giving rise to a danger of ‘compromising national security,’ as set out in the Koh’ Code of Conduct Manual (2034) for the Guest Visa holders in security clearance positions. No physical rituals indicating a consummated relationship have been identified to date.

Security around the Bullet was such that even I, as a resident of the Strip, hadn’t been aware that it was about to launch. It was explained to me as a …

ROBOTIC VOICE:

… high-speed, underground shuttle link carrying goods...

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