Ep59: Isabella Hammad on Palestinian identity, art and the power of words

This week's guest on the show is the hugely talented Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian, and most recently, Enter Ghost. I love Isabella’s work, which is always so thoughtful, beautifully written, multi-layered and hugely informative and insightful. As a British Palestinian, Isabella tells stories of Palestinian families, enabling us to understand better, Palestinian history, Colonial projects, and what we are witnessing unfold in Palestine right now.

At the time of recording this episode, towards the end of 2023, the most recent war on Gaza has been taking place for over 75 days, and the official death toll has crossed 20,000 people. Thousands are still trapped under rubble, and millions are also at risk from starvation, disease and the cold. 

I’m so glad to be talking about Palestine, and Isabella’s work today. 

Isabella Hammad was born in London. Her writing has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, The New York Times and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and a 2019 O. Henry Prize. Her first novel The Parisian (2019) won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and has received literary fellowships from MacDowell and the Lannan Foundation. She is currently a fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.

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Transcript

Samia Aziz: 0:01

Hello, and welcome to The Diverse Bookshelf with me, Samia Aziz. On this show, I interview incredible authors doing a deep dive into important themes and issues while talking all things books. This week, I'm speaking to the incredible Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisien and most recently, Enter Ghost. I love Isabella's work, which is always so thoughtful, beautifully written and multilayered and hugely informative and insightful. As a British Palestinian herself, Isabella tell stories of Palestinian families, enabling us to understand better Palestinian history, colonial projects, and what we are witnessing unfold in Palestine right now. At the time of recording this episode, towards the end of 2023, the most recent war on Gaza has been taking place for over 75 days, and the official death toll has crossed 20,000 people. Thousands are still trapped under rubble and millions are also at risk from starvation, disease and the cold. I'm so glad to be speaking to Isabella today. All about her work and about Palestine. Isabella Hammad was born in London. Her writing has appeared and conjunctions the Paris Review The New York Times and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and the 2019 Oh, Henry prize. Her first novel The prison, which was published in 2019, one of Palestine Book Award, the SU Kauffman prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask award from the Society of authors in the UK. She was a National Book foundation five under 35 honoree, and has received literary fellowships from McDole, and their Lannon foundation. Hello, Isabella, welcome to The Diverse Bookshelf Podcast. It is so wonderful to have you here today. I'm really looking forward to speaking to you.

Isabella Hammad: 1:59

Thank you so much for having me.

Samia Aziz: 2:01

So I always like to ask my guests and people in general, how they are. And I kind of feel like at the moment, it feels like an increasingly impossible question to answer. But still, I'd like to still ask it. How are you doing everything going on? And also bearing in mind, you know, we're in the midst of British winter, which isn't a particularly nice anyway. But how are you?

Isabella Hammad: 2:28

Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how I am. It's a pretty horrible time. So I'm maybe in some way better than I was. But yeah, it's been it's a difficult moment. I think for for lots of us. I'm sure it is for you as well. So it's a tough time.

Samia Aziz: 2:44

Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to obviously, like today, I want to talk about your novel, enter ghost. But before that, I just want to explore your sort of relationship with Palestine, I know that you have made an effort over the years to go back to the West Bank regularly, I just want to understand a little bit about that.

Isabella Hammad: 3:06

Totally. Yeah, I am. I didn't grow up going there. I went elsewhere in the Middle East. But it was always going to be a big deal to go for the first time and I went after college. It was sort of like, major. I always knew it was going to be a major event and it was going for the first time. And then since then, basically, I go every year. I kind of maintain my relationship with the place that way and try and spend sort of chunk of time every year there. And yeah, I mean, I think it's always difficult to talk about my kind of that relationship with Palestine, given what's happening right now and how it really feels like we're in a major turning point, a major point of change in- I think it can't be overstated, actually - in Palestinian history. And also, I think world history because this is I think the first time - well, this is the first time in history, we've seen a genocide happening live on television. I'm sure our conversation will be coloured by this as you know, right, rightfully. Yeah, I think that I obviously will hope I'm going next year.

Samia Aziz: 4:13

Yeah, I hope so too. And I hope more of us that the one to go also also get to go. Yeah. And it just, I'm interested in, in knowing from your perspective, like when you do go back, do you notice any particular change? Like how, even in terms of like how it just feels, but also visually, like, do you have you been noticing a difference over the years?

Isabella Hammad: 4:38

I think that's a really interesting question. And it's, it's a sort of specific perspective you've got when there's time away, like, you see the changes, because they're not happening incrementally. It's happened with a year you know, whatever, kind of like seven months or something. So yeah, certainly I remember having a sudden moment, maybe like five years ago where I suddenly realised that this settlements that used to be when you're driving around the West Bank that are on the hilltops, suddenly they're close to the road. So quite rapid feeling of the land being swallowed up, of increasingly feeling the stranglehold on Palestinian towns, cities and villages in the West Bank and this feeling that your past, you know that the zones of so called, like so called Palestinian sovereignty are getting smaller and smaller. That's definitely something. Sometimes I also wonder if it's sometimes those changes that I see have to do with changes in me as well. Like, I also wonder if it has to do with me growing up or when I go and I feel really bad, for example, or I feel like overwhelmed by my perception of the strength of the Israeli military control. Is that is it has it changed? Or is it just that I'm seeing it, I'm seeing it more clearly than I did before. Or I'm, I have less of that kind of like, you know, when you're young and you, you have this, you're very optimistic about change, and you know, people power and stuff, I still have faith in people power. But I think that there's some kind of like, more greyscale, seeing things more, more clearly, maybe, as well. And that has to do with me just getting older and more mature.

Samia Aziz: 6:13

For sure. That's, I mean, that's really interesting, because I sometimes think about how sometimes when you go back to a place, especially if you've been away for a while, things can sometimes seem smaller, and they seem less almost like less magical than you remember them being or less, less happy, or whatever it may be. And I think obviously, in part that is because of how you change, but perhaps also the role of memory and how we can kind of control in some ways, our memory and we kind of can like almost change it to fit a certain narrative or a certain understanding of how we're perceiving the world at the time. But the other side of it, which is, I guess how you feel about the Israeli military, for example, I think is also really interesting, and probably very true. If we feel more strongly about something, I think we maybe we start to see that play out in different ways. We're more visually, so thank you for sharing that. And as you said, I think, you know, the entire conversation today will be coloured by what is happening in Palestine and Gaza, and also in the West Bank at the moment. But I would love to hear about your journey as a writer, because you are an absolutely stunning writer, like your work is phenomenal. And you've written two really amazing books so far and two ghosts came out earlier on this year. What has your writing journey been like?

Isabella Hammad: 7:41

Thank you, that's really kind. I was a big reader as a kid, as most most writers are big readers as kids, right? And always liked doing bits of writing, but I didn't feel very confident about writing. And I think that partly had to do with kind of education I had in the UK, not to I mean, I had largely that's, I mean, it's not entirely true. I did have great English teachers at high school who were encouraging of creative writing. But I think at university level, because I studied literature, I felt more inhibited or nervous about trying to write. You know we're told, first drafts are always rubbish. And also when you first start writing, it's not going to be great quality, you have to kind of learn the craft, and not really being an environment where that was encouraged. I didn't feel very confident about it. But it had always been something I'd wanted to do. Specifically, I'd wanted to write the novel that ended up being my first novel from quite young age, when I was a teenager, I'd wanted to write this novel about pre- Nakba Palestine. And then it was when I left college that I was like, you know, hell with it, I'm gonna get there go more or less. But broadly speaking, at that point, I was like, I may as well try. And then I began to try. I learned how to write scenes. And I learned how to do it from that point onward. So in a funny way, it was less like I wanted to be a writer, it was more like I wanted to write that book. And then writing that book made me who I am made me a writer, made it the way in which I experienced the world and what I do with my days.

Samia Aziz: 9:13

So obviously, The Parisian is brilliant. So multilayered a real education, I think, as well, because I think there are, I feel like there are more stories and resources available about sort of post Nakba, post 1948. And not often as much pre-Nakba, but which is what you what you address and you explore in The Parisian. So how how did you find the transition from writing the prison to writing and to go switch which obviously is a lot more modern day and what kind of because obviously it wasn't as if you were told you had to write a you decided to write it's your book. What drove that change?

Isabella Hammad: 9:59

You know, my first book took me about five years to finish and at certain point in writing a book, so I've experienced from the experience of writing two books. So there's a certain point at which the next book occurs to me, like I'm writing one book, and I suddenly know what my next book will be. And this idea of theatre had started quite early on. So I'd started making little notes, like, mixed in with my other my Parisien notes, other notes for this new novel. And then it was actually really fun to switch from the - obviously, stylistically, they're quite distinct. And but also, I think that it was a change for me to sort of experiment with different kinds of ways of making scenes, using different kinds of techniques, but also just kind of thematically to start exploring form in different ways. Obviously, the book is partly written and in theatre shape, you know, it goes into play form, and to explore my themes formally in a different way, in the way that I had done with the Parisian, but they're just different toolkits. So it was a fun switch. And challenging. It's always good to be challenged, I think with with a new piece of work.

Samia Aziz: 11:10

Yeah, absolutely. So Enter Ghost - I would love for you to just introduce your novel. I really like hearing how authors like sum up their book, so if you could please just tell us what Enter Ghost is all about?

Isabella Hammad: 11:24

Of course, yes. So the book is narrated by an actress called Sonya, whose sister lives in Haifa. And they've grown up in London, but returning to Haifa every summer, which is where their father is from. Their mother grew up in in the Netherlands, but was the daughter of a refugee from from the Galilee. And the novel opens, she's arriving in Haifa, to stay with her sister, she's had a bad affair with a theatre director, she's feeling pretty depressed about her career. And pretty much as soon as she arrives, she gets drawn into a production of Hamlet in Arabic in the West Bank. And then the rest of the book is basically about putting on this play in the conditions under which Palestinians have different legal statuses and experiences live.

Samia Aziz: 12:12

I really enjoyed the novel, I really, really enjoyed it. And I love going to the theatre, have never, ever thought of written writing a play. But every time I go, I'm always just in awe at the amount of work that must be going on behind the scenes, and also the role of the director. But actually, before we get into maybe the intricacies of the novel, I want to talk a little bit about the role of art and creativity and storytelling. What we're seeing in Gaza at the moment is a very clear targeting of writers and creatives. You know, Musa Abu Toha was arrested. And we've seen that so many really reverred and endeared Palestinian writers have been killed very recently as well. I wonder if you could just reflect on the role that you think that art and storytelling and plays and creativity can play or plays in the Palestinian Liberation Movement? And can we really look at sort of the loss of that in anything other than being intentional as a way of limiting the stories that get taken forward?

Isabella Hammad: 13:23

Yeah, it's been very important in the Palestinian liberation struggle for decades. And one of the kind of greatest theorists of this relationship is Ghassan Kannafani, who was a revolutionary leader, and also a really great writer. And he was killed so young, and if he'd lived, I mean, he would have been incredibly prolific, I'm sure, and would have graced us within amazing literary productions. And I really think that narrative making it's been very important for the Palestinian people to tell their own stories, especially in the face of consistent attempts that erasure. With genocidal violence, one of the aspects of genocide is to erase culture. And we're seeing that systematically in the destruction of universities and the destruction of cultural centres in the assassination of writers in also in the destruction of places of worship, they are they are very, very linked. I think that the sense of, of communal identity, the sense of being part of something larger than yourself, the sense of a shared language and sense of shared imagery. These things are not to be underestimated. These things are very, very powerful. And the Israelis know that they are very powerful. And that's why they attack them. And that's why they must be preserved and looked after.

Samia Aziz: 14:40

Absolutely, I really enjoyed hearing you speak on that so eloquently just now and have been thinking about it a lot. Recently, especially because I think, sometimes we think about our society and we think about maybe political leaders that are at the fore in front of it, but if we really think about like the passing on of tradition and culture and we think about what is told to the outside world, so much of that comes from writers. That's why we need places like libraries and archive Institute's which we have seen in recent weeks have been completely targeted and annihilated. And it's a very clear sign of genocide, as you said, is definitely part of that erasure of getting almost rid of people from history. So, in Enter Ghost, Sonia has come to stay with her sister, Haneen, who lives in Haifa. Now, I think what I what I really liked about the novel was that you explored the many facets and the many different ways that Palestinian identity is playing out in Palestine, and also in Israel at the moment. And so we have, we have places like Haifa, which have Palestinian families are still living there. But Haifa is now in modern day Israel. So this Palestinian Israeli identity is really complex and very heavy. And I think we see it a lot in the book, we see it. There's a lot of questioning of honey and questions like why am I still here? What am I doing? should I even be here? And I just wondered what you wanted to explore with regards to that and what you wanted people to think about?

Isabella Hammad: 16:36

Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I think it's really it's it's an important point to remember which, which perhaps, is not widely known. But the Israeli state has never declared its borders. So according to them, all of it is greater Israel. So the West Bank, they call Judea and Samaria, and as we know, they're already planning, property development and offshore gas exploration in Gaza. So for them, all of it is part will will be part of their future state project. It's an expansionist ideology. So that's why my character in Arabic Palestinians war will refer to the land that was taken in 1948, as usually as 48. Or the insight because in fact to call it and of course, we can call it Israel proper or whatever, but it's the the blue line is blurring. I think that's worth worth bearing in mind that this is this is basically one state is just with all these different sorts of legal mechanisms, and military mechanisms in place in different areas, different civilian infrastructure. But so for a character like Haneen, she of all Palestinians, you could argue, has the most privilege or the most freedoms because she she has an Israeli passport, she has the citizenship and that gives her bestows on her certain freedoms of movement, certain rights, although Palestinian citizens of Israel still are second or third class citizens within their own within that society for a variety of different reasons, or different kinds of covert and, and explicit modes of discrimination. But I kind of in the character hunting, I guess, because she teaches in the university, she's sort of occupies this uncertain position where she's come back, unlike Sonya who just didn't want anything to do with the Palestinian because she just decided to be a total individualist and become an actress, and in the UK, and not have anything to do with it. Haneen really wanted to engage. And her way of engaging was to work in an Israeli institution. And then she starts to feel this position as actually really difficult to occupy and really challenging morally and kind of literally, so that's sort of one of the ways that the character of honey and is grappling with her, her moral predicament. I really liked the character of honey. And I think she's actually one of the more most sympathetic in the book, she's got this she's sort of not very expressive. And Sonya finds that difficult. But, but she's, she's, she's very principled or she's tried, she tries to be very principled.

Samia Aziz: 19:00

But yeah, I also really like the character of Haneen. And she is the older sister model in many ways. But also just I think that she's just a really interesting character in how much she she thinks, and how sort of careful she is about things. And also even in terms of how much he controls what she says, to even her own sister. Well, one of the really interesting parts in the book, there's a part where the characters are when they're preparing the rehearsing for the play. And Sonya begins asking people about, you know, when did you have your political awakening? And she actually later on even asked her father, like, when did you have a political awakening? And I found that question so interesting, because I think about myself and I think I had a political awakening when actually but Because of Gaza, I would say back in 2008. And that was because I was doing my A levels. And I all of a sudden, was just very interested in politics and up until then just had not engaged in much outside of my own life. Partly because I was a child, but maybe also because I've, you know, had very big extended family and, you know, just very different circumstances in their lives in in the place where most people were not talking about politics or current affairs. So there wasn't that that appetite. So I think about myself, but I also think that like, but I was, I have not been living in Palestine, I have not been living in a conflict zone. And I just wondered if do you think that if you have lived your entire life, in a conflict in, is there actually ever a moment of awakening? Or is it just your complete normality in your your existence? And you don't know anything else?

Isabella Hammad: 21:04

I think that's a really interesting question. It makes me think of this story by Kannafani actually, I can't remember what the title of the story is very short. And in it, a little boy says to his father, dad, am I Palestinian? And the father says, Yes, you are Palestinian, and it's like a stone falls on him. And he suddenly realises, and that is like in a moment of awakening to his condition. I think you can be in an environment in which you ambiently absorb a political, political ideas, or you you literally see you literally see things in your daily life if you're, for example, living under military occupation. But I think as even even such a such a child who grows up in such an environment, there will still be moments where they were there moments of understanding, even if they're seeing it on a day to day basis where some pieces fit together, and they start to see something for themselves so that it's coming from themselves. I do think there is probably a distinction there. It but it probably happens earlier. Right? For those people, right? I mean, speaking for myself, I grew up in the UK. And I was in a family that was very politicised, and I was very, you know, conscious of being Palestinian and also confused and felt that I had to hide it. I would tell people, I was Lebanese still lots of people that from my childhood, think I'm there. But yeah, you know, there's sort of quite confused, you know, like a lot of sort of like, like badges saying Free Palestine around the house, kind of like, sort of bits and pieces. But I felt that for me it for me, the I mean, belatedly that in a sense, going there and seeing with my own eyes was when it was like, Okay, now I see everything. Now I see everything, and I'm changed. But then the groundwork had been had been laid there.

Samia Aziz: 22:48

Me and my parents are not Palestinian, we are Pakistani. And I just remember actually, at one point, feeling like such a disconnect between some of the things that my parents had been holding on to about the things that they've been through. And they almost felt like I just wanted them just to let go of it. Because to me, that isn't my reality. And I wonder if your experience was somewhat similar, because you were trying to grow up in the UK, trying to understand your own identity, but was somewhat removed from the experiences that your parents and their parents would have had? And I just wonder if it was something similar to that.

Isabella Hammad: 23:27

So interesting, I don't think I did experience that. I think I just wanted to know, I mean, that's why I started the book, where I started researching it. When I was really young. When I was like 15, I started interviewing my grandmother, you know, about the 1930s. Like I actually had wanted to know, like, I wanted to understand that I was conscious, really conscious that in the UK, there is no education about the history of the British Empire. And that is why that's a large reason why I think, yes, there are the massive marches here for Gaza are really encouraging. But I also think there is a it's muted as well. And I think that does, and people are afraid to speak. And I think that's because they don't have the education. They don't know their own history here. And they don't know that, that everything that's happened in Palestine is because of the British. This because of them. It's actually the UK government's responsibility to rectify its crimes. And that knowledge is just lacking. So I think that, I think that I came to understand, but I mean, reading was also like, important for that part of my education, reading books and to understand the history of empire. But I think I wanted I had curiosity.

Samia Aziz: 24:37

Yeah. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And actually, I think reading and for the same reasons that you said about how we're not taught about the actually what happened with the British Empire in schools and more broadly, it was only when I explored that did I understand more like who I am and where I come from, and now I'm so like, I'm so certain of my own identity, and also the role and the role that Britain plays in that, which is also a bit conflicting because I am living in Britain. And so there's a confusion there, but also so much clarity. But I think you're definitely right. And I think what I've been disappointed about is seeing people that authors and other people that, you know, have been talking about colonialism and decolonization but seem to have still muted themselves. When it comes to Palestine. That is probably one of the most frustrating things that I've seen at the moment.

Isabella Hammad: 25:38

Yeah, I feel gravely disappointed. I think exactly that because this is sort of a ways in which Palestine is like, literally out of joint, you know, it's the last Bastiaan in some ways, or one of the very last bastions, one of the most prominent final bastions of European colonialism, one of the one of the residues of that of that history, and people don't, people are afraid to talk about it, because it's happening now. And then, and then later on, maybe they'll say, Oh, I knew all along once it's a safe past fact. They'll be able to theorise about it and say they're on the right side of history, but they just didn't say anything at the time.

Samia Aziz: 26:19

Yeah, it is interesting. From that perspective, as well, because we have in Palestine, almost like a colonisation after colonisation. So there hasn't been a period of self rule. But, but there is a hesitancy to look at the role of Israel as that of a coloniser. And to have this idea that we live in a post colonial world. You know, British Empire has fallen, there's no colonialism, and well, France is out of wherever it was colonising. But actually, it is, as you said, it is happening right now. And I just think that that understanding is so important. And if if people can almost like arm themselves with that knowledge, I think will bring such a shift in not only how we view what's happening, but how we feel we're able to talk about it as well.

Isabella Hammad: 27:12

I think it's also at this point, we're talking about 20,000. massacred, but that's the figure. I mean, I haven't looked at the numbers this morning, but it's probably more like 30,000, counting the people under the rubble, we've also got people being starved, fighting infectious diseases, there's no water. If this isn't these facts, can't make people wake up to the reality of this ethno nationalist state project. I really don't know what will. And I think what we what's important is to enable people who do see but are afraid to speak to enable them to speak. And it might be that they don't have the vocabulary. They don't have the community. They're not brave enough yet. But I would say the world's majority can see it for what it is. And it's just that the power in the world lies in the hands of a very few people in a in a handful of nations that dominate the world. And I think we should see that clearly for what it is and what it means for our future.

Samia Aziz: 28:17

Yeah, absolutely. It's really scary. And I think one of the really heartbreaking things I've been seeing is when you hear some of the, like the journalists and the Palestinians on the ground, say things like, why is the wild not doing anything? Why so while to quiet? I think what I find so like, gut wrenching about that is knowing that it is literally a handful of people that are controlling it, there are hundreds and 1000s. And probably millions around the world now that are out on the streets. But it is a handful of people that are controlling it. And it is very scary. And as you said, I think it tells us a lot about the world that we live in. And it's not too late to change and to fix up right like it, especially

Isabella Hammad: 29:02

it's a must. It's a must. Because this has now huge implications for the - I mean, I'm not exaggerating - I don't think when I said this has huge implications for the future of our species. This is gravely serious, that this is happening and that and that it hasn't stopped. There is still not a ceasefire. This is gravely serious for our future. So I Yes, I hope people keep it up.

Samia Aziz: 29:26

Yes, absolutely. So let's get back to talking about Enter Ghost. And so the the play that our actors put on, is Hamlet. So why did you decide that you wanted these Palestinian actors to put on a Shakespeare play? And then why did you choose Hamlet?

Isabella Hammad: 29:48

Yes, thanks. So I first of all came, you know, the idea of theatre came first and I thought maybe I'll write a play. Maybe I'll do an Arabic play a few playwrights and then I thought actually It's quite good to do Shakespeare because although Shakespeare is British, he's also global. There's also a Soviet Shakespeare tradition or these other Shakespeare traditions. And also, there's a way there are ways in which certain Shakespeare plays are so well known that they come close to cliche, even even if they're known in a very like bastardised simplified way like everyone knows "to be or not to be", even if you don't know where it came from, you've heard "To be or not to be", what it signifies. That signifies a kind of like a high blown rhetoric of kind of grandiose theatrical grandeur -"To be or not to be", it sort of it connotes literary seriousness has all of these connotations. But I had initially thought I would do Macbeth and do all one of the plays that is traditionally or has a kind of their hat, around which a new postcolonial Shakespeare tradition has grown up right where you have kind of talking back to Shakespeare, whether that's through Calliban or in The Tempest or, or one of the other characters that represents a dominated people by the West. But then I found out that Hamlet had been banned in the prisons in the Israeli prisons in the First Intifada for being a text that incitement to violence, which I thought was really interesting, that To be or not to be as actually a very dangerous speech to "take arms against the sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." And then I found out that I had this other whole history in Egypt during the time of Naser, when to be or not to be was translated as shall we be or not be offered as a kind of newspaper slogan? Meaning the we have the Arabs that kind of coming to be coming to historical consciousness on the world stage, the coming of the Arab nation. So with all of those different echoes, I felt like it was quite good play to play around with basically to mess about with and because, you know, I, I recognise it can still be a barrier to entry, people might say, Oh, I'm not I don't really know how that very well, or I never studied it, or, you know, but I'm hoping at least they know, like, a handful of things. Like that's a ghost, you know, just like the basic things so that they can they can get into the text, and they can see where I'm making jokes and laugh, hopefully.

Samia Aziz: 32:11

I really enjoyed it. I read Hamlet, many, many years ago now. But I really enjoyed, I guess, like revisiting it through the book. And I thought it was I thought there was a lot that was very clever. And actually one of my favourite. My favourite parts of the book is when the actors are trying to decode whether they think like, what they think of a ghost is what they think and what they think, you know, well, is it Palestine and have this like, really animated conversation about that. And I just wondered for you what is behind the title into ghost? And what what do you think about the ghosts that I guess we all have?

Isabella Hammad: 32:55

Yeah, I mean, it didn't have that title. When I was writing it. I wrote it under the title, Go Bid the I just I thought it was so it was so clever. And I mean, I Soldiers Shoot, which is the last line of the play. But I sort of knew that this would be vetoed by my editors. My agents, were like, no woman is going to pick up a book with soldier in the title. So, Enter Ghost is a much more sellable title that sort of sounds mysterious, but I think it works. I like that it pulls out ghosts throughout the book. So people that are looking for ghosts. I think it works well. And I like that and I like the resonance. But obviously there are lots of different

ghosts in the book: 33:31

there are ghosts of the previous generations, there are the ghosts of parents, there are the ghosts of grandparents, there are Palestinians as ghost to haunt the Israelis the return of the repressed. You know, it's something I could also play around with, I kind of like the way the actors as you say, debate about that how to allegorize Hamlet to represent Palestine. And the director is like, no, no, we don't want it to be like a too simple a one to one allegory, it can resonate, but we don't want it to be like didactic in this way. So this sort of battle, which is also sort of joke about a Palestinian arising or, or artwork. I think in the same way, I guess for myself as a writer, I also didn't want I'm a bit I was a bit like Maryam like, I didn't want it to be to that there is one one ghost for more, it can be something that kind of imbues the text that evoke certain things that pairs together things you might not ordinarily pair together. That makes the mind work in more lateral ways, I guess. could almost tell that it would have been quite fun for you to like, play around with that and explore different things. And I also really liked the character of Maryam I think she's so great. Really, really interesting, really strong willed as well. I do love her. I want to explore the the sister so we have Sonya, we have honey What Were you really interested in bringing out really about their relationship, like what was important to you to bring across about these two people?

Samia Aziz: 35:11

So I mean, I have I have one sister, I have a I'm not sure that I approach characters with that in mind, I don't think I come to them with oh, I want to draw this out, I think I was interested in sisters. And that might be because I don't have a sister. And I maybe always wanted a sister and thought, well, maybe I'll just write a book that sort of about sisters, and I can explore sisterhood. And what that means. And obviously, the whole book in way, in many ways is about the relationships among women, and different kinds of being a sister or being a mother. In fact, the ways in which sisters end up mothering each other, as honey does for Sonia. So Haneen is like Sonia's mother. In some ways, it's her older sister. But as I, as I wrote the book, and I, and as I defined the characters in opposition to each other, it became quite clear that Sonia and Haneen had defined themselves almost in distinction to the other that they had taken decisions because their their sister had gone one way they had gone another way. And I think that that can be true of siblings. In general, you know, when you think about the family unit, and how you come to be as a person, I don't know, if you've got siblings, or if you've experienced that, you you do there is a kind of unconscious perhaps, or conscious comparison among among siblings, and sometimes they copy each other. And sometimes they go their own way. That said, well, they did that. So I'm not going to do that, I'm going to do something else. And that becomes a kind of actual central force in identity formation. I sometimes think when you know, people in the diluted way in which people deal in psychoanalytic ideas, there's always an overemphasis on the parents and the ways that your mother and father and how they abandoned you, or didn't, or smothered you or whatever, but these things are how your your neuroses are formed. But actually, I think that siblings play a really big role. They're also there when you're a kid, or they suddenly appear partway through childhood and screw everything up. So I think I just wanted, you know, I just wanted to kind of play with that and see what see what my characters did when I when I put them under those conditions. brother also over I have one sister, and we are quite different. I think, although when people meet us, they think that we're very similar, but I think we're very different. And also, like, we're eight years apart. So we have this like, almost like a life difference. For for a lot of fun. A lot of art, a lot of my growing up, I kind of felt like we weren't on the same page. Now that, you know, I'm in my like, early to mid 30s. And she's in her early 40s. I kind of feel like we're in a similar place now, I guess. But for so long, we just weren't. And I really liked seeing that, in some ways play out with Sonya and honey. And as well, just to show that like how difficult it can be just sometimes have a conversation, and how difficult it is to really say what you want to say. And to ask the questions that you want to ask and and especially if you feel left out because there were parts in the book quests on the felt like Haneen had hidden things from her or not told her or forgotten about her. And just to see that playing out on the page was really interesting.

Isabella Hammad: 38:14

I was just gonna say, Yeah, I think that's also definitely when you when you grow up with someone, you have certain ways of relating to each other where you develop or when you've known someone for a long time. And sometimes it can be hard to say the truth or to kind of find new ways of relating to each other. It's like your brain just goes along this one track. Well, this is how I react to my, to my dad or whatever, or this is how I sort of respond, I go into this mode, and I go into that mode. And these are the roles we play and it can be hard to break through and actually talk about something directly.

Samia Aziz: 38:42

Yeah, absolutely. And I will say what you just said also, before about, about parents and how sometimes, even like among women and with sisters, one might and you know end up in like a mothering type role. And I never thought about if that is because we because like we experience being parented, and if we kind of feel like that's what we need to do, I don't know. But there is a story there is part of sanyes story is that she doesn't have any children and she's had baby loss and then struggling with fertility. And I just as someone that has been through that myself, I guess I appreciated to see that on a page in a book that we don't see nearly enough of that but I just wondered if you could just talk talk about why you felt that was an important part of Sonya's story.

Isabella Hammad: 39:34

Definitely, so the theme of motherhood was it was very important from the beginning. And in part because I wanted to I kept coming at it from quite a kind of cerebral standpoint, I was interested in and political standpoint, I was interested in the role quote unquote, that women play in the Palestinian struggle. And that role like in iconography has always been the mother of the fighter brought and largely the mother of the fighter, which is a bit like Mary, the Mother of Christ, the martyr universe, sort of like similar iconography, the fighter goes out, you give them their breads outside or whatever, you know, this kind of thing. And partly knowing so many strong Palestinian women, I was like, well, this is so interesting sort of this iconography. Is there a new iconography? Or are they could there be new kind of ways of imagining the role of political women, and that was sort of where the idea of the mother came in is to that angle, and then I and then I chose Hamlet, and then I was like well, then Sonya should play the mother character. And she should be struggling with that role, the role of the mother, which is also a role, that even if you're not in a political struggle is something that women have to contend with, whether its absence or its presence as a choice or not a choice either way, because that's what society expects of women. Even if you completely broken the formula, you say, I don't care about that. I don't want kids, you still are contending with this paradigm. Socially. We haven't we haven't heard of that. And so that was something that kind of entered into Sonia's life. And it became clear at a certain point in the writing that that should involve a concrete experience of loss, rather than a kind of abstractly this is the path I didn't take. It should actually be No, she actually experienced wanting to be a mother and she thought she was going to be a mother. So that's where we're at in Enter Ghost.

Samia Aziz: 41:21

Yeah. And how did how does that also link to or relate to Sonya and Haneen's relationship with their own mother, who was largely absent from the book. To be honest, at the beginning, I wondered if she wasn't alive anymore. And then there was a bit where Sonya was talking about her day, and she was I called my father, and then I called her mother. And I said, Okay, she's not, she's still alive. So, yeah. Why? In what in wanting to explore motherhood and the role of women to then have a main character's mother to be so absent from from the story? .

Isabella Hammad: 42:01

Yeah, so their strongest relationship ends up being with the father because the mother left them. So they in fact, were left by their mother, which I think now that I think about, and I found myself actually, I think about my characters in this way, rather than they almost at a certain point developed opacity, so that I could think aspects of them and this miraculous thing of inventing characters met were kind of like completely consonant with each other. And as though they were real. But it seems like it's in that mode, I'm going to make this comment, it seems correct to me that the mother should be absent so that they don't really have a model for being you know, the neither of them are mothers, they haven't actually taken this path, or they have had a kind of mixed relationship with the idea of motherhood. And I think that does have to do with their relationship with their mother, who was quite absent and who wanted to pull them away from Palestine. She herself had a kind of complex relational kind of difficult relationship with Palestine. And yeah, so she's sort of ghostly. She's sort of not really there. And that's partly why the oldest sister then then becomes then becomes Sonia's maternal figure. She's the one who suddenly returns to wanting, wanting to be sheltered when she's in trouble, without realising that honey in herself need some care.

Samia Aziz: 43:09

Yeah, absolutely. That's really, really interesting. I mean, and you said that you use the word ghost, which I hadn't thought about it, but in some ways of their mother is quite ghosts-like, throughout the book, because she's there. But they have these questions. Also about her like, there's at one point, Sonya asks Haneen, why does she think that their mother married their father? And I just I found that so like, you know, your sister's not really gonna know the answer to that question. But it felt like such an important question for Sonya to try and understand everything that's going on in the way in just in the way that ghosts do haunt us. And they force us sometimes to think about the things that we've locked away. And we've just sort of like push to the back of our mind. So that's really interesting. So the book is, is basically like, a book, a play within a book. That's right at play within a book, but it's also like a play within a play. So we've got the actors of performing Hamlet within the book does. We have bits of their own interactions that are written out like a play? Yeah, exactly. I'm very interested in understanding why you decided to go with the form in the way that you did, and what it was like for you exploring that?

Isabella Hammad: 44:34

Well, I definitely wanted to play with form when I started it, I wanted to explore theatricality and performance and roles formally. So I sort of knew I would do it at some point. And then it became almost automatic when they started rehearsing, in part because there was so many characters in the room that it was actually became a technical way to have everybody speak without all of that those sort of clogging ligaments of, of then he put his cup down whatever it you know, the kind of, I didn't used to sort of have that or, or the sort of balance of, of prose and dialogue of of stock frozen dialogue. And it also did this other thing that I really liked, which was it made Sonia, who by that point had becoming the first person, I'd started the book and third person, but it gave me this break from being stuck in Sonya's perspective. And she just became another one of the speakers. So there was sort of levelling all of the speakers into one. And I liked that effect. I like what that suggested about being part of the team of the play, that they were all in it together in this sense.

Samia Aziz: 45:39

Yeah, I did like that you were able to bring forward other characters, almost to like the main stage of the book without having to switch perspective. Because I have read a lot of books as far as perspective, and I do quite enjoy them. But I think I liked the fact that this was just one perspective, they gave it a continuity, but at the same time, you were able to bring forward other other characters in that way. So yeah, I really, yeah, it's, I think it's so good. There's a bit in the book. And I have heard you have spoken about it before as well, where one of the characters says, you know, every family has a Nakba story. And I just wondered if you could just reflect on that. On that sentence?

Isabella Hammad: 46:24

Well, it's true. Every family has a Nakba story, right. Much of our understanding of the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, is passed down through oral histories. There are some great projects, actually some great oral history projects as one happening at the American University of Beirut, where they're recording their will they have recorded a huge number of oral histories about the Nachbarn and put them online. I think this is so important and so valuable, especially as our grandparents generation passed away or people who witnessed it, that generation is being lost and those memories are being lost. It's so important to preserve, it isn't that kind of act of witnessing, and obviously now we're having another Nakba or if that could be ever stopped. Indeed, I think there's also a growing understanding of the Nakba, as a framework or as an ongoing project of erasure, which began in 1948, or 1947. In fact, and which has never really stopped, but certainly, I think thinking Palestine through through the lens of family is very real. That's how we understand it is through our families, especially those of us in diaspora. That's very important to understand it through the lens of our families. You know, somebody said to in Egyptian said to me what, what she was with with me and a group of other Palestinians, she said, You guys are always talking about family trees always asking from what village someone is from, or what family are they were they really, are they related to this person, or that person? Also, God was so awful, she's like, No, it's because you're a diasporic people, these things are very important. You kind of you latch on to family trees, it's a people that's been fractured. So these things become very important, this sense of, where you're from here, and then you went there, and my grandparents was from there. And you know, I don't know that, that people in other countries talk about their, their great grandparents so much, you know. So I feel like this is actually very important for an affirmation of sense of belonging, a sense of self, and the sense of a collective sense of self that is resisting that erasure.

Samia Aziz: 48:24

Yeah, I mean, I think it's amazing, really, to, to kind of know your own history as far back as a lot of Palestinians do. I don't, I can't really tell you anything concrete about my family, before my grandparents and I can just tell you that my grandparents moved from Pakistan into the UK. And I have been asking my parents and have been asking my aunts and my uncles, but so much of the history has just lost it has gone. And, like I have, I have this like very, like a basic story that I have dated to 1920. But I don't know if it is even 1920 that my ancestors came from Kashmir, but what is now Indian administered Kashmir. They came from there into Pakistan, and then they were five brothers that moved to different villages. And that's how my family and the community has sort of developed. Then in the 70s, my grandparents and also one of my parents, at the same time, moved from Pakistan to the UK. So I have this, but it's a very vague story. I can't tell you any names. I can't tell you the names of any more villages apart from the ones that I have visited. It's very, very vague. And actually, I really sometimes feel that loss. I feel that absence and I have tried to fill it in, but there's just no there's no way for me to find that information because everybody that I knew is no longer here. And so actually, I'm always in awe of people that have history, I think it's so powerful and so important to know that and also, when it helps, it helps a lot to build community, because not to the same extent. But definitely when I meet somebody, there's also from box on if they say the name of an area that I'm aware of. Immediately, my interest is farther piqued, and I start asking, Oh, do you know this person that first and I think it's a very natural, a very natural thing. But it's really important in community, and kind of building that sense of as a no family as well. I recently read a piece in The Guardian that was published an exchange between yourself and Sally Rooney. I think it was a guardian, right?

Isabella Hammad: 50:45

Yeah, it was in the observer.

Samia Aziz: 50:47

And I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really, I think it put words to a lot of the things that a lot of us are feeling at the moment. But you also, one of the things that you talk about is, is the fact that it's been a PR war since 1948. But that is exactly the line that's actually taken from enter ghost. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about that, based on the importance to keep talking and the importance that word and words and language, and generally sort of making noise and raising awareness has right now.

Isabella Hammad: 51:27

Yeah, the other the other day I heard the writer Mohamed El Kurd, say, in Palestine, they are subjected to genocide, but here -and he was speaking in London - we are at war. And I think that is really important, too. I mean, people know this already, but to to reaffirm the fact that Israeli Apartheid is sustained by international complicity, specifically of the US, UK, France and Germany. And that means that the manufacturing of the consent of the taxpaying public is a plays a key role in sustaining that system. So that's where language is very important. And that's where the role of mainstream publications actually also, is, is pretty it's really large, like the New York Times plays a huge role in this war. And that is, they bear a huge moral burden, in fact, yeah, so it can't really be understated. I think sometimes you can feel like, Oh, I'm stuck in this discursive war, so far away from where actually people are being killed every minute. And so it feels like why are we fighting about words? When that's happening, when people are being massacred? It's sort of seems so detached or something, but it's not - the things are related. They directly relate to the war machine, in a frightening in a frightening lead direct, direct route.

Samia Aziz: 52:53

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that I have taken a lot of my time, actually over the last few months is expressing frustration. The use of words chosen by people, by people of influence by big mainstream news outlets, like the BBC, like the New York Times, if you use a set of words to describe death in Israel, for example, and you're using a different set of words to describe deaths in Gaza, but those the words that you're using imply blame or they imply a lack of innocence or they imply hatred, you are fueling the machine, it is part of the narrative, it is the thing that is legitimising what is going on and it's so important to get as you say, like to get the terminology right. And so I'm so grateful for all the work that that you're doing and that so many other people are doing to to just keep the conversation going in the way that it needs to be going. And so how long did it take you actually to write into ghost? It took you five years to write the prison right? How long did it take you to write Enter Ghost?

Isabella Hammad: 54:06

Three and a half, three? Okay, four years? Yeah. With edits? Yeah.

Samia Aziz: 54:10

Okay, that's quite a long time. I guess after three and a half years once you'd finished writing it, did you feel like you had done what you have set out to do three and a half years ago? Or did you feel somewhat different towards the text?

Isabella Hammad: 54:29

No, I think I think I broadly with both books I've written kind of knew what I wanted. So that I mean, obviously it's never there always faults and attacks. It's never perfect. I think somebody said a novel it's a long piece of writing with something wrong with it. There's always something kind of you know, they're they're baggy pieces of of writing. But broadly, I ice I knew what I wanted to do. And I and I didn't really change plan. I kind of I kind of kind of figured out how to get there.

Samia Aziz: 55:00

And what do you hope for anyone that picks up Enter Ghost?

Isabella Hammad: 55:05

I hope that it makes people think deeply about lives other than their own.

Samia Aziz: 55:11

Yeah, I'm sure it will and Isabella, it has been so wonderful speaking to you today. Thank you so much for your time.

Isabella Hammad: 55:19

Thank you so much for having me Samia.

Samia Aziz: 55:22

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