262 · Hanita Brand
just as “in a conversation, when we have discovered the other person’s
standpoint and horizon, his ideas become intelligible without our nec-
essarily having to agree with him.”^22 In this broad understanding of a
text, there is space enough for both the writer and the readers, while
also allowing a place for idiosyncrasies, disagreements, and a variety of
interpretations.
Let us go back to our text. If we look at the story itself in the context of
its horizon, a Palestinian interpretation is indeed possible, though only
to a certain extent. While the novella certainly contains an international
or universal didactic message, it also includes a possible Middle Eastern
one, particularly at the end. The basic situation at the end of the plot does
resemble the Jewish-Palestinian one. A situation with a group already ex-
isting in the chicken coop, referred to by the hen as “home,” and another
group, the newcomers, to which there is a growing resistance, matches
the state of affairs of Palestine in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Most
Arab critics read the story this way and objected to the final dénouement,
in which the hen sends away the only other chickens remaining from the
previous group and stays alone with the new arrivals. This they saw as
defeatist. This part was also recognized by George Kanazi as having a
potential to be interpreted in this manner—which is why he gave it as
one of his reasons for the need to stress the author’s opposite claim and
see the Palestinian interpretation as inadmissible, “as it associates the
author with views he never entertained and with ideas that do not fit
those he publicized in his lectures and written publications.”^23 This point
was stressed by al-Ḥusseini in his letter to Al-Thaqāfa in 1943: “The local
political problem did not cross my mind at all, and had it crossed, the line
of development [of the plot, it] would have of necessity differed.”^24
The author was defending his honor and reputation as a loyal Pales-
tinian, which were tainted by the Arab critics’ Palestinian interpretation.
And truly enough, his loyalty should not have been put in doubt: if one
looks at the other writings of al-Ḥusseini, one can see how in books and
articles published in various journals, al-Ḥusseini wrote about the impor-
tance of Palestine and Jerusalem in the intellectual history of the Arabs
and Islam, for example, mentioning local names of famous authors and
̔ulamā ̓, or great libraries that existed throughout history in the place.
This, of course, also played out against him, as it validated a special focus
on matters Palestinian in his oeuvre and explains why so many readers