Don’t worry I’m not trying to sell it to you, I haven’t finished writing it yet. But it’s been on my mind this week.
Before October 7th I was working on my first novel. A historical drama based on a true story, set in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem during the crusades. Following the life of Queen Maria Komnene, sent to marry the King of Jerusalem aged 13, I wanted to use this incredible sweeping epic of a story to talk about issues of identity and belonging in the holy land. I wanted to talk about middle eastern experience and agency during this period that’s only ever looked at through either Arab or European eyes. I wanted to talk about the huge spiritual importance of this land to so many people, and the complexities involved in making this holy place a home, with all the grim realities of living in a perpetual war zone, and the day-to-day ordinariness that still prevails. How Jerusalem even 1000 years ago was a holy place, a place full of tourists and ordinary people living ordinary lives, and a place of high tension and occasional horrific bloodshed.
Since October 7th I haven’t been able to get my head to the “letting go” place that allows me to sink into medieval romance. I’ve wanted to. I’ve needed to. The luscious escapism of disappearing into a golden green world of knights in shining armour and love and sex and intrigue has been what I’ve needed more than anything at times, but I haven’t been able to do it. Why? Because history rhymes so hard.
If I sit down to my research texts I’m reminded immediately of the erasure of Jewish voices from the story of Israel. There are almost no Jewish characters in this book I’m writing because there are almost no mentions of the Jewish communities in the crusader kingdoms, they are only mentioned when they are massacred, because as always, the world loves dead Jews. I’ve anachronistically given my Queen Maria a Jewish handmaiden called Sarah, knowing that a Jewish woman would never be given such a role, because I needed to talk about that community, and no one else ever has.
I’m reminded of the saintly reverence Salah Al Din (Saladin) is still held in by the Arabs. Every time I think about writing his character, a pragmatic, charismatic leader and brilliant military mind, I am reminded that he is a revered symbol in Palestine of the conquest of the Holy Land, and I’m reminded of how many nameless Jews he slaughtered when he took the Kingdom from the Christians, and how the hypocrites who talk about Israel as a colonialist project conveniently ignore the main road in Gaza that bears his name, an enduring symbol of the Arab Conquest, and even after all that I’m reminded that Saladin himself was actually a Kurd, born under Islamic Caliphate rule, another product of a kind of colonialism that racist westerners insist is impossible; colonialism carried out by people they racialise as “brown”.
When I look to my male protagonist, Balian of Ibelin, a native baron born in Jerusalem, an utter nobody looked down on by his French peers whose military prowess and unstoppable determination saw him rise higher than anyone could have imagined, I want to write about the struggles inherent for men in a hyper masculine but deeply religious society. I want to talk about the struggle to be a good man when you are asked to commit acts of horrific violence. I wanted to talk about the experience of a child of immigrants and his relationship to his home, his sense of belonging, his sense of duty. Now all I see when I think of him is the men of the IDF. Ordinary men. Ordinary heroes. Trying to find a balance between the right thing and the wrong thing. Trying to do what must be done to defend their homeland and squaring that up with their moral and religious beliefs. Violence and necessity, home, duty and religion. When I try to write about Balian now, the man who defended Jerusalem against Saladin a thousand years ago and saved thousands of lives, a man described in the primary sources as being hugely tall and having a ridiculously hairy chest, all I see is an IDF soldier I’m privileged to know personally, a man who fights for his home not because god says so or because he’s ordered to, or because he enjoys violence, but because he loves the land and the people behind him with such fierce loyalty, and would sacrifice anything to protect them.
I hope that soon I’ll be able to sit down and let this story flow again, and all these people who have been dead a thousand years will act as an allegory for the modern moment, a way to encourage new ways of thinking about the land and the conflict.
Because unless we can look at the past with new eyes, and see the repeating pattern of erasure, hatred and misunderstanding, the complexities, and the difficult truths, we are doomed to keep repeating this battle for another thousand years.
Ugh I’m crap on Substack. I wrote a whole comment and then tried to edit a misspelled word and deleted the whole comment. 🤦🏻♀️
Loved this piece and subscribed. I think there is a whole novel on this piece tbh. A writer writing about medieval Jerusalem post 7/10, with all the rhymes and intersections to writer grapples with. (Obviously I am no writer and this idea is probs super wanky but there ya go 😂). If there are typos in this I’m not editing coz I don’t want to act delete again