Abu-Hanna's "Real" Thousand and One Nights

Writing the Self Into History in Turn-of-the-Century Galilee

Abstract

In this article I analyze the production of a text, an autobiography, in which I participated during my stay in the Galilee. My purpose here is to explore the ways in which history and historical self are produced in the telling of an autobiography. First, I explain what it means for Abu-Hanna, an 80-year old man of regional notoriety, to be turning the stories he usually tells to a local audience into a written, English language autobiography. Here I show how Abu-Hanna conceives of his stories and of his relationship to his local public, and how he relates to the written autobiographical text and his potential international readership. Then 1 analyze three types of historical narratives found in the autobiography. My concern here is to understand not just the particular forms of history they represent, but more precisely what we can learn about them by examining how they are produced in practice. Finally, I lay out a particular pattern that Abu-Hanna repeatedly deploys in both the form and content of the stories, a pattern I call the logic of confrontation. 1 argue that through this pattern Abu-Hanna develops a narrative of "heroic" historical agency which, though holding characteristics of his "larger than life" personality, is also readily recognizable by his local public. This narrative calls into question the hegemony of narratives set out by the state (that is, in this case, by British or Israeli officials), and exposes the state's failures to an international public.