The Caravan of grief: A narrative of resistance, the status of refugees and the longing for a Home

The birth of the concept of Nation States was conceived often with the intrinsic tendency of viewing it as a homogeneous and monolithic structure. Subsequently, it came to be reiterated in popular imagination and discourses in a more or less essentialistic and seclusive policy. The politics of membership to a Nation is nowhere as fascinating in all its complexity as in the Middle East, with Palestine as the epicentre. The occupation of Palestine by the forces of Zionism, has led to not only a historical disjuncture, but also forced migration and exile. My paper attempts to showcase how a particular ‘narrative’ propagated by Zionism as well as the intervention of the West, has reinforced the myth of the absence of the Palestinians. In this case, I have tried to explore two texts: Joe Sacco’s graphic novel Palestine and Eran Riklis’s film Lemon Tree. My purpose is to show how both these texts acts as visual narratives that complicates, and counters the role of mainstream narrative. It is to show how narratives become an important trope in the politics of ‘resistance’, through both these texts. Last, but not the least, my paper will focus through both these texts on the status of ‘refugees’, to focus attention on the meaning of ‘home’, in its spatial, temporal and material forms.