Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud’s intertextuality with William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Abstract

This article argues that Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud parallels Shakespeare’s Hamlet by exploring various themes and motifs such as the ghost, the gravedigger, Ophelia’s suicide, adultery, chastity, and madness. Through these themes and motifs, Jabra weaves a narrative that simultaneously recalls and reinvents Shakespeare’s classic play in a contemporary, politically-charged context. This article shows that Jabra utilizes Hamlet as a pivotal reference to represent the main concerns of his Palestinian people from a new and distinctive literary perspective. This is explicit in Jabra’s representation of revenge, in particular. In Hamlet, Shakespeare explores the theme of a son’s revenge for his father. Jabra, on the other hand, structures In Search of Walid Masoud around the revenge of a father for his son, which makes the revenge at the heart of the novel not personal but rather collective (the father’s revenge for his motherland/Palestine). This demonstrates Jabra’s proclivity to render the national plight of Palestinian people global and permit the Palestinian struggle to be perceived on a larger scale.

Keywords:

• Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Jabra’s In Search for Walid Masoud
• appropriation
• revenge
• death
• ghost

Reviewing Editor:

• Oliver Nyambi, English, University of the Free State, South Africa

Subjects:

• Introductory Literary Studies; Interdisciplinary Literary Studies; Literary/Critical Theory

Introduction

William Shakespeare has had a considerable influence on world literature and Arabic literature too (Hennessey & Litvin, 2019). This impact was mainly due to the frequent translation and retranslation of his works by Arab authors who showed a great deal of influence by him (Mohamed Tounsi, 1989). Graham Holderness (2007) states that ‘received in the Middle East as a great icon of classical theatre, Shakespeare is there for writers to admire, emulate, imitate or challenge’ (141). Mahmoud F. Al-Shetawi maintains that in the Arab world, Shakespeare’s plays ‘were translated repeatedly and more often adjusted to satisfy the conditions of local theaters of the time’ (1999, p. 60). Hamlet, Al-Shetawi asserts, ‘has been assimilated in the fabric of Arabic creative processes’ (1999, p. 60). While Arab authors have shown a strong inclination towards appropriating Shakespeare’s plays, their notable focus has been on Hamlet, which ‘is one of Shakespeare’s most often translated [and appropriated] plays’ (Litvin, 2011, p. 21). Yousef Awad and Barkuzar Dubbati point out that ‘Hamlet has always had a strong presence in contemporary Arab literary and cultural productions’ (2018, p. 3). Many Arab and Palestinian authors, including Fadia Faqir, Samar Attar, Susan Abulhawa, Mamdouh Adwan, Edward Said, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, and Mahmoud Darwish, have engaged in the appropriation of William Shakespeare’s plays (Bessami & Abu Amrieh, 2022; Bedjaoui & Abu Amrieh 2022; Abu Amrieh 2022). In his memoir Out of Place, Edward Said draws upon allusions to Hamlet to reflect upon his personal experience of exile and displacement, as well as to delve into his complex relationship with his parents (Hamamra & Abusamra, 2021). Jabra skillfully incorporates references to Hamlet (and The Tempest) throughout his novels, such as The Ship and In Search of Walid Masoud, to shed light on the Palestinian experience of displacement and the haunting aspects embedded within the collective memories of Palestinians (Qabaha & Hamamra, forthcoming). Fadia Faqir, a renowned Jordanian novelist, and Samar Attar, a notable Syrian novelist, both employ rebellious female protagonists that subvert the traditional Shakespearean portrayal of women as passive and voiceless (Alhawamdeh, 2018). Susan Abulhawa appropriates in her novel The Blue between Sky and Water (2015) some of the tropes and themes that Shakespeare employs in Romeo and Juliet (c. 1596) so as to depict how wars turn Palestinian people’s love stories/marriages into tragedies. Abulhawa employs these tropes and themes that Shakespeare uses in his greatest tragedy to represent love stories/marriages that are embroiled in ongoing violent events that epitomize the living conditions of Palestinians located in Gaza (Abu Amrieh 2022). Moreover, within the Middle Eastern context, Shakespeare’s plays have been both performed on stage and subjected to critical analysis, serving as a means to comment on the political and social cultures prevalent in the Arab region (Hazou, 2015; Al-Saber, 2016; Hamamra, 2020a; Hamamra, 2020b; Bessami & Abu Amrieh, 2022).

This article shows that Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was exceptionally engaged with Shakespeare’s oeuvre, especially Hamlet which is reflected in his allusions and parallels to the subject matters and the protagonist of this play. Jabra (1919-1994) is a distinguished Palestinian- Iraqi author, artist, essayist, critic, and avid translator of many works of Shakespeare. He translated Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1960), King Lear (1968), Coriolanus (1974), Othello (1978), Macbeth (1979), The Tempest (1979), Twelfth Night (1989), and 40 Shakespearean sonnets.

The primary objective of this research is to investigate the instances where Jabra borrowed from Hamlet in his novel In Search of Walid Masoud. The study aims to analyze the impact of these choices on the characterization and themes of the novel and how they contribute to its interpretation. Additionally, this study delves into the broader cultural milieu that informs Jabra’s choices and how they are assimilated into the novel. As Linda Wagner-Martin (2000) argues, ‘tracing the author’s borrowings – whether thematic correspondences, stylistic effects, parodies, or parallel characters or scenes –has today become a kind of critical method’ (p. 173). The significance of this study derives from the fact that it is the first attempt of its kind on Jabra’s borrowings from Shakespeare in In Search of Walid Masoud, a novel that was published in Arabic in 1978, and was translated into English by Roger Allen and Adnan Haydar in 2000. It tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of the protagonist Walid Masoud who does not appear as a character in his own right, although he fills the novel from beginning to end. The novel has multiple characters with distinct voices, each telling his/her version of the reminisced memories with the protagonist.

In Search of Walid Masoud has been reviewed and studied by many critics. Some critics explore the psychic and political landscape of Arab modernity and the sense of individuation (Selim, 2006; Esmaeili & Ara, 2020). Others focus on the fractured sociopolitical condition of Palestinians and the sense of disillusionment and impotence to change the world (Ibrahim El-Hussari 2017, Rebecca Johnson, 2009). And other critics studied its representation of estrangement in its various individual, social and cultural aspects, especially through its usage of dramatic and internal monologue and the stream of consciousness (Hossein and Razieh Khosravi 2013). Moreover, while Qusai Al-Thebyan, Nazmi T. Al-Shalabi, Fahd Salameh, and Maithem Kifah (2011) have examined Jabra’s translation of Shakespeare’s plays, none, to the best of our knowledge, has substantially examined Jabra’s literary borrowings from Shakespeare’s and influence by him, which is the main subject of this article

Bloom posits that Shakespeare is the foundation of literature, and his influence can be traced to the works of all writers who came after him. He (1997) emphasizes that Shakespeare has not only invented but also impacted the styles and themes of succeeding writers (xviii). Within the context of Jabra’s translation of Shakespeare, his translation of Hamlet was a long journey fueled by his love and engagement with it. It took from Jabra 24 years, from 1959 to 1983, to translate seven plays and forty sonnets of Shakespeare including Hamlet. One can argue that this long journey of engaged reading, interpretation, and translation of the play is a journey of influence on his In Search of Walid Masoud, especially, as Bloom puts it, ‘no strong writer since Shakespeare can avoid his influence’ (Bloom xix). This influence however does not mean the new text In Search of Walid Masoud is a replica of the original one Hamlet which refers to snatches of pretexts. Writers often reference and draw inspiration from the works of their predecessors, but they also modify certain aspects of the subject matter, literary style, or plot. Bloom argues that writers’ anxiety is rooted in their struggle against their literary forebears as they strive to create a unique work that garners recognition and acclaim. Bloom compares this struggle to the Oedipal complex, where the emerging writer is likened to Oedipus who is engaged in a battle against his ‘father’, the literary predecessor, to symbolically kill and surpass him, thus establishing his/her independent authorial identity and creating his/her own authoritative literary space. Bloom (1997) argues that this anxiety compels writers to create something revolutionary and innovative, and authors who achieve this are deemed ‘strong’ since they can transform ‘their blindness into the revisionary insights of their work’; they create a work that reflects their individual and creative identity (10).

While we agree with Bloom’s idea that creative writers are probably influenced by their precursors, we contend that Jabra’s works have their distinctive style, that is, Jabra has transformed his influence by Shakespeare ‘into a totally new identity that is typically his own’ (Haydar & Allen, 1985,3). To gauge the degree of this transformation of influence into an autonomous identity of the author’s own, we read Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud alongside Shakespeare’s Hamlet contrapuntally while exploring the instances of intertextuality and appropriation. Margaret Litvin (2011), in Hamlet’s Arab Journey, argues that any influence study should not over privilege the influencer, in this case Shakespeare, and limits the agency of the influencee, in this case, Arab writers. She demonstrates that such a study ‘neglects to ask why different writers take different things from Shakespeare and bring different things to him’. Litvin recommends reading such influence within the paradigm of ‘postcolonial rewriting’, which stresses the agency of the rewriter who seeks to write a narrative that addresses the concerns of his nation (Litvin 23). In this article, we illustrate ways in which Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud engages with the following motifs and archetypes in Hamlet: the ghost, gravedigger, Ophelia’s suicide, adultery, wedding and mourning, revenge, pretending madness, abstinence, and how he appropriates them to suit the postcolonial context of the Arab world.

Archetypal critics point to recurring cultural patterns involved in the literary text, which are based on myths and rituals of a certain nation. In archetypal criticism, the critic takes over from where the author left off. Authors have their own private mythology of archetypes and motifs and the critic shows how they covertly take their places in the works of these authors. Archetypal critics argue that every work of literature can be categorized and placed into a larger framework and can be analyzed in comparison with the classical texts. They believe that a novel or a play has a pattern which is actually the repetition of the same patterns from classical texts (or from myths) that the writer’s text is influenced by. Archetypal critics unpack these repetitive patterns in the works of the writers whom they believe is a cycle of continuity since the evolution of myths.

In the novel, Walid Masoud expresses his admiration of Shakespeare’s plays and his characters; he says to Wesal Raouf

What a crafty devil Shakespeare is! he said, looking straight into my eyes. ‘He makes Hamlet say that, and many people imagine that what he’s saying is ‘Void, void, void!’ For some people that may well be true: people deficient in language, people with speech impediments, parrots. But Shakespeare’s al-Mutanabbi’s brother; they’re both masters of words. What Shakespeare wants to do is make Hamlet scream in the face of all the parrots of this world: ‘Words, words, words!’ The most wonderful thing God’s given to man! (200-201).

The speaker highlights that Shakespeare, much like the renowned Arab poet al-Mutanabbi, is a virtuoso of language. Both authors comprehend the potency of words and their ability to express intricate emotions and concepts. When Polonius secretly questions Hamlet about his reading material, Hamlet responds with the phrase ‘words, words, words’ (2.2.190). During their conversation, Polonius is surprised by the depth and intelligence of Hamlet’s responses, remarking that ‘how pregnant sometimes his replies are!’ (2.2.205-206). This suggests that his words and thoughts hold more weight than they initially appear to. Polonius’s reaction highlights the tension between the two characters, as Hamlet likely resents Polonius’s attempts to pry into his personal affairs. Overall, this scene adds nuance to Hamlet’s character and sets the stage for the following complex narrative. In his soliloquy ‘Now I am alone’, Hamlet tries to obscure his intentions, exclaiming, ‘This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words’ (2.2.567–570). Hamlet views the act of using words to defend his cause as a base act, akin to the actions of a prostitute. However, he acknowledges that using art can be a powerful tool, as he declares, ‘the play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king’ (2.2.589–590). This demonstrates the importance of art in depicting the intricate facets of Hamlet’s persona.

Hamlet’s cautious attitude towards Polonius highlights his discomfort with Polonius’s intrusive nature. His remark, ‘Words, words, words’ (2.2.191) reflects a satirical stance towards Polonius’s loquacity. Throughout the tragedy, Polonius, despite claiming ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’ (2.2.90), has an appetite for long-winded, often roundabout speech. Hamlet’s mockery of Polonius’s verbosity highlights Hamlet’s wit, intellectual prowess and his ability to use language as a means of both defense and offense. Furthermore, this scene can be viewed as a commentary on the dual nature of language. Words in Hamlet play a double role—they can be tools of deceit or instruments of truth (Hamamra & Abusamra, 2021). As Hamlet designs a play within a play to reveal the honesty of the ghost, he remarks, ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king’ (2.2.602-603), highlighting the duality of performance and words. Hamlet’s own soliloquies, rich in existential conflict, reveal his wrestling with the nature of language, truth, and artifice. This tension is also evident when he confronts his mother about his genuine grief, stating, ‘Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems’’ (1.2.76). The scene with Polonius, then, one can argue, emphasizes words’ potential to act as smokescreens.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the ghost of old Hamlet is a commanding force, and it continues to govern from beyond the grave propelling the movement of the plot to its tragic closure. In the fourth scene of Hamlet, Marcellus states that ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ (1.5.90). Horatio immediately responds with the belief that ‘Heaven will direct it’ (1.5.91). This foreshadowing alludes to the ultimate fulfillment of Hamlet’s quest for vengeance, driven by his unwavering sense of righteousness. The pursuit of justice against Claudius, who committed regicide and engaged in an illicit relationship with Hamlet’s mother, is presented as aligning with the principles of divine justice and a moral worldview, aiming to halt any further malevolence. The ghost represents the past and serves as a potent symbol of the unresolved problems and conflicts that linger in the present, bestowing Hamlet the task of revenge.

Similarly, in Jabra’s novel, the character of Walid Masoud is absent, and all that is left is his voice. This voice serves as a conduit for the past and provides valuable insight into the events that led up to his disappearance. Jabra creates a parallel between Hamlet and In Search of Walid Masoud, highlighting the similar themes of loss, absence, and the struggle to make sense of the past. The loss of Palestine has become ghostly, haunting Palestinian memories. Just as the ghost of old Hamlet appears to his son, Hamlet, a belated ghost of his own ghostly father, Palestine is a ghost that is captured in writing which is, in turn, a supplement to the absence of the land. In other words, hauntology in both texts is fundamentally based on the ontology of absence: the absence of the father in the play and the absence of the mother in the novel. Therefore, the presence of the ghost is linked to the absence of the Old Hamlet. Within the context of Palestine, the geography of language or the geography of the text is a supplement to the absence of the homeland (Hamamra & Abusamra, 2022; 2020). The different scenarios presented for Walid Masoud’s disappearance in the novel echo the uncertainty surrounding the ghost in Hamlet. Just as Hamlet is unsure whether the ghost is real or a manifestation of his guilt and grief, the various speculations about Walid Masoud’s disappearance leave the reader unsure about what happened to him. This ambiguity and uncertainty add to the haunting and mysterious atmosphere of the novel, as well as to the larger intertextual relationship between In Search of Walid Masoud and Hamlet. The recording that Walid Masoud left in his car on the road from Baghdad to Damascus constituted the novel’s mystery. Hence, it can be said that the voice in the recording is a pivotal idea in the construction of Jabra’s novel, the sequence of its events, and their interrelationship, just as is the case of the ghost in Hamlet. One notable difference is that the ghost’s voice is embodied as Hamlet and the guards perceive it while that of Walid Masoud is disembodied, a recorded voice. In other words, the recording distinguishes itself from the ghost in the sense that it exists without a physical form, where the recorded voice of Walid Masoud substitutes his physical presence. The audio recording thus acts as an indicator of the body’s absence. As mentioned before, Palestine has become a voice without a body, a body that has been raped by the Israeli colonial regimes. In the novel, the substitution of Walid Masoud’s physical absence with the recorded tape underscores the idea of the alignment between Palestine and the Palestinians, where both faced disappearance and became voices without bodies.

The place where Walid Masoud left his car with the recording inside (the road between Baghdad and Damascus) constitutes a premise that supports the interpretation that we adopt in this study. Baghdad and Damascus represent the incubators of the Palestinian diaspora, and for Walid Masoud to leave his car in that place means his transition from exile, in which he achieved impressive successes, to the search for the homeland and the realization of revenge. As Edward Said argues, exile is ‘the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted’ (2001, p. 173). Therefore, exiled people keep thinking of their native place, and they resist the forgetfulness of their memories there. Walid Masoud embodies the image of the educated Palestinian in exile who advances the national struggle against the plundering of the homeland. The Palestinians who succeeded in exile feel, in the end, that they are not in the actual place in which they should be. Said defines exile as ‘fundamentally a discontinuous state of being, exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past’ (1984, p. 51).

Unlike Walid Masoud who perceives the world away from home as an exile, Hamlet’s feelings of exile are spatially interior in that his homeland, Denmark, renders him out of place. Saddened by the death (murder) of his father and his mother’s overhasty marriage to Claudius, he contemplates suicide as a way out of Denmark which he describes as ‘a prison’. Hamlet’s reference to Denmark as a prison because of the political corruption that engulfs Denmark and his feeling of entrapment has an anachronistic similarity with Palestine where Palestinians feel that they are imprisoned in their homeland due to the restrictions on mobility and economic, political and social hardships brought about by the Israeli military occupation. Walid Masoud left the recording/puzzle in exile for his friends to search for him, while he left exile to search for the homeland and avenge his son, feeling that upon his loss life turns into a skull, an image that Jabra borrows from Hamlet. Walid Masoud narrates:

o I want to die too I ask myself, but I’ve known the answer for a long time I don’t need to strike a theatrical pose any longer taking in my hands Yorick’s skull and other skulls which the grave diggers dig up every second I don’t need all of this to remember that all the laughter and beauty will be gobbled up by my lady worm why should I care who gobbles it up after today when the desert road in front of me never ends, and I don’t want it to end it’s more wonderful than all the heads and all the eyes and all the lips (p. 18).

The narrator alludes to the iconic scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the protagonist encounters the skull of Yorick.

The narrator in Jabra’s work invokes the theme of mortality and transience by alluding to Yorick’s skull, which also features prominently in Hamlet. The concept of a ‘lady worm’ is also mentioned, alluding to the idea that worms and other organisms will consume the body after death. Thus, Jabra’s reference to Hamlet underscores the timeless nature of these existential concerns and the fragility of human life. However, while Hamlet is known for his theatrical and introspective nature, often using plays and acting to uncover the truth and expose the guilt of others, the speaker rejects dramatic gestures and pretense, reflecting on not needing to strike a theatrical pose anymore. While the speaker in the passage exhibits resignation and detachment towards the consumption of beauty and laughter, Hamlet, driven by a strong purpose to avenge his father’s murder, embarks on a journey filled with internal conflict, moral dilemmas, and a quest for justice. Walid Masoud refrains from pondering death, which stems from a societal motive deeply entrenched in the Palestinian culture of martyrdom. This viewpoint honors those who lose their lives serving their nation as martyrs.

The state of pain for the loss of the son that possesses the main character, and the accompanying states of sadness and depression, prompted the character to this identification with the grave digger. Walid Masoud, after the loss of the son and the homeland, no longer considers it necessary to ask about the meaning of death and the turning of skulls. This moment significantly occurs when Walid Masoud is on his desert road between Baghdad and Damascus, the way back to the homeland, and the search for revenge, which is more important than all the skulls that the gravedigger overturns. The reader will appreciate the essence of the above connection as an accentuation of the situation of Walid Masoud after his son Marwan was killed, especially this scene appears when he talks in detail about his son in the paragraph that precedes the above one:

and the morning looks strange through the large window like images frozen on a movie screen glowing with yearning mystery desire secrets and pain ah yes Marwan Marwan the pain remains I know I know as in surrealist paintings one tearful mascaraed eye on top of another the rain beats on the windows and flows in streams down the panes the door is open or half open then closes silently like the door of an ancient prison beyond which volcanoes may erupt, and yet you’ll have no knowledge of it one cries like a lover unused to crying every tear is like a knife in a wound oh Marwan (17-18)

This shows that the narrator’s reference to the grave digger reflects the deep sorrow and depression experienced by Walid Masoud after losing his son. Masoud’s grief was so profound that he, like Ophelia, felt there was a point in contemplating death and the macabre imagery associated with it. Walid Masoud’s linking himself to Ophelia rather than to Hamlet reveals that his disappearance is suicide and his revenge is not fulfilled. This is evident in the recording tape where he recalls his friend Ibrahim Haj Nofal commenting on it:

we’re all bastards he said what about Ophelia I said including Ophelia he answered even though she was nobler than either of us since in a world of villains and traitors she was at least able to commit suicide. However, life’s still more important than her or you or me or more important than lovely heads and big eyes and luscious lips (p. 18).

The statement ‘we’re all bastards’ suggests that everyone is inherently flawed or imperfect in some way and therefore unworthy of moral consideration. The reference to Ophelia is significant because she is a character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet who is often viewed as a symbol of innocence and purity. By including Ophelia in the statement ‘We’re all bastards’, the speaker is implying that even those who are considered virtuous or noble are not exempt from the flawed nature of human existence. However, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one can argue that Ophelia is not virtuous, for she is not what she seems to be at a meta-theatrical level. Makeup and ‘paintings’ are, markedly for Hamlet, the source of female dishonesty and hypocrisy; as he says to Ophelia: ‘God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another’ (3.1.142-43). Hamlet believes that women are manipulative through their changeable appearance, and he constantly associates painting with female sexual and political corruption. The speaker then asserts that life itself is more important than any individual. This statement reflects a kind of existential nihilism, where the value of human life is questioned or denied. The speaker dismisses physical attributes like ‘lovely heads’ and ‘big eyes’ as insignificant in the face of the larger, existential questions that confront us all.

The character of Ophelia in the novel also serves as a representation of the condition of Arab women in general. Jabra borrows Ophelia from Hamlet to represent Raima, the wife of Walid Masoud, who has gone insane, and Laila Shaheen, who was martyred under Israeli bombing in his novel Hunters in a Narrow Street, and Naima, the wife of Wadi’Assaf, who died during childbirth in The Ship. As in Hamlet, the female characters in Jabra’s novels are often tragic figures and burdened with a similar formula of tragedy as that of Ophelia. Ibrahim Haj Nofal compares how Ophelia lost her mind and fell into the river without committing a crime to the story of the Iraqi woman whom he saw fly to pieces at the moment of the bomb blast without committing any sin. Furthermore, the adultery relationship between Hamlet’s uncle and his mother has striking anachronistic similarity with the relationship between Ibrahim Haj Nofal and Sawsan Abdlhadi. Both Sawsan and Hamlet’s mother adultery during the period of mourning, and Sawsan refers to this in her paintings:

She produced a large number of pictures, painting every single day, night and day, and eventually, I began to feel her painting had matured. She started putting in a lot of hidden allusions to our relationship; in fact, she never finished a picture without including some symbol or other with a sexual connotation, one that we both understood and that was tied up with our private experiences together (251).

Unlike Hamlet, where we learn about his mother’s infidelity through ‘the ghost’, Sawsan Abdul Hadi confesses it through her art. She incorporates sexual symbols in her creations hinting at her relationship with Ibrahim al-Hajj Nofal. As these drawings attain a level of signification and purpose distinct from their creator, they become spectral entities that communicate to viewers that the artist behind the paintings is ‘a woman no longer pure’. Jabra borrows from Hamlet this incident (his mother’s marriage to his uncle) to show human fallibility. Ibrahim al-Hajj Nofal considers humans to be scoundrels and traitors (242), which drive the central characters to seek revenge, both individual and collective. Adultery in both the play and the novel therefore has political implications. Gertrude’s overhasty marriage (incest, in Hamlet’s words) hinders Hamlet’s taking the place of his father as the king of Denmark. The Arab leaders, feminized by the colonial regimes, are, metaphorically if not literally, become women who are committing adultery with colonial regimes to serve their interests. The cost of this relationship, this adultery, is the loss of the homeland/Palestine.

The fundamental underpinning of the retribution theme in In Search of Walid Masoud doesn’t rest on individual retribution (a father avenging his son) but pivots towards communal vengeance (a father avenging his motherland/Palestine). The novel delves into the topic of diaspora and the desire for return to the homeland/motherland/Palestine. The martyrdom of Marwan emerges as a fallout of homeland deprivation. In this sense, the ‘exile from homeland’ and the ‘loss of a son’ converge, transforming into a single concept. This amalgamation liberates Walid Masoud from a quest for personal revenge, shifting the focus to a collective one. Support for this argument comes from the character Maryam, one of Walid Masoud’s romantic interests, particularly her response after listening to the recording he left: ‘What’s all this talk of symbols?’ Maryam asked. ‘Walid’s words are as clear as day. He’s crying over his son. He’s recalling himself and his son to his mother, the earth he could never stop thinking about’. (p. 22).

Walid Masoud commences a sorrow-laden voyage that lacks any trace of joy. It’s a journey steeped in retribution and homecoming, where he aims to reconnect with his homeland. This reading is further reinforced by the recurrent invocation of the mother complex by Walid Masoud’s companions. The narrator, Dr. Jawad, mentions ‘Dr. Tariq stood up. ‘There are more important things than all that on the tape’, he said. ‘Walid, as Freud says, suffered from an Oedipal complex … Fadil!’ (p. 22)

There is a lot of evidence confirming Walid Masoud’s change after the martyrdom of his son and his desire to avenge him. Maryam Al-Saffar, one of Walid Masoud’s mistresses, for example commented after she heard the recording that Walid left in the recorder in his car: ‘What’s all this talk of symbols?’ Maryam asked. ‘Walid’s words are as clear as day. He’s crying over his son. He’s recalling himself and his son to his mother, the earth he could never stop thinking about’. (p.22). Walid’s profound bereavement for losing his son perhaps drove him to take revenge. Walid’s mistress Wesal (the mistress whom Walid called ‘Shahd’ and his closest confidant) told Dr. Jawad Hosni that she believes that:

He [Walid] wants revenge for the killing of Marwan, and in his own way, his own crazy, stubborn way. The day he feels his thirst for revenge has been slaked, he’ll come back. You’ll see, Jawad. He’ll come back. One day, a while back, I had a feeling he’d been killed. I could see him before my very eyes with bullets searing their way into his body; he kept twisting and rolling over, but the bullets kept chasing him. But now I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s conquered death (286).

It is the revenge – that takes different shapes – as a result of the loss of the son and the homeland, just as it was the revenge of Hamlet due to the loss of the father. Jabra also draws on Hamlet’s claim of madness to realize revenge to allow Walid to mislead his pursuers so that he can move freely and realize his revenge. Amer Abdel Hamid says to Maryam Al-Saffar, commenting on Walid’s recording he heard:

‘The tape?’ Amer commented. ‘If you want my frank opinion, I’ve come to the conclusion Walid was going crazy when he recorded it. I agree with Tariq Raouf on that point. I don’t care if it’s an Oedipus complex or, more obviously, straightforward madness’. (271).

The term ‘mother complex’ serves as a pivotal interpretive key for understanding Walid Masoud’s revenge theme as a collective rather than an individualistic one. Walid Masoud’s disappearance has no relation to the Oedipal complex but rather to the Mother Complex. It is worth noting that Walid Masoud did not undergo the transformation that Hamlet did from the Oedipal complex to the Mother Complex. His psyche was formed around the Mother Complex from the outset. Considering the historical context in which the novel was written (1978) offers a clue for interpreting the initial formation of the Mother Complex in the protagonist. In the 1970s, national liberation movements opposing colonialism were active worldwide. The essence of the national liberation movements was complete separation from colonial powers. If we compare this period, the time the novel was written, and the era of national liberation movements in the third world with the current Palestinian political situation, we find that the modern Palestinian suffers from the Oedipal complex. This is because the Palestinian politician at this stage cannot detach from the Israeli colonizer. Hence, the PA exploits Palestine/the mother and its resources to maximize their benefit through their relationship with the Israeli colonial regime. This reminds us of the initial character of Hamlet in the play, who, suffering from Oedipus complex, sleeps with his own mother through the figure of Claudius (Hamamra et al., 2023). As mentioned before, Palestine has become a voice without a body, a body that has been raped by the Israeli colonial regimes. In the novel, the substitution of Walid Masoud’s physical absence with the recorded tape underscores the idea of the alignment between Palestine and the Palestinians, where both faced disappearance and became voices without bodies.

It’s worth pointing out that the essence of the original novel gets somewhat lost in translation. The English translation modifies ‘mother complex’ to ‘Oedipus complex’ and swaps ‘Jung’ with ‘Freud’. The dissimilarities between these two major figures in psychology are quite considerable. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, often viewed psychological phenomena through the lens of personal, intrapsychic dynamics, with a notable emphasis on sexual and aggressive drives. His theories, including the well-known Oedipus complex, deal with individual psychological development and its implications. Jung, on the other hand, extended beyond the personal perspective that Freud emphasized. He incorporated collective elements into his theories, recognizing the influence of shared human experiences and archetypes that cross individual boundaries. Hence, the repeated reference to ‘Jung’ throughout the novel is of notable significance, underscoring the collective dimension of Walid Masoud’s struggle. This aspect becomes particularly apparent in a scene where Walid Masoud’s friends gather to listen to the recording he left. A discussion unfolds between two of his friends, Dr. Jawad and Amer, further exploring these psychological concepts:

Amer came over to me. ‘So this is where you are!’ he said in a loud, cheerful tone. ‘I was looking for you’. And then in a subdued voice, ‘Have you discovered anything?’ ‘Nothing’, I replied. ‘How about you?’ ‘My brain’s not functioning today’, he said. ‘I can’t understand a thing. When everyone leaves, I’m going to look at a few books by Freud’. ‘To find out what the Oedipal complex is?’ (p. 24).

The ‘mother complex’ illuminates Walid Masoud’s existence, indicating that his quest for revenge is not purely self-driven but also stems from a vision of himself as a redeemer for humanity and his homeland. The ‘mother complex’ renders Walid a paradoxical character due to its dual nature: a detrimental side reflected in his engagement in multiple simultaneous romantic relationships and a commendable side manifested through his self-sacrifice and struggle against injustice. These two facets collide, resulting in Walid Masoud’s character being largely unfathomable to any woman attempting to penetrate his internal world, despite his numerous romantic liaisons. Dr. Tareq Raouf provides commentary on this intricate characterization:

I ventured once to call this the Oedipus complex, which, according to Carl Jung, appears in its negative mode as macho behavior. It’s a strange psychological complex because it contains profound contradictions; the great movers in history were mostly lovers of numerous women. It appears, sometimes, that this persistent passion reflects the positive side of the Oedipus complex. It begins with different forms of manliness, resolution, ambition, fighting oppression, and the desire to sacrifice oneself heroically for the sake of truth. Its negative side manifests itself as love for one woman after another. Its positive side is manifested in this lust to explore the universe’s secrets and the revolutionary spirit that strives to give the world a new face (p. 104).

The character of Walid Masoud in Jabra’s novel shares similarities with Hamlet’s trait of abstaining, not only from life but also from romantic relationships with women. The two characters are also similar in the idea that the characters surrounding them - whether in the play or the novel - believe that the main character (Hamlet/Walid Masoud) plays with the hearts of women, either because of jealousy (the jealousy of Walid Masoud’s friends for his handsomeness and his ability to attract women), or fear (Polonius’ fear for his daughter Ophelia). In this context, Ibrahim al-Hajj Nawfal explains the physical traits of Walid Masoud, which are similar to the physical traits of Hamlet:

I felt there was something deep down inside him that he refused to submit to any woman. As soon as his emotions reached the point of bursting, and he began to worry something deep inside him might take fire, he’d give his beloved the cold shoulder as a means of prevention, of protection; it was as though his decisions were based on some inner experience, and he was unwilling to release his control over it. After such an experience, what have women left? A suppressed love or a hatred that appeared as mere insouciance on the surface, but deep down was a self-consuming flame? (259).

The character of Walid Masoud’s detachment from the women he loves and his emotional distance from them when faced with conflict is reminiscent of Hamlet’s estrangement from Ophelia, a woman he loved but ultimately turned away from. And the distance from mistresses that Hamlet and Walid Masoud made is only because they seek something much deeper than that relationship, and by that, we mean: the realization of revenge. The son’s revenge for the father in the play, and the father’s revenge for the son and the homeland (Walid was a member of a fedayeen organization, and that was what he disclosed to some of his mistresses) in the novel. It is also important that the psychological state of all of Walid’s mistresses after he leaves them (from euphoria to despair), is similar to Ophelia’s condition, as she heard sweet words from Hamlet yesterday. The next day she heard deranged words.

Conclusion

This article has argued that Jabra’s borrowings from Shakespeare’s Hamlet assisted him in representing the struggle of Palestinian people to avenge their lost homeland in his novel In Search of Walid Masoud. These intertexts impacted the characterization and themes of the novel to the extent that they could contribute to its interpretation. We have revealed in this article that Jabra’s representation of moral, political, social, and national subjects need to be explored alongside Shakespeare’s plays contrapuntally. We believe that Jabra has a Shakespearean passion that assisted him in establishing his authorial identity as well as rendering the personal and national larger and global, allowing the Palestinian struggle for being to be understood on a grander scale. Moreover, Jabra’s references to Hamlet’s existential concerns informed his representation of Walid Masoud’s profound sadness and deep sorrow after losing his son, which drove him to contemplate death, like Ophelia, whom Jabra also uses to represent the condition of Palestinian women living under Israeli settler-colonialism.

As such, this article illustrated that Jabra reinvented Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a new context. That is to say, Jabra’s influence by Shakespeare did not only help him to establish an authorial identity, but also to address the concern of his nation distinctively. Jabra was able to re-employ Shakespeare’s Hamlet in his novel in a manner consistent with the political, fictional, social and cultural experience that Jabra intended to express in his representation of the Palestinian diaspora, national liberation, and the struggle against settler-colonialism. It appears that this re-employment has made the symbolic and thematic functions in Hamlet bear other connotations in the novel. For example, the adultery relations turned into relationships that condemn the Arab regimes that exploited the Palestinian issue to achieve their interests, and Ophelia was made by Jabra a symbol of the suffering of women in the Arab world. It should be noted that Jabra was aware of the necessities of re-employing and appropriating Shakespeare in the novel in terms of a change in the structure of the psychological complexes of the characters. Jabra, for instance, employed the mother complex in Hamlet in ways that allowed building the Palestinian personality complex that fits the struggle of Palestinians for independence and self-determination, and voicing the concerns of the colonized Palestinians whose inspirations for freedom have been pathologised.

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Notes on contributors

Ahmed Khouli

Ahmed Khouli is an assistant Professor of Arabic Linguistics and Postcolonial Studies. He is the Director of the Department of Languages and Teaching Methods, and Head of the Arabic Language Department at An-Najah National University. His research interests focus on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the contemporary Arabic novel.

Ahmad Qabaha

Ahmad Qabaha is an associate professor in Postcolonial, Comparative and American Studies at An-Najah National University in Palestine. He is the author of Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing (Palgrave, 2018), and the co-editor of Post-millennial Palestine: Memory, Writing, Resistance (Liverpool University Press, 2021).

Bilal Hamamra

Bilal Hamamra is an associate professor of English literature at An-Najah National University. His research interests are in Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare, Palestinian literature, women’s writings and gender studies. He has published many articles on language, gender politics, martyrdom and diaspora in highly reputable journals.

Abed Khaleq Isa

Abed Khaleq Isa is an associate Professor of Arabic Literature. He is the Dean of the College of Humanities and Educational Sciences. His research interests include pre-Islamic literature about kingdoms, kings, pendants, and legends. He published many research papers in Abbasid literature, modern literature and travelogue.