São Paulo – Anglo-Palestinian author Naim Attalah just had his autobiographical novel The Old Ladies of Nazareth translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil by Matrix Editora. The book recounts his childhood memories and tells the story of two sisters, Wardeh (Arabic for rose) and Jamileh (beautiful). The ladies live in Nazareth, and the story starts in the beginning of the 20th century, in 1918, when England started controlling Palestine after beating the Ottoman army in the World War I.
The Arab Christian sisters are illiterate and live off the land, growing flowers and fruits and raising chickens. They are familiar with the rhythms of the land that they live off, in a farm that remained untouched by the wars. They trade eggs with Bedouins in exchange for baskets of figs and other supplies and try to sell flowers to the monks.
Wardeh had an arranged marriage when he was eighteen, but the brief union gave her a son. Jamileh remained single, skeptical and suspicious. They lived a spartan, cautious life in tune with the place where they lived. Wardeh’s son, though, disrupted their simple life. He studied in a German school in Jerusalem and eventually became an aggressive, unpredictable man. His frail, sensitive son would later become the most important person in the life of the sisters.
The 80-page novel is focused on the love of these two ladies towards the child, who, after years of reclusion and subjection to his strict father in the big city, takes refuge in Nazareth because of the war. For him, this refuge is about freedom and adventure. The kid had always been sick, between life and death, and raised far from the streets and games. The first time he found himself free was by immersing himself in the simple life with the ladies of Nazareth. “It was like history had frozen, and they came back to Biblical times,” the author describes.
The boy delves into his origins, looks for his lost cousins, uncles and aunties, finds about love, affection, adventure, life and art through the teachings of his grandmother and great-aunt. The narrative brings this learning journey of the hero, from childhood to adulthood, in search of a spiritual, political, social, psychological, physical and moral growth.
The book shows the charm of the rural life, full of uncertainties and subject to the whims of nature. And it brings contrasts into harmony: Nazareth and Jerusalem, countryside and the city, East and West, life and death, youth and old age, Palestinian Arabs and immigrant Jews. Being native and foreign in your own land.
The Old Ladies of Nazareth was first published in England in 2004 by Quartet Books, a publishing house ran by the author since the 70s. Naim Attallah wrote over 15 books. He was born in the former Mandatory Palestine in 1931 and had an illiterate grandmother of humble origin that lived in Nazareth. Now 89, he is married, has a son and lives in London.
Service
As Senhoras de Nazaré
Naim Attallah
Translated into Portuguese by Alessandra Blocker
Matrix Editora
ISBN 978-85-8230-638-3
80 pages
BRL 24
www.matrixeditora.com.br
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
