Dr. Ibrahim (Abe) Fawal
Dr. Ibrahim (Abe) Fawal was an author, filmmaker and adjunct instructor who was born and raised in Ramallah, Palestine. He held a B.A. from Birmingham-Southern College, an M.A. from UCLA, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. He served as David Lean's "Jordanian" First Assistant Director on the classic film Lawrence of Arabia. After settling in Birmingham, he established the first film studio in Alabama and produced several award-winning documentaries.
For over twenty-five years, Fawal taught film and literature at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and for ten years at Birmingham-SouthernCollege. He was co-founder and a primary sponsor of the Birmingham International Educational Film Festival, a past chairman and 26-year Advisory Board Member of the Writing Today Conference at BSC.
In 1998, his novel On the Hills of God won the prestigious PEN Oakland Award for Excellence in Literature. The story: Three young men, friends since birth, one a Christian, the second a Muslim and the third a Jew, defy religious labels and politics and are bound together by love for each other---until the invasion of the enemy tears them apart. Who is to blame? In his praise of the novel, the poet/novelist Ishmael Reed says:
"For anyone who is interested in the roots of the Middle East crisis, Ibrahim Fawal's brilliant novel is a must read."
The novel was published in Arabic, optioned for the screen by a New York producer, and is being translated into German and Indonesian. Three universities have used it as a textbook. At one of those universities three professors assigned it to their students for three consecutive years. The power of its story-telling and the wealth of its pertinent information gained for it almost unanimous rave reviews from the students, a fact which led the professors to deem it an excellent introduction to the social, cultural and political problems of the Middle East.
The third printing of the hardcover edition of the novel was published with a forward by Dr. Robin Ostle, the authority on Arabic Literature at the University of Oxford. In it, he writes:
"This novel is a rare work of literature. Other Palestinian authors of high quality...have written novels in Arabic which have been translated into English, but for the most part these books have remained locked within the specialized circles of Arabists and Middle Eastern scholars. On the Hills of God belongs to that small number of creative works written in English by an Arab author, by a Palestinian American who has lived in his adopted country since 1951, yet who has never ceased to be haunted by his childhood and adolescence in Ramallah and by the unending cycle of injustice which has been the lot of the Palestinian people throughout the second half of the past century. The pages of On the Hills of God pulsate with passion, drama and violence: the love affair of Yousif Safi and Salwa Tawil which triumphs against the powerful odds of social convention in a traditional society, the killing of Dr. Jamil Safi which is a powerful symbol of the death of the future of Palestine, a future that was full of promise grounded in vision, humanity and the common cause of Muslim, Christian and Jew. ..."
For over twenty-five years, Fawal taught film and literature at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and for ten years at Birmingham-SouthernCollege. He was co-founder and a primary sponsor of the Birmingham International Educational Film Festival, a past chairman and 26-year Advisory Board Member of the Writing Today Conference at BSC.
In 1998, his novel On the Hills of God won the prestigious PEN Oakland Award for Excellence in Literature. The story: Three young men, friends since birth, one a Christian, the second a Muslim and the third a Jew, defy religious labels and politics and are bound together by love for each other---until the invasion of the enemy tears them apart. Who is to blame? In his praise of the novel, the poet/novelist Ishmael Reed says:
"For anyone who is interested in the roots of the Middle East crisis, Ibrahim Fawal's brilliant novel is a must read."
The novel was published in Arabic, optioned for the screen by a New York producer, and is being translated into German and Indonesian. Three universities have used it as a textbook. At one of those universities three professors assigned it to their students for three consecutive years. The power of its story-telling and the wealth of its pertinent information gained for it almost unanimous rave reviews from the students, a fact which led the professors to deem it an excellent introduction to the social, cultural and political problems of the Middle East.
The third printing of the hardcover edition of the novel was published with a forward by Dr. Robin Ostle, the authority on Arabic Literature at the University of Oxford. In it, he writes:
"This novel is a rare work of literature. Other Palestinian authors of high quality...have written novels in Arabic which have been translated into English, but for the most part these books have remained locked within the specialized circles of Arabists and Middle Eastern scholars. On the Hills of God belongs to that small number of creative works written in English by an Arab author, by a Palestinian American who has lived in his adopted country since 1951, yet who has never ceased to be haunted by his childhood and adolescence in Ramallah and by the unending cycle of injustice which has been the lot of the Palestinian people throughout the second half of the past century. The pages of On the Hills of God pulsate with passion, drama and violence: the love affair of Yousif Safi and Salwa Tawil which triumphs against the powerful odds of social convention in a traditional society, the killing of Dr. Jamil Safi which is a powerful symbol of the death of the future of Palestine, a future that was full of promise grounded in vision, humanity and the common cause of Muslim, Christian and Jew. ..."
In 2001, the British Film Institute published Fawal's second book,Youssef Chahine, a biography of the internationally renowned Egyptian director who won the Cannes Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award and is considered the poet and thinker of Arab cinema.
"A discussion of the frequently controversial film maker Youssef Chahine. The book aims to illuminate Chahine's work in the context of modern Egyptian culture and its tumultuous post-war history and how such films as "Cairo Station" (1958), "The Earth" (1959) and "The Sparrow" (1973) dramatized the dilemmas of ordinary Egyptians. He also argues that Chahine's intensely autobiographical trilogy "Alexandria...Why?" (1978), "An Egyptian Story" (1985) and "Alexandria...More and More" (1989) spoke to the concerns of the broader Egyptian intelligentsia amongst whom he has earned the reputation of being the "poet and thinker" of modern Arab cinema. The final analysis of the book argues that Chahine's work stands comparison with directors such as Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa or Sembene but also emphatically draws strength from its links with one of the most vibrant popular cinemas of the world and from the roots and traditions of popular Arabic culture." ~ Amazon
"A discussion of the frequently controversial film maker Youssef Chahine. The book aims to illuminate Chahine's work in the context of modern Egyptian culture and its tumultuous post-war history and how such films as "Cairo Station" (1958), "The Earth" (1959) and "The Sparrow" (1973) dramatized the dilemmas of ordinary Egyptians. He also argues that Chahine's intensely autobiographical trilogy "Alexandria...Why?" (1978), "An Egyptian Story" (1985) and "Alexandria...More and More" (1989) spoke to the concerns of the broader Egyptian intelligentsia amongst whom he has earned the reputation of being the "poet and thinker" of modern Arab cinema. The final analysis of the book argues that Chahine's work stands comparison with directors such as Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa or Sembene but also emphatically draws strength from its links with one of the most vibrant popular cinemas of the world and from the roots and traditions of popular Arabic culture." ~ Amazon
In The Disinherited, the sequel to Ibrahim Fawal's critically acclaimed On the Hills of God (winner of the PEN Oakland Award), the young Palestinian Yousif Safi searches throughout Jordan for Salwa, his bride, from whom he was separated during their forced exodus after the catastrophe (Nakba) of 1948. Amidst the squalor of refugee camps, and beside himself with anxiety for Salwa, Yousif joins his countrymen in trying to exist while waiting to be restored to their homeland. Why, they ask, did this tragedy befall their country and its people? Why had the holy land been turned into a battleground? And now they've become a people without a land.
As weeks turn to months and months to years, the Palestinians’ hopes dim, yet Yousif does find his beloved Salwa, and they joyfully begin their new life together. The Disinherited follows the young couple as expatriate workers in Kuwait, then as students in Cairo. Always they are working and organizing, joining with their fellows to develop schools, newspapers, and increasingly militant organizations. Their dream is to unite the Palestinian people around the world, and to regain their homeland. In measured, epic storytelling, Fawal masterfully weaves a second chapter in the story of the Palestinian diaspora.
Press Coverage
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
The Birmingham News published an editorial by Ibrahim Fawal, author of the award-winning novel On the Hills of God, in their May 18, 2008 edition.
In his editorial, Fawal discusses the displacement of approximately 2.5 million Palestinians by Israeli forces following the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. He examines the controversial settlements built
by Israelis in the West Bank, and also the wall erected in Bethlehem. In addition, Fawal touches on his own experiences following the Second World War.
From the editorial:
"I was 15 years old in 1948, and not a day goes by that I do not remember the tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees streaming into my hometown of Ramallah, which did not become part of the new Israeli state. The woman who later became my wife, Rose Rahib, fled her home in Lydda as a 6-year-old girl. Rose and her family walked in the stifling heat some 30 miles to Ramallah. Her father had been successful in the trucking business and had built his family a fine home. But Israeli soldiers came, stuck guns in their faces and asked the out of that home, saying “go to Abdullah,”meaning to Jordan, which was then ruled by King Abdullah.
… Perhaps it is because of the progress I have seen in the half-century I have lived in Birmingham—a city whose history is so deeply rooted in the civil rights movement—that I am prepared to look forward to a brighter future in which Jews and Palestinians can live side by side as equals. I remain convinced that if Americans truly understood what the Palestinian people have endured at the hands of Israel – in 1948, in 1967 and today – they would strongly disapprove of their government’s financial and diplomatic support of Israel’s systematic discrimination and oppression of Palestinians.
The words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. echo powerfully for me: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”
Upcoming On the Hills of God Author Interviews, Lecture
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
Dr. Ibrahim “Abe” Fawal, author of the stunning Palestinian novel On the Hills of God, will be interviewed tomorrow, Feb. 1, 2007, at 6:30 pm on the Birmingham, Alabama, radio program Tapestry on WBHM. Fawal will also give a lecture on “The Origins of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” on Thursday, Feb. 8, at
7:00 pm at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Education, Room 230. Dr. Fawal, who was born in Ramallah, will speak about Palestine and its history, using his novel as a jumping off point for discussion.
Booklist called the PEN Oakland Award-winning On the Hills of God a “novel that appeals to our common humanity.” Richard North Patterson said that this “passionate and deeply human narrative should capture anyone interested in the origins of the Middle East conflict.” And in the foreword to a new edition of the book, Oxford University scholar Robin Ostle comments that the book “deserves the widest possible distribution.”
To learn more about the Tapestry radio program, or for post-interview excerpts, visit the Tapestry website. On the Hills of God is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book
retailer.
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
Dr. Ibrahim “Abe” Fawal, author of the stunning Palestinian novel On the Hills of God, will be interviewed tomorrow, Feb. 1, 2007, at 6:30 pm on the Birmingham, Alabama, radio program Tapestry on WBHM. Fawal will also give a lecture on “The Origins of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” on Thursday, Feb. 8, at
7:00 pm at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Education, Room 230. Dr. Fawal, who was born in Ramallah, will speak about Palestine and its history, using his novel as a jumping off point for discussion.
Booklist called the PEN Oakland Award-winning On the Hills of God a “novel that appeals to our common humanity.” Richard North Patterson said that this “passionate and deeply human narrative should capture anyone interested in the origins of the Middle East conflict.” And in the foreword to a new edition of the book, Oxford University scholar Robin Ostle comments that the book “deserves the widest possible distribution.”
To learn more about the Tapestry radio program, or for post-interview excerpts, visit the Tapestry website. On the Hills of God is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite local or online book
retailer.
