المسخوط The Bureau of the Cursed
Muhammad Ali Taha

“And I must confess to you, ladies and gentlemen, that our friend Hisham is still in love with rainbows. Every time he sees one, he feels the urge to run up to it and catch it. And were it not for his venerable age, and the graying hair on his head and on his moustache and on his chest, and were it not for his fear that one of his children would grab his hand and say to him in a sad voice: ‘Where are you going, Father?’ Or one of his grandchildren would stand in his way and ask: ‘Where are you going, Grandpa?’ Were it not for the fear of that, he would have already taken off his shoes, buckled down, and run after it.”

Muhammad Ali Taha is one of the leading Palestinian writers living in Israel today, and his unique voice has also attained great resonance throughout the Arab world. His alive-and-kicking stories present—in human, but also critical and sarcastic, hues—life in this country in all of its layers: personal, social, and national. This anthology is the richest selection of his stories that has been published to date in Hebrew, and it presents a broad range of his varied writing, over five decades of literary endeavor: his views on Palestinian society, the ramifications of the conflict, the generation gap, the village and nature, Jews and Arabs, hope and despair. All these can now be heard in full force in Hebrewas well.

Translation: Members of the Translators Forum | Editor: Yonatan Mendel | Literary editing: Dafna Rosenblit |

Copy editing: Amira Binyamini-Nevo

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