Samir and Yonatan

Samir and Yonatan
Carmi, Daniella. 2000. Samir and Yonatan. New York: Arthur A. Levine. ISBN: 0439135044.

PLOT SUMMARY
When Samir rides his bike down a flight of marketplace steps in Palestine's Occupied Territories, his leg is shattered so badly that he must be taken to the Jewish hospital. As he waits there for the arrival of an American doctor, his family cut off by roadblocks and obstacles, he gradually learns the stories of the Jewish patients sharing his room, and even makes a friend in the peculiar Yonatan.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Samir and Yonatan is a surrealistic tale, translated from its original Hebrew, of one boy’s stay in the hospital for a shattered leg. The boy is Samir, a young Palestinian from the Occupied Territories and the hospital is the “Jews’ hospital,” outside Samir’s world of curfews, roadblocks, shortages, and grief.

The jacket art by Rafal Oblinski hints at both the theme and the dreamlike nature of the story. The jacket illustration is a stone wall with a hole cut in the shape of a dove. Through the hole, one can see a dark night, a winding path, stars, comets, and the floating figures of two boys, Samir and Yonatan – suggesting the story’s themes of peace and escapism.

Samir’s family is unable to visit him because of roadblocks. He slowly comes to know his fellow patients and roommates- Yonatan, a quiet and dreamy youth with an unspecified hand disability, Ludmilla, a quiet girl from Russia intent on starving herself, Tzahi, a hyperactive boy who cannot urinate, Razia, a young girl with an abusive father. Tzahi’s brother is an Israeli paratrooper, much the same as the soldier who killed Samir’s brother, Fadi. Yonatan is a space aficionado who speaks to Samir only in the dark of night. He plans a trip to Mars for Samir and himself.

Samir’s story is told in a stream of consciousness format. His first person account moves through time and place as his mind wanders during his lengthy hospital stay. “I’m lying in bed, eating the chocolate crispies… They crackle in my mouth, making a nice sound. I remember the packet of chocolate that Bassam bought to me and Fadi. We kept it for some time, till Fadi said we should bury it with the rabbit, so she wouldn’t be all alone in there.”
The reader gains a sense of Samir’s uneasiness in a place so alien to his life experiences. Although he has learned Hebrew from his work at the grocery store, he is uncomfortable speaking both Hebrew and Arabic while in the hospital. While being anesthetized he counts in Arabic. “The Arabic numbers sound peculiar in this room. In this place the numbers are mine only, nothing to do with anybody else in the room.”

Samir eventually becomes friends with the bookish Yonatan, and they take their trip to Mars – a midnight foray to an unoccupied hospital office where they play a Mars simulator game on the computer – an otherworldly experience for a boy from the Occupied Territories where even a steady source of electricity is a luxury. Through Yonatan, Samir learns that he can use his imagination to escape from painful realities. Samir also comes to terms with his brother’s death and bonds in an unusual way with Tzahi, the paratrooper’s brother.

The story of Samir and Yonatan was written by Daniella Carmi, an Israeli author, and she succeeds wholeheartedly in portraying the plight of the occupied Palestinians. Through Samir’s use of occasional Arabic words and experiences, “I sit there with a wonderful taste in my mouth, the taste of labanch balls in olive oil, like Mom makes when Dad gets paid for barbering some UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) people,” and his descriptions of a life filled with soldiers, sirens, burning tires, and power outages, the reader truly can understand Samir’s lifestyle. The contrast with his life in the hospital could not be starker. In the hospital he is served three meals per day in a comfortable bed, he eats sweets, plays with clay, and is attended to solicitously.

What is missing from the story is the Israeli perspective. Several Hebrew words are scattered throughout, and Ludmilla is pining away for her native Russia, but the story cements the impression that the Palestinians are heavily oppressed by wealthy and indulgent Jews. A more balanced perspective would help students understand the conflict. One reviewer noted that a companion activity to this book would be to teach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Carmi missed an opportunity to incorporate this into Samir and Yonatan. Another flaw in this story is the assumption that the reader will know which names are Arabic and which are Hebrew. Without knowledge of local names, it is difficult to discern early in the book that Samir is the only Arabic patient at the hospital.

Overall, the story is hopeful in that Samir is able to identify with, and even befriend one of his Jewish roommates, and he returns to the Territories with a sense of hopefulness and possibility, “Yes … every day I’ll have to search for some new sign that will remind me that it all really happened, and was not a dream.”

Although School Library Journal suggests this title for grades 4-8, only an extremely insightful 4th grader would truly be able to grasp this complicated story. Grades 6-9 would be a more appropriate recommendation. (A glossary of Hebrew, Arabic, and selected acronyms is included.)

REVIEW EXCERPTS
"Explain the conflict between Israel and Palestine."

2005. "Israel/Palestine." Library Media Connection 23, no. 6: 41-41. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed July 27, 2007).

"The theme of tolerance and understanding is uplifting and hopeful."

Al-Hazzá, Tami C. 2006. "Samir and Yonatan." Book Links 15, no. 3: 12-12. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed July 27, 2007).

"This book was by far one of the... WEIRDEST books I have ever read!! My fellow youth and I (a bunch of 14 year olds) all agree that we would never under any circumstances find joy inAnd POKING someone else's pee bag! Nor would I find joy urinating with my enemy in a plant!"
2007. Schmitz, John J. Amazon.com "Dumber than my shoes." http://www.amazon.com/Samir-Yonatan-Daniella-Carmi/dp/0439135230/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0651715-6160802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185559792&sr=8-1 (accessed July 27, 2007).

CONNECTIONS
A school reading of Samir and Yonatan should definitely be prefaced by a lesson on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For readers interested in this topic, suggest One More River and Broken Bridge by Lynne Reid Banks.