RAMALLAH — Wearing traditional costumes and dancing the traditional dabke, a dozen male and female actors move across the stage dominated by an image of a white horse. For the last two months, Ramallah-based Wishah Popular Dance Troupe has been performing a musical inspired by one of the cornerstones of Palestinian literature: Ibrahim Nasrallah’s “Time of White Horses.”
In the novel, Nasrallah — winner of the 2018 Arab Fiction Award — weaves the saga of a Palestinian family by starting toward the end of the Ottoman rule in Palestine and continuing all the way to the Nakba, the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. With its tapestry of traditions, values, conflicts and alliances, the novel provides a strong narrative of the history and identity of the Palestinians. The relationship between Khaled, a young man from the village of Hadiya, and his white mare becomes a symbol of descending tyranny with one colonizer after the other attempting to take control of the lands and Khaled’s most treasured possession, his horse.
