SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Behind bars, a man convicted for a deadly Tel Aviv bombing became a novelist. Now he's been freed from prison. He was 1 of nearly 2,000 Palestinians released from Israeli prisons last month. NPR's Daniel Estrin spoke to him about the bombing that landed him in prison and the novel he wrote there that made him famous.
(CROSSTALK)
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: A bald man with a beard sits next to the outdoor swimming pool at a Marriott hotel in Cairo after more than two decades behind bars in Israel. NPR producer Ahmed Abuhamda was there in Cairo, recording his voice as we spoke on the phone.
BASSEM KHANDAQJI: OK. I'm Bassem Khandaqji. I'm from...
ESTRIN: Bassem Khandaqji was apprehended in 2004 during the second Palestinian intifada - or uprising. He was convicted for planning a suicide bombing that killed three Israelis at an outdoor market. He admits it.
KHANDAQJI: I was live in a terrible war. When I saw all the people around me was being killed by the Israeli airplanes and tanks, that make me very angry. I was a young man. I was 20 years old. I was in the third year in the university.
ESTRIN: He acknowledges he was the one who dispatched the bomber to Tel Aviv. He says he wanted the bomber to attack a military target, but he acknowledges that civilians were killed. He had 21 years in prison to reflect.
KHANDAQJI: Did I meant to send these suicide bombers to Tel Aviv to kill these people? No. I don't believe in targeting the civilian people. It was a horrible period. It was a complicated period. And if the history will return back, I will never use the same tools. Today, I try to convince my readers by my text that I'm a new man now.
ESTRIN: In prison, he started writing novels and found ways to smuggle out his books for publication. How, he wouldn't say. Last year, while he was still in prison, he won Arabic literature's highest honor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Arabic, reading).
ESTRIN: The International Prize for Arabic Fiction released this video with a selected reading from his award-winning novel "A Mask The Color Of The Sky."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Arabic, reading).
ESTRIN: The protagonist is a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank with a degree in archaeology who's writing a novel about Mary Magdalene of the Gospels. The main character finds an Israeli man's ID card and uses it as a mask to pose as an Israeli so he can enter Israel. The premise is similar to what the author was convicted for - using a journalist ID card to enter Israel and prepare for the bombing. But the book takes this in a different direction. The Palestinian protagonist takes on the identity of an Israeli. Nur, the Palestinian, becomes Ur, the Israeli.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Arabic, reading).
ESTRIN: In prison, Khandaqji did a political science degree by correspondence, focusing on Israeli studies. He still considers himself as part of a struggle against Israel, now using words, not weapons. He calls himself anti-colonialist and believes in a shared destiny in one state - Palestinians and Jews together. He says he's committed to writing about the other.
KHANDAQJI: Unfortunately, in Palestinian literature, there is no clear presence inside the Palestinians' stories or novels of the other - of the Jews. It's a stereotype presence. The Israeli, he's a human like us. He is not just a soldier. He is not a vampire. In the Israeli texts, they handle the Palestinian as a vampire and as a terrorist. So I can't treat the Israelis inside my text like that. I'm looking for a new ethic discourse.
ESTRIN: Out of all the Palestinian literature written in Israeli prisons over the years, Khandaqji's award-winning book stands out, says the former head of the Palestinian National Library, Issa Qaraqe.
ISSA QARAQE: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: He says, the book doesn't directly address the prison experience like the majority of the literature by Palestinian prisoners. The book steps out of the prison and talks about Palestinian history and identity and confronting the Zionist and biblical identity, he says.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NABIL SULEIMAN: (Speaking Arabic).
(CHEERING)
ESTRIN: At the awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi last year, the head of the jury, Syrian novelist Nabil Suleiman, announced why the book had won the $50,000 prize.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SULEIMAN: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: The head of the jury said the book intertwined the personal and political in innovative ways, with new narrative forms, exploring self-awareness and the awareness of the other. The author's brother accepted the award on his behalf. In Israel, the win drew angry headlines. And in prison, Khandaqji found out about his prize from his interrogators.
KHANDAQJI: They came to my room, and they take me out to a interrogation with the intelligence. They was very angry, and it was a stress meeting. So I told my investigator that, if I know that my words will hurt you like that, I will decide to write a hundred years ago.
ESTRIN: Since then, he's written another book in the same series, this time from the perspective of the Israeli character whose ID was stolen, a character whose family history is tied to the Holocaust. In prison, Khandaqji would write at 4 or 5 in the morning, when the other prisoners were asleep, hiding his writing from them and from his jailers.
KHANDAQJI: That's the most fascinating thing. I can't write without this secrecy, without feeling that I am wanted to the jailer. When I decide as a prisoner to write, I turned to a wanted man. And my words too. They want my words.
ESTRIN: After the Hamas attack, October 7, 2023, prisoners had their personal belongings confiscated, including pen and paper. Khandaqji says he wrote an entire novel in his head - a novel based on his friend, a fellow prisoner author, who was denied clemency and died of cancer in prison last year.
KHANDAQJI: It's amazing experience to write inside your head without any pen. You afraid from forget something. I succeed. I took my novel with me when I was released.
ESTRIN: Khandaqji was released in October. That's when the ceasefire began in Gaza, Hamas released Israeli hostages and Israel released many Palestinians from prison. Some of those prisoners who were serving long sentences for deadly attacks were banished to Egypt under an Israeli condition that they never again return to their homes in the West Bank. Khandaqji has been sent into exile.
KHANDAQJI: I feel I am so scared. I'm so scared from the exile. It's harsh. It's a harsh thing. It's a very complicated thing. Maybe the prison, it's more easier for me.
ESTRIN: His award-winning book comes out in English translation next year. He says he has more books in him to write. And he has a page to turn in his own life too.
KHANDAQJI: I told the investigator before he was released me. He asked me, are you going to talking to the families of the people who was killed in the bomb you were involved with? I told him, yeah, maybe in the future. Maybe I will call them.
ESTRIN: That chapter remains to be written.
Daniel Estrin, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
