Just 2 Only The Palestinian Farce

We have in our hands the third edition of the novel (Just 2 Only) by the creative Palestinian novelist and poet Ibrahim Nasrallah. He begins it with an introduction addressing the reader, through which he revives the memory of writing and the memory of the novel together. The author says: “In 1992, the first edition of the novel (Just 2 Only) was published while I was preparing to write a long novel about Palestine. The project (The Palestinian Comedy) had not yet crystallized. Now, in 2013, the question I had been searching for an answer to for a long time arises! Why was this novel not included in the comedy project later? I do not deny that I thought of this in 2000, when the first two works of the comedy were published. However, the problem that I and the publisher faced was that the second edition of (Just 2 Only) had been published independently a year earlier, and its copies had not been sold out. Day after day, it became clear to me that the wide area covered by (Just 2 Only), especially with regard to the massacres suffered by the Palestinians, was not found in such abundance in any of the comedy novels. Furthermore, returning to writing about the subject of the massacre in such a broad manner was not an option. I also tried, hesitantly, to get the opinions of some friends and readers who know this novel well, and to my surprise, they unanimously agreed on the necessity of It was included in the Palestinian Comedy Project, and even included “Wild Waves,” which was born out of the First Intifada!
Today, “Just 2” joins the seven other novels published so far in the Palestinian Comedy Project: a novel that I am proud has received significant critical attention and has been translated into three languages ​​to date. I hope that the reader who has not yet read it will find in it a necessary complement, illuminating other aspects of the human journey of the Palestinian spirit.
Between the first farce, “The Time of White Horses,” and the eighth farce, “Just 2 Only,” Ibrahim Nasrallah covers more than two centuries of modern Palestinian history, illuminating decades of injustice, occupation, massacres, wandering, and uprisings. He tells the story of the Palestinian people in their displacement, homelessness, and alienation, and the story of an Arab homeland that continues to bleed. It is an adventure in search of rights: the rights of a people whose land has been lost, of an Arab nation that has abandoned the cause, and of some of whose countries have become immersed, intentionally or unintentionally, in the game of nations, in a world open to the unknown and all possibilities. Perhaps the moral of the novel is that the novelist rings the alarm bell and re-applies “Just 2 Only” to the Arab present in this era of history. Therefore, its re-inclusion in the Palestinian farce project and its re-publishing is a step in the right direction.