Abstract
This chapter analyses narratives published, performed or screened between 1968 and 1999 that have attempted a ‘rewriting of history’ in a context of defeat, in the aftermath of the 1967 naksa. Belonging to different genres (a play, two novels, a television series) all these works feature peasants (and urban underprivileged) as key actors of the 1919 revolution and narrate their resistance in a laudatory mode. The chapter starts with an analysis of al-Masamir (The Nails,1968) by Saad al-Din Wahba, and goes on with readings of Qantara al-Ladhi Kafara (Qantara Who Became an Infidel, 1966) by Mustafa Musharrafa and al-Faylaq (The Legion, 1999) by Amin ‘Izz al-Din. Finally, it examines Gumhuriyyat Zifta (The Republic of Zifta, 1999), a television drama written by Yusri al-Gindi and directed by Isma‘il ‘Abd al-Hafiz, in which the peasant community of the Delta village is given a much more important role than is generally admitted in the historiography about the village’s declaration of independence during the 1919 revolution. Special attention is given to the use of the colloquial, including the songs of the Zifta series, based on poems by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Abnudi.
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