When it comes to literary festivals, the way it usually works is that the organisers find a nice spot for writers to set up shop, then wait for the public to turn up to listen to the writers talk. In Palestine, though, things are a little different. Here, it's the job of the writers to go out and travel from city to city, seeking out an audience. And here, the writers listen as much as they talk: to the people whom they've come to meet about the realities of life under military occupation.
Now in its third year, Palfest – the Palestinian Festival of Literature – is part-cultural roadshow, part-exercise in literary pedagogy. With the goal of bringing "writers and artists from around the world to Palestinian audiences," since 2008 it has convened a yearly celebration of the written word: a week-long series of readings, talks and workshops in Palestinian cities across the West Bank.
The reason behind the festival's unusual structure is a pragmatic one. On the West Bank, the most immediate effect of Israel's military presence is the restrictions it places on freedom of movement for Palestinians. Between security roadblocks and Israeli settlements, the simple act of travelling becomes anything but; a short journey between cities can take as much as half a day. So the guest writers – this year including Geoff Dyer, Hisham Mater, William Sutcliffe and Adam Foulds, alongside local writers such as the Orwell prize-winner Raja Shedadeh and Suad Amiry – make the journeys themselves, touring Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and the Old City of Jerusalem and observing everyday life in Palestine.
As well as taking art to the people, the ambitious aim of the festival seems to be to establish the foundations for the promotion of cultural expression among Palestinians. Much has written about Palestine, but mainly from an explicitly political perspective. Palfest seeks to encourage young Palestinians to tell their own stories, using fiction and poetry as their tools.
Why should any of this matter? Don't the realities of life on the ground render artistic expression a diversion, at best? Perhaps not. The written word provides a (largely) democratic platform via which writers can bear testimony to their lives, can educate and inform the wider world about the conditions they face. It's a point the Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer made forcefully when she visited the West Bank a couple of years ago. Writers have a duty, she suggested, to put forward what she called an inner testimony, "to talk about what is actually going on, not just on the surface but deep within, the factors that shape the emotional and social landscape, even if unseen or unacknowledged."
Naturally, Palfest is not without its detractors. While international in outlook, the festival has no connection with its neighbours across the Green Line. Coincidentally or not, Palfest took place this year – as it did two years previously – at precisely the same time as the biannual International Writers Festival in Jerusalem; but the two events scarcely deigned to acknowledge the existence of the other. It would be easy to put this down to political posturing, but Ahdaf Soueif, the founder of Palfest and author of the Man Booker prize-shortlisted The Map of Love, rejects this suggestion. "I feel that the Palestinians are too often seen as an adjunct or reverse side of another coin," Soueif told the New York Times. "Palestine is an entity in its own right, and it deserves its own festival. If the day comes when Jerusalem is a shared capital, then we can reconsider." She has a point, of course. Certainly, one cannot argue against giving Palestinians the opportunity to shape and to celebrate their cultural identity on their own terms. Still, it does seem a little like creating a literary cordon sanitaire, eschewing the opportunity for conversation between those most in need of understanding the truth about the uneven relationship between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Under the circumstances, one can't but think of lines written by the poet Mahmoud Darwish: "Me or him/ That's how war starts/ But it ends in an awkward silence/ Me and him".
But it's early days. In the meantime, the festival is making the most of the opportunity it has created for itself: actively promoting an authentic, indigenous Palestinian literary culture, and giving the inhabitants of the West Bank the opportunity to meet and learn from writers and poets from the wider world. A rolling schedule of workshops in local universities is taking shape, and there is talk of extending the festival next year to include film.
On the closing night, in the sepulchral surroundings of the African Community Centre in the Old City of Jerusalem, Geoff Dyer, quoting John Berger, summed up the experience. "There are not two sides, but two dimensions. You can either go back or go forward."
Forward it is.
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