The Palace on the Higher Hill (excerpt)

The following is an excerpt from The Palace on the Higher Hill, a novel by Karim Kattan. Initially written in French, the novel was translated into English by Jeffey Zuckerman and published by Foundry Editions on the 2nd of April, 2025. It can be ordered online.

“In beautiful, angry prose, Karim Kattan introduces us to an intimate Palestine of the imagination [...]. He gives a nuanced deeply moving vision of the tragedy of war and a picture of his homeland that feels entirely new to English-speaking readers.” The excerpt selected for this issue of Kohl resonates particularly with the collective state of uselessness as the genocidal war has been unfolding – and the dissonance and alienation from anything and anyone outside of the fight for liberation.

***

She came in and out of focus as she spoke, as if some antenna had a bad signal. I get the impression that her existence here depends on her feelings. Her contours grew jumbled when she was annoyed, and settled again when she was at ease; her complexion deepened as she shrieked, and returned to some degree of grey as her fury subsided. Even her voice was by turns staticky and clear throughout the day. But no matter her state, it was clear she was family. I could tell that we shared, or had once shared, the same mediocre blood.

What did I have to say to her? I hadn’t asked for any of this: not this war, not the one before, not the one after. Our whole family’s story, at heart, was one of uselessness. All who had preceded me had been utterly, irremediably useless. They’d left by way of inheritance both this house (palace, my arse) and their uselessness. They’d lost everything, absolutely everything: their wars, their battles, their homes, even their courage. As for me, I’d resigned myself to my uselessness. Like the rest of them, I had no expectation that an angel might appear to us one day and tell us: “You were right! Sorry, our mistake. We’ll fix it.” Our whole history was one long string of catastrophes and I certainly wasn’t about to get myself into another one on this old lady’s orders. If it was anyone’s fault that we had ended up here, it was the fault of people like her who’d sold their dreams, then their weapons, then their children. The lady revolutionary now the lady patron of arts. And she actually thought she could hold on to this house for… a few days? A few months? However long it took for us to be snuffed out?

For the first few days, Nawal talked nonstop from when I left my bedroom until I returned to go to sleep. She had decades of stories and complaints to share. She was full to the brim, bursting with words. But why? She ought to have done something sooner, maybe when she was hosting those dinners and soirées. I’d walked away from it all.

I’d walked away from it all… yes, I, the offspring of businessmen and high-society ladies, resistance fighters when they could respectably be so, I’d walked away from it all. So what if we disappeared, we rifle and underwear sellers? Underwear sellers… is that what I don’t dare to confess to you? It’s so stupid, it’s nothing to do with me, but I still feel ashamed… So what if we disappeared? We wouldn’t be the first or the last to. My greatest fear isn’t being annihilated. It’s being misunderstood.

“We’re not in some western, Imm Ayub,” I’d snapped at her the first time she tried to tell me that I had a battle to fight. “Maybe you aren’t, but they are. You should have seen them! Real cowboys. Thugs. Would you really leave our house at the mercy of thugs?”

***

At the airport, I was half dozing on the moving walkway when a simple, understated poster stretching for several metres alongside me caught my attention: COMING SOON TO HAIFA, A MONUMENTAL LABOUR OF MEMORY: THE MUSEUM OF PALESTINIAN CULTURE. And in that moment, I understood it was over, that underwear and rifle sellers were a thing of the past. If they memorialise us, it’s because they’ve won; because, with this pre-emptive act of memorialisation, they’ve already overseen our annihilation. The feeling that the moving walkway was bearing me toward catastrophe. It used to be that we were accused of being fictional. They would stand up in their parliament buildings and stare at foreigners and say, “No, these are fictional beings! They do not exist! They never existed! They are murdering us and they are dangerous and they never existed!” Now they are building a museum, now they are placing us behind glass alongside some embroidered dresses and an olive press. They wave a wand and poof: we are now truly the stuff of fiction.

Which is how I know I won’t be swayed by Nawal’s rants: the family line ends with me. After Faysal, snip: the vasectomy of a whole dynasty. No offspring to carry a family’s name, a nation’s regret, a father’s moniker. No thanks. I’m a lizard stranded on an island lost in the universe and that suits me just fine.

***

“Can you even say you know this country’s soul, its murmur? Behold the light outside, how perfect it is; behold the horizon in the distance as it dances and laughs, draws nearer then further away like a child, playing by the water. My land is fire my land is ocean my land is a hymn winding through the hills, a hum fading, vanishing in the din. Behold the mineral spring and the thunder and, down there, see the foxglove covering Old Jihad, there where the world ends. Would you leave such a gem, a pearl, in the hands of barbarians? Do you understand, little one, little idiot, that here is where all will be decided? Leave, and you will be nothing any more. Leave, and you will lose yourself. Would you choose not to hear Jerusalem, its dull roar, down there, and, closer, not to hear the song of hundreds of villages? Did I beget forsakers, who have snuffed out, succumbed to minor disasters? I who almost took up arms, I who would, today, if I could, take a kitchen knife and go down the hill to slit the throat of every single soul I saw… I can see him, there, in your eyes. You’re like him, too fond of the better things in life. You’re like him, introspective and self-absorbed. I’m not surprised you all turned out cowards.”

Sometimes Nawal can be a hateful creature, a monster. That morning, she came and watched me as I sat in the garden, staring into the void. Her eyes blazed. I was certain she would punish me with a slow, agonising death. She drew near and terror overcame me. I couldn’t move a limb. I thought of you. It’s true, I’m forgetting you, but sometimes you still come to mind. Like fog, yet still here. Nawal’s eyes were an inch from my face and I couldn’t move a single muscle and I kept saying, “please, please,” and Nawal, in her fury, looked ready to devour me. She stayed silent, face to face with me, for a few seconds, and the wiswiswis came back and swarmed the two of us. I begged, “Nawal, please, please, please.” Suddenly, she spun on her heel and disappeared into the house; a gust of wind, as if at her behest, slammed the door shut and shook the house.

But I’ve already lost the thread. Just the memory of it makes me shiver. Nawal’s sitting across from me right now, terrified. She’s listening in case they’re there. And I recall her in that demonic, vengeful form, so long ago, that form she never again showed me, and I don’t know how to reconcile this poor, terrified, depressive ghost with the vengeful spirit I’d beheld.

But I didn’t mean to tell you about that. I didn’t start this so I could tell you about that. I wanted to tell you… yes, when you left. You left, like that, because I didn’t hear you and I didn’t see you. You were patient. You waited a whole week for me. You stayed in this house, alone, beside me, and you touched me with such care, you stroked me to reassure me, you listened to me when I managed to talk, you tried to bring a bit of the real world into this palace of ghosts and you almost succeeded.

And then you left. What’s there to say? A slammed door, a deafening sound, I’d never heard anything like it, you’d left and when the door slammed shut I knew you’d never be back and it was over for me. So I did what anyone in my place would have done, I think, I locked the heavy deadbolt on top and turned the key in the small lock on the bottom. I went out onto the terrace. I looked out at the night already starting to give way to day. I wondered how things could change like that, how without any warning night could become day and how you, George, who only a few hours ago had been kissing me, how you could now be gone forever. I took a deep breath. I looked at the darkness slowly dissipating, evaporating even as out of its depths came the light of day, and I made my decision.

I sat down in a red leather chair in the Jaffa room and, there and then, I dreamed of this land I hate. I started imagining that, this day, the sun would be so strong, so victorious, so pitiless, that it would scorch everything in its path. Each ray would incinerate trees, houses, people, and, at the end of the day, the desert’s wind would rise above a land made all the purer, a land without anything. For the first time without anything. For the first time, here, there would be silence. A very, very nice land in which to die.

Nawal was waiting for me in the kitchen. She was happy you’d left. She was cooking. She was whistling. I had been calm all this while, but her smugness pushed me over the edge.

“It’s your fault! It’s your fault he left. Why did you do that? He was the only one, the only one. He actually wanted to find me. I didn’t ask anything of him and he still came. Do you want to keep me on a leash here like some dog? He came to find me. Who in your life ever came to find you? He was so patient. And maybe if he’d been patient for just a day or two more, who knows, maybe…”

She listened in silence. She gave a mischievous half smile, as if she’d done something naughty.

“He could have saved me. I’d have packed my bags. I’d have turned off all the lights. I’d have locked the doors. And I’d have climbed into his car and we’d have headed back and I’d have left you here, all alone, because you’re the one who doesn’t want to leave.”

Nawal wasn’t smiling now. Gently, she replied: “You’re the one who didn’t want to leave with him.”

***

I wanted you to leave. I didn’t want you to be patient for just a day or two more. It’s a double bind: all I want is to follow you, to go back, to leave behind this house and this ghost and these wretched memories. But I can’t bring myself to abandon this strip of land where Joséphine and Ayub are buried, where the corpse of my grandfather Ibrahim is snuggled up in the earth against that of his son Ayub, my love. I want to follow you, but not just yet. One day, when I’m set free, I’ll come back. A happier day. When all is gone. For now, I’m handcuffed to this sky and this cemetery.