Call Me Dov/Khaldūn/Zeʹev/Badīr: Issues of Language and Speech in Two Recent Israeli Re-workings of Ghassān Kanafānīʹs Returning to Haifa

This study examines Sami Michaelʹs novel Yonim be-rafalgar (Pigeons at Trafalgar Square, 2005) and Boʹaz Gaonʹs play, Ha-Shiva le-aifa (The Return to Haifa), two recent Israeli intertextual responses to Ghassān Kanafānīʹs 1969 novella ‘Ā’id ilāayfā (translated as Returning to Haifa,1984). Both pieces are based explicitly on Kanafānīʹs novella, while reconstructing major themes, and inflecting small details. This study pinpoints how the Hebrew texts re-form and alter the ‘original’, and how the novella, in turn, can be read as ‘inviting’ such responses. It focuses on issues of language raised by all three texts, and, by extension, on the role of voice and direct speech. It reveals such issues as being at the crux of the intertextual discourse engendered by the re-writings of this novella. Some general linguistic points reify the connection between these texts, and are thus an apt prism for analysing and comparing them.