Liminality of/in the refugee camp: Sabra Falling by Ismail Khalidi.

Résumé En

Sabra Falling by Palestinian American playwright Ismail Khalidi unfolds on the brink of the Sabra refugee camp massacre. The play starts with an Israeli soldier, Eyal, crashing into an Arab family’s home, resembling their deceased son, Eyad, a victim of Israeli oppression. Eyad’s father, Sofyan, sees Eyal as his resurrected son, while the rest of the family—his wife Leena, their daughter Dalia, and their son Hani, who has joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—sees him as the enemy. The family grapples with whether to eliminate him or use him for leverage, while Sofyan, a struggling playwright, urges Eyal to continue Eyad’s activism through writing. The play also features the ghostly appearance of an Israeli General who urges Eyad/Eyal to kill the Palestinian enemy. Beyond the mere paronymy—Eyal, the amnesiac Israeli, and Eyad, the deceased Palestinian— Khalidi plays on the notion of border in various ways. Indeed, the action takes place in a liminal space, the refugee camp. Furthermore, the amalgamation established between Eyal and Eyad calls for a common identity, dissolving the differences between Jews and Arabs. Liminal temporality is also at stake as the play both foreshadows the imminence of the massacre and showcases the soldier’s amnesia. But the border also operates in the relationship between the stranger par excellence, the sworn enemy who is dehumanized and the guest who is taken in by hospitality into the family. Finally, liminality is evident in the metadramatic dimension of the play, symbolized by the typewriter and the literary past of Sofyan and Eyad.