The Child Goes to the Camp

Ghassan Kanafani

Prepared by: Dr. Sweetha Saji,

Dept. of English, St. Albert’s College
 Palestinian writer

Experience of being a refugee

The Author Political activist and journalist

The story is taken from the

anthology: Palestine’s Children
The Child Goes to the Camp
• Introduction to the setting: the narrator differentiates
between war-time and a time of hostility. War is
temporary while hostility is permanent. Emphasizes that
it’s a time of hostility.
• The narrator’s family: father, mother, 7 brothers, an aunt
and her husband, their 5 children, grandfather.
• Narrator describes the time of hostility: 18 people
under one roof, with no work and food.
• Grandfather’s interest in newspapers

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The narrator’s task
• The 10 year old narrator and his friend Isam were given the daily task of going to
the vegetable market with a large basket. They were to fill the basket with whatever
they find, abandoned in the market.
• “Isam would shoot off like an arrow just in order to snatch a torn head of lettuce
or a bunch of onions or maybe even some apples from between the wheels of a
truck which was about to move. My role was to hold off the fiends – other
children.” (page 161)
• They would eat the best of the collection on their way home – their secret deal.

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 HOSTILE TIME

• A time when no one expects any virtue.

• The only virtue that matters is the keep
oneself alive.
• In continuous hostilities, one loses sight of
what is important and what is not.

(page 162)

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 The main event
The narrator and Isam, tired
after a day’s work, carrying
heavy basket, stand on wet
ground with no shoes.
narrator leaves the heavy basket
The policeman fell down, the
narrator saw that it was a five
pound note. He takes it up and
runs; the whole place gets alarmed
and runs after him
The narrator notices a note
under a policeman’s thick heavy
shoes
Without second thoughts, the
and pounces on the note,
compelled by an instinctual
force.
He waited till it was dark to go back
home. As expected all 17 of the
family members were waiting for
him and the five pound note that he
found
Back in the Camp
ISAM Lied that he was the one who found the note and the narrator forced it from him.

FATHER Both their fathers wanted half of the money to be shared among them

NARRATOR Was adamant that the money belonged to him alone. Everybody turned against him

Proposed that the narrator could spend the money for all the children, at some place
GRANDFATHER
they like (a lie)

The argument was settled; as a reward, the grandfather wanted him to buy him newspaper daily, for a week;
the narrator guarded his precious note day and night, resisting his mother’s attempts to bribe him

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Life during a “hostile time”
AFTER TEN DAYS…
o While everyone thought that he must have spent the five pound after ten days, grandfather knew
that he still had it safe in his pocket.
o Isam and the narrator continued their task as before.
o The narrator was saving the money until the right moment comes to use it. It was like a key that
only he had, to open a door to escape when the time comes. But it seemed as if they were getting
into deeper hostilities

THE ENDING
o The narrator was hit by a truck as they were grabbing vegetables.
o He regained consciousness at the hospital
o The first thing he did was to check his pockets – found that the note was missing.
o He thinks that it was Isam who took it, but it didn’t matter as it was a hostile time.

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Highlights of the story

• The effect of the hostile condition which subjects

innocent children to behave like adults

• Lack of virtue and humanity

• Hostility and its impact on refugee life – use of

irony in the story (political war vs daily struggle to

stay alive)

• Human rights issues