Beside the Sickle Moon: A Palestinian Story

‘The Ministry of Defence is proud to announce the future construction of the luxury hotel,’ two Palestinian men at an Israeli checkpoint read a sign written in Hebrew and learn that a part of their community is about to be upended in the Occupied West Bank. Beside the Sickle Moon: A Palestinian Story is a tale of betrayal, disillusionment, hopelessness, confusion and division. Dealing with the conflicts of a future generation, we encounter a Palestine that feels defeated through the prism of the main protagonist, Laeth Awad. Set in the year 2065, the novel is at once both dystopian and a continuation of the present.  While stories of resistance and martyrdom colour his father’s generation, Laeth spends his days living above a shop, hanging out with friends and relatives and smoking. That is, until one day, Laeth and his cousin, Aylul, are stopped at a new Israeli checkpoint in Ramallah. Both men are startled by the sudden appearance of a new checkpoint, but soon quickly discover that, in one month’s time, a new luxury hotel will be constructed to facilitate incoming Israeli settlers.

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While this is bad news for them, Aylul believes a new opportunity has presented itself. ‘Embrace our birthright, Laeth: uphold the thawabit. Resist colonization …’ Aylul proclaims. Aylul believes that the threatened erasure of the community will reignite the spirit of resistance and he wants to be on the ground floor, when it does. Aylul gets approval from different factions and sets up a new Resistance group to fight the Occupation, but his enthusiasm is not shared by our central protagonist and narrator, Laeth. Laeth does not have a vision of the future and thinks the Resistance is futile.

Through a combination of peer pressure and that of his cousin, Laeth reluctantly follows Aylul into the guerrilla movement. ‘There’s no courage in this, but fear’s hard to come by when you’re born into endings.’ Laeth ends up in the hands of the Israelis and, to his horror, is questioned by a man known as Meir Cohen, who is also known as the “Butcher of Gaza” and the man who infiltrated Hamas, with a reputation for cruelty, Cohen requests that Laeth come and work for Israel. Laeth feels isolated and paranoid.

Laeth eventually accepts and works for the Israelis. Laeth is part of a minority of young Palestinians who sees Israel’s colonisation as inevitable. Others who feel the way he does, set up an NGO called “The Forgotten Ones”, which advocates for the peaceful transfer to full Israeli conquest, which the rest of Palestinian society treats with ambivalence. ‘The Occupation of Ayn Yassin [Laeth’s village near Ramallah] felt inevitable, but to think I’d be this alone,’ Laeth laments. Resistance is sweeping the village, Al-Mubarizun. The Resistance faction Aylul set up is gaining popularity and the belief in a final battle to liberate Palestine is reaching fever pitch. Despite his isolation, Laeth is not alone. He is joined by his Palestinian girlfriend, Leila, who shares Laeth’s outlook and is also involved in gathering information. Going undercover and trying to spy on the Al-Mubarizun’s leads to bloody consequences.

Beside the Sickle Moon represents the dance that occurs between belief and doubt, optimism and pessimism. In Laeth, we find a man who is post-ideological in the truest sense; to be an ideologue requires a belief about the future and the ability of those who understand the tools of history to shape it. Laeth has no sense of the future, only that things will continue to get worse and worse. He is suspicious of all grand ideas and is cynical. 2065 is a time when it has been over a century since the 1948 Nakba and, with nothing to point to in terms of Palestinian freedom, as Laeth sees it, any talk of freedom being realised seems to exist outside of his frame. Living day to day without a belief in anything has left him unable to empathise with the likes of Aylul. The novel explores where this kind of cynicism leads our character and offers fascinating insight into what such a life might be like. A very painful but important perspective on a segment of Palestinian society.

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