Enter Ghost

Each of the cast members, Majed, Amin, George, Ibrahim, Faris, and Wael, are listed with their descriptions like they are characters in a play. Then there is a description of the rehearsal written in script mode, e.g., “IBRAHIM shakes his head. MARIAM: (Addressing everyone) You shouldn’t be afraid of Shakespeare” (102). The actors get to know each other while they wait for Majed, who is late due to traffic at the checkpoint.

The novel continues in conventional first-person narration. The electricity cuts out soon after the cast begins the read-through. While the power is out, Sonia feels someone close behind her in the theater and thinks it must be Ibrahim. They continue the rehearsal in Mariam’s garden. Wael struggles with the part of Hamlet.

Sonia reflects on her first role in the theatre. She played Pierrot in a student production of Pierrot Assassin de Sa Femme (1882) by Paul Margueritte in Britain. She had been trained as a dancer, which made her ideal for the silent, physical role. During the run, she bonded closely with her castmates. She told them the story of Rashid; she shamefully wanted her experience of going to the West Bank to impress the others. Her parents and sister came to see her perform. Onstage, Sonia had a sudden feeling of self-consciousness about performing. After the cast party, Sonia went home with Aidan, a student who played the undertaker in the play.

Sonia goes to see her Uncle Jad and Aunt Rima on the outskirts of Ramallah. She feels anxious about seeing them. Uncle Jad tells her he had a health scare that led him to reconnect with Sonia’s father, Nabil, whom she calls “Baba.” They eat lunch together, and Sonia babbles anxiously. Uncle Jad describes Nabil as “noble” for his work with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as a youth. Watching her aunt and uncle’s closeness at the kitchen table, Sonia thinks about her ex-husband, Marco. They had never come to Palestine together. Sonia tells her aunt and uncle about the production of Hamlet. They are excited when they hear Wael will be playing the role of Hamlet. When she leaves, Uncle Jad comments nostalgically on how Sonia had always been independent and calls her “little dancer.”

Sonia recalls when she got pregnant for the first time at 19. She had begun casually dating Aidan. When she realized she was pregnant, she got an abortion. Afterward, she avoided Aidan until he confronted her for being a coward and cutting him off. Finally, she told him in a bar, and he was upset.

Later, while at drama school in London, Sonia met Marco. They got married at 28, and she got pregnant a year later. Marco came from a wealthy family and worked as a film and theater reviewer. When at lunch to tell her father the news, Sonia felt a pain in her stomach. They went to the hospital and learned that Sonia had a “uterine septum” that required they induce a pregnancy loss. The next afternoon, Sonia had a matinee performance as Solange in The Maids (1947) by Jean Genet. The erotic, dramatic role wore her out but also kept her from “falling off a cliff” (127). After the lost pregnancy, Sonia and Marco drifted apart.

After leaving her aunt and uncle’s house, Sonia goes to the market, where she trips on a vendor’s display and scrapes her knees and hands. Later, Mariam asks her to babysit Emil for a little while. Sonia reads to Emil the story of Athena’s birth from the head of Zeus from Greek Myths. Mariam returns and tells her that Israeli security forces detained Salim and then released him from custody after they held him for a few hours without questioning.

While Emil watches television, Mariam tells Sonia that Emil’s father lives in Hebron; they had broken up because “he had no dream” (136). Sonia tells Mariam the last time she had been to the West Bank was over a decade ago to see Rashid. Mariam tells Sonia Rashid died and that it had inspired Haneen’s academic career. Sonia is shocked to learn this.

Over dinner, Mariam and Sonia talk about the play. They joke about the stereotypically common interpretations of works like Hamlet as narratives of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation. Mariam is frustrated with the typical symbols of Palestine, like olive trees and keffiyehs (Palestinian scarves). When Sonia jokingly suggests they play Ophelia as a suicide bomber, Mariam tells her seriously that “someone already did a version like that quite recently” (139). Sonia agrees officially to be in the play.

While rehearsing Act II of Hamlet in Mariam’s garden, Ibrahim tells Sonia he is glad she has officially decided to join their production. Later, Sonia calls Haneen and asks her why there is so much tension between Uncle Jad and his brother, their father. Haneen tells Sonia that when their father was 22 at university in Beirut, he had met a resistance fighter named Maher. In 1969, Maher was part of an operation setting an oil pipeline in Haifa on fire. After returning to Beirut, a sniper killed Maher while he was with Nabil. Nabil took Maher’s body back to Maher’s mother in the refugee camp and spent the rest of the year there with her before leaving for Paris. Haneen says that, in contrast, Uncle Jad only became politicized in his fifties.

News has spread that Salim’s suspension was due to his support for arts funding, which involved coordination with the Palestinian Authority and therefore amounted to treason. The cast members largely take it in stride, although the men become more jumpy and paranoid. Wael continues to struggle with the difficult role of Hamlet until Mariam has him play the role of an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint during an acting exercise. One night, Mariam and Sonia debate whether art can really contribute to political change. Mariam expresses doubts, but Sonia thinks Mariam doesn’t believe them.

On Friday, Mariam, Sonia, Ibrahim, and Wael drive from Ramallah to Haifa. At the checkpoint, the Israeli soldiers make Wael get out of the car. Sonia is outraged and confronts one of the soldiers, who she realizes is from Leeds. She claims Wael is her son, and they have no right to detain him, to no avail. The soldiers detain Wael for about an hour. When he returns, he looks defeated and ashamed.