The Divergence of Judaism and Islam. Interdependence, Modernity, and Political Turmoil

13

The Road Not Taken

Isḥāq Mūsā al-Ḥusseini and His Chickens

Hanita Brand

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” 1916

The Road Not Taken

This is an account concerning a unique response by a Jerusalemite Arab,
a Muslim intellectual, to the cultural, ideological, and political repercus-
sions of the encounter between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East, as it
is reflected in a literary work he wrote. The following discussion is based
on an analysis of the work itself, the debates surrounding it among Arab
critics, and personal interviews with the author, including one I had with
him in October 1979.
In 1943, Dr. Isḥāq Mūsā al-Ḥusseini (=al-Ḥusaynī), a relative of the no-
torious Mufti of Jerusalem, Ḥājj Amīn al-Ḥusseini, published a novella,
Memoirs of a Hen (Mudhakkirāt dajāja).^1 In this book, a hen is telling the
story of her arrival at a new chicken coop (“home,” in her words), and she
describes how life goes on in it. In his preface, the author maintains the
pattern of realism in which this fantastic fable is cast: “This story depicts
the life of a hen that lived in my home. Bonds of friendship and love came
to pass between us, and I used to feed her with my own hands and watch
her life day by day. The incidents which she recounts really happened