Film: Fog

It’s been several weeks since I watched Fog, an hour-long documentary film from 2008 by director Rafik Halabi, and yet I remain haunted by its story, as though I’d been immersed in an epic novel or dramatic film. What I mean is that Fog, a fact-based foreign video project made on what was likely a tiny budget, has all the elements of great literature and art: War! Death! Family! Spirituality! Mystery! And a relentless quest for the truth. It is also one of those true stories that seems, on its surface, so preposterous that it has to be the work of fiction and fantasy.

The fog of the film’s title is the mist that wraps the slopes of Mt. Hermon, on the disputed border between Israel and Syria, into which Sergeant Mu’in Halabi, a Druze Arab soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces from Western Galilee, disappears during the early days of the October War of 1973. It’s the last that his three army companions see of Halabi during an abortive assault on the Syrian-held summit. Weeks later, army officials report to his family that his body has been found, with its eyes gouged out, but it is in an advanced state of decomposition and rapidly buried.

Later, a girl from his village claims to have heard his voice in a radio broadcast from Syria. Might he have been captured and still be alive instead? The story grows more complicated when a four-year-old Druze boy, who had been born just a month after Halabi’s disappearance in a nearby village, reveals striking knowledge of the details of the soldier’s disappearance, as though he had been there, and claims to be the reincarnation of Mu’in Halabi. The Druze religion, a highly secretive outgrowth of Ismaili Islam, includes reincarnation as one of its beliefs. Even largely secular members of the Druze people don’t discount the possibility of being reborn in another body.

At age 22, Roni Ganam, the boy who claimed to be the reincarnated Halabi, has grown up to be a local soccer star, but is killed during his own army service, when his bus is destroyed by a suicide bomber. Again, not long after this tragedy, a new child is born, who reveals, a few years later, intimate knowledge about Roni’s life and sudden death. Has the spirit of Mu’in Halabi found a new incarnation? What seems undeniable is the consolation that the family members of both deceased soldiers take in their faith that their lost boys live on in another embodiment—that death is but a transition into a new life.

Enter Rafik Halabi, a veteran Druze TV news reporter (and author of The West Bank Story), who sets out as the director of this investigative documentary to pick through the evidence, disentangle the varying accounts of Halabi’s last hours and try to reach the truth—but who only finds himself drawn deeper into the mystery. By the end, the documentary sheds new light on what likely happened in the mists of Mt. Hermon, and yet still leaves the viewer looking through shades of ambiguity, too.

I’d ordered Fog mostly because I’d worked with several young Druze on Kibbutz Shamir and finally visited Majdal Shams last summer. The Druze seem to symbolize the immense complexity of life in Israel, which often gets lost in black-and-white accounts we receive in the North American media, let alone the one-sided pro-Israel or pro-Palestine rhetoric that divides the blogosphere and Internet comment boards.

Mu’in Halabi, from Western Galilee, was a Druze Arab and an Israeli citizen and a soldier in the IDF. In the October War, he was fighting against Syrian army units that would have also included Druze soldiers, loyal to Syria. They were fighting over the captured territory of the Golan Heights, where the Druze residents—after centuries of being a minority caught between major powers—are careful to hedge their allegiances. They now live in land that was formerly Syrian, but has been annexed by Israel, but could one day (however unlikely) be returned to Syria. Confused yet? There is little wonder that the Druze religion, and even society, has clung to secrecy (and a belief in the eternal cycle of reincarnation) as a survival mechanism. Fog is both a metaphor and a way of life.

So what’s the kibbutz connection to this fascinating documentary? Okay, beyond my rubbing shoulders with Druze guest workers on Shamir, it’s pretty minor. But there is one: the sumptuous, moving and note-perfect score was written and performed by Yair Dalal, a well-known Israeli musician of Iraqi background (known especially for his oud playing) and peace activist who lived during his thirties on Kibbutz Samar (where encounters with Bedouin musicians sent him off on new artistic directions).

In short, Fog is one real-life tale of death, life and mystery that is worth getting lost in.

Review: The Syrian Bride

It’s not every day that the village of Majdal Shams gets mentioned on the front page of Canada’s national newspaper. (Actually, other than this Monday, it’s probably been never.) Oddly enough, I was thinking a lot about Majdal Shams last week, even before the news that hundreds of Palestinian refugees had marched from Syria, crossed the no-man’s land that divides that country and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, climbed over the “Shouting Fence” and embraced villagers on the other side—before most were dispersed and chased back to Syria by the Israeli army. (At least one of these demonstrators was killed during the clash.)

I had been reviewing video and audio recordings of my visit last summer to Majdal Shams, a village on the slopes of Mt. Hermon, and drafting a chapter about the activists and artists and citizens I’d met there, as well as memories of working (and drinking) with some of the Druze labourers from Majdal Shams who were hired to help in the apple orchards of Kibbutz Shamir. I had also borrowed the library a DVD of The Syrian Bride, a 2004 film by an Israeli director and Palestinian screenwriter set in the town. I’d been told last summer that this fictional tale had been inspired by a real family and real events in Majdal Shams. I finally got a chance to watch it last night.

It’s well worth the time, especially for anyone interested in the complex sociopolitical dynamics of this part of the world, especially for anyone who wants to learn about the Druze and their strange Limbo status in the Golan.

Who or what are the Druze? They are Arabs living mostly in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Their religion is an outgrowth of Ismaili Islam—a splinter off a splinter of the Muslim faith. It’s also highly secretive in its beliefs and practices. Even among believers, there are “initiates” who can learn its tenets and others that can’t. They are not even considered Muslim by many Sunni Muslims. In Israel, they mostly live in the western Galilee: they volunteer in the army, they elect politicians to Parliament, they are full citizens of the nation. (Fun fact: the most famous Druze in the U.S. is Casey Kasem, the Top 40 music personality.)

In the Golan Heights, their situation is different. The 20,000 or so Druze there live in four villages; Majdal Shams is the largest. Many Druze fled from the Golan for Syria, in 1967, after Israel conquered this strategically located plateau (from which Syrian soldiers often took potshots at kibbutzim in the Hula Valley, like Shamir). In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan and extended Israeli citizenship to the remaining esidents, but that declaration has never been accepted by Syria or other nations, and most of the Golani Druze refuse to take up this offer of citizenship. Instead, as the opening of The Syrian Bride explains, their nationality is listed as “undefined”… which can make life tricky.

Druze families have been separated from each other for 40 years now. In Majdal Shams, on the edge of town, they meet on either side of the two fences that define the no man’s land between Israel and Syria (which was breached in the recent protests) and call across to each other using megaphones. Because of this practice, the location became known as The Shouting Hill or (as I heard it) The Shouting Fence. Some Druze prefer to call it the Valley of Tears. These days, such visits are less common, as people can communicate via the Internet or cellphone, or meet in neighbouring Jordan.

The film is fascinating as it explores different tensions within one family in the town. Mona, the bride, is marrying a Syrian Druze actor from Damascus, who she will meet for the first time when she crosses the border from Israel—and exchanges one passport for another, never to be allowed to return to see her family. (Mona is played by Clara Khoury, who also appears in the hilarious and pointed Israeli sitcom Arab Labor.) Her father, Hammed, is a political activist and local leader, recently jailed, who faces a return to prison if he breaks parole and visits the restricted border to see his daughter off.  One brother, Hattem, has become an outcast from their father (and the religious leaders of his community) because he married a Russian woman and lives abroad. Mona’s older sister (the movie’s main focus) is caught in a loveless marriage with a well-meaning but traditional Druze husband who can’t understand her independent streak. (And their teenaged daughter is having a briefly described Romeo & Juliet affair with a young Druze man whose father, an Israeli collaborator, has “disgraced” his family.)

The slow pace of the film reunites the family members as they prepare for Mona’s wedding and departure, and the final Kafkaesque bureaucratic hurdles, on both sides of her divided community, keeping her from an uncertain new life in Syria. (A life that would seem even more uncertain now, given the recent violence and unrest there.) In the end, it’s a story about the fences that divide families as well as nations. And it’s well worth watching.

The Shouting Fence

While not directly kibbutz-related, there was an interesting article by Saleem Ali about a proposed “peace park” along the Syria-Israel border, in the Golan Heights, not far from Kibbutz Shamir (which once was on the border with Syria before the Six Day War). The posting discussed a symposium last month in Tel Aviv about how ecological projects can help peace-building in the Middle East.

The Golan Heights are an especially complicated piece of land, even by Mideast standards. Formerly part of Syria, captured by the IDF in 1967, and populated largely by Druze Arabs who don’t consider themselves Muslim or Palestinian or Israeli and practise a highly secretive splinter sect of Islam. (Confused yet?) What I most remember about visiting the Golan Heights when I lived in Israel 20 years ago was the Shouting Fence. Located near Majdal Shams, one of the major Druze villages on the slopes of Mt. Hermon, this barbed-wire no-man’s land had separated friends and family members since 1967. For years, they had come (usually on Fridays, I believe) to communicate via megaphone or loud voice to other Druze across the new border in Syria.

I’m not sure if the Shouting Fence still exists in that form, but it was strikingly symbolic of the complex and sorrowful divisions in this part of the world. (I wrote a poem with that title years ago and have been tempted to call other projects by that name.) That’s why the idea of a borderland peace park holds such hope (even if many critics consider it mere dreaming), especially for the Druze people, who have never really cared much for the national borders that divide them.

In his article / blog entry, Ali, the author of a book about peace parks, did mention (although didn’t name) a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley that has a special arrangement to grow crops on the Jordanian side of the border and a “peace island” in that region, where Israelis and Jordanians can visit without visas. He also acknowledged skpeticism on both sides of the debate, noting that “Arabs are highly suspicious of conservation efforts in this context just as Native Americans have been suspicious of the US. National Park system, whose establishment often excluded them from their land. Thus any peace park must be one where access and economic development are concurrent with conservation.”

Still, I find it hopeful that the idea of ecological conservation might be used as a tool to get two deeply divided nations talking about peace and, more importantly, to get deeply suspicious peoples meeting each other on common ground.