by Anna Balestrieri
Convicted of collaborating with the terrorists responsible for the Tel Aviv market suicide attack that killed three people during the Second Intifada, prisoner Basim Khandaqji receives the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
The Arabic Booker
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) is the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world. It is often referred to as the “Arabic Booker” and its aim is to reward excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing and encourage the dissemination of high-quality Arabic literature internationally through the translation and publication of the winning novels.
It is the Palestinian Basim Khandaqji who won the award this year for his “A Mask, the Color of the Sky” (2023). The writer received $50,000 in recognition and funding for an English translation. The book was chosen from 133 applicants whose works were published between July 2022 and June 2023.
Born in Nablus in 1983, Khandaqji is serving three life sentences in connection with a suicide bombing at Tel Aviv’s Carmel market in 2004 that killed three people and injured dozens.
The plot of the book
The “mask” of the book’s title is an Israeli identity card found by chance by the protagonist and is autobiographical in nature. According to an official Israeli statement at the time, Khandaqji, then 21, used a journalist’s identity card obtained during his studies at A-Najah University in Nablus to help a suicide bomber enter Israel from the West Bank. Amar Al-Far, 16, from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, after having entered the country illegally thanks to this document, detonated a bomb in the popular Tel Aviv market, killing three people and injuring more than thirty.
Nur, an archaeologist who lives in a refugee camp in Ramallah, adopts the “mask”, that is, a false identity, both metaphorically and practically, thanks to the discovery of a document the color of the sky (blue, like Israeli identity cards ) in the pocket of an old coat. He decides to pose as the Or of the identity card he found (note the identical meaning of the name, light, “nur” in Arabic and “or” in Hebrew) and joins an archaeological expedition in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, from where he embarked on a journey to Israel that would otherwise have been denied him. He meets Palestinians living in Israel for the first time and comes to terms with his own identity.
“What follows is an experimental, multi-layered narrative that seeks to recover elements of history and place with vivid and memorable characterization,” said the International Arabic Fiction Prize (IPAF), which announced the prize winner during a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The novel, published by the Lebanese publishing house Dar Al-Adab, “analyzes a complex and bitter reality,” said Nabil Suleiman, a Syrian writer who chaired the jury of the 2024 prize. It was the publishing house that received the prize instead of the author.
Studies in prison
In his years in Israeli prisons, Khandaqji graduated from Al-Quds University with a degree in political science with a thesis in Israel Studies. He also continued to write articles on literature, politics, Palestinian women’s activism and the plight of prisoners in Israeli prisons. He has published several poetry collections, including “Rituals of the First Time” (2010) and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem” (2013).
