The novel is based around the historical incident known as the Damascus affair, offers a different interpretation, and has caused astonishment among historians by adding a homosexual interpretation for the historical events.
The novel was one of the five finalists of the prestigious Sapir Award in Israel (2005), and was awarded the Presidential Prize for Literature (Israel, 2006). Death of a Monk was written at first in Hebrew and had been translated into English (Harvill Secker, London) and other European languages.
The real historical events of "the Damascus Affair" are the disappearance of a monk on the eve of Passover in the Jewish quarter of Damascus. It led to blood libel against the Jews, putting some of them in jail while others were killed.
The novel Death of a Monk leads to certain inevitable outcomes - though not by expected means - and, in Hilu's imaginative re-telling, not everyone is who they seem to be. Hilu has taken a piece of history and cast it in another light.
Hilu vividly recreates the twisted alleyways of the old city of Damascus, its air scented with anisette, araq, coffee and lemon; he equally vividly reveals the hero's attraction to other men and his perpetual struggle to assert himself.
Plot summary
The plot occurs in Damascus, 1840. Aslan is a 15 years old religious, Jewish teen, one of the outwardly pampered sons of the Farhi family. Additionally, he is gay. Behind closed doors, he is abused and beaten by his siblings, mother and father; at school the other kids make fun of him, especially when he and Moussa, another delicate lad, are caught holding hands.
The outcome of this tender incident speaks volumes about the power of Aslan's father in the community: when this news gets out, Moussa simply vanishes.
But there's even more going on behind the Farhi household doors. When his father is away, Aslan's mother dresses her son in her clothes, shoes and make-up - and these are their most (and maybe the only) intimate moments together. At any other time, she sides against him with the rest of the family. Miserable, Aslan grasps at anything he can to put himself out of his misery, including trying to become fatally infected when there's an outbreak of the plague.
When his father marries him off at the age of 15 to a rabbi's daughter, things go from bad to worse as Aslan is unable to consummate the marriage. His solution involved succumbing to passions of his own, a tremulous step that takes him down a secretive road of pleasure mixed with fear.
As he becomes bolder in his forays to explore and enjoy the forbidden nightlife of the city, Aslan becomes enamoured with a young woman singer, Umm-Jihan, and catches the eye of Father Tommaso, an Italian monk. Aslan's meeting and further interaction with the monk spur on the plot, when the monk has a heart attack and dies, while Aslan's secret makes him hide the body. That leads to a blood libel against the Jews, blaming them, with no evidence, for the murder of the monk, in a vicious trial with grim results.
Aslan observes his family's long-standing feud with a rival merchant family, and the blaming of all the community because of his secret and of his being in the closet. One of the memorable things he says is: "why is it that men cannot love one another more, instead of beating and striking, oppressing and debasing, despoiling and destroying?"
Ultimately, his attempts to assert himself to his father prove terrible and tragic.
Antisemitism has increased greatly in the Arab world since the beginning of the 20th century, for several reasons: the dissolution and breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and traditional Islamic society; European influence, brought about by Western imperialism and Arab Christians; Nazi propaganda and relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world; resentment over Jewish nationalism; the rise of Arab nationalism; and the widespread proliferation of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
Blood libel or ritual murder libel is an antisemitic canard which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christian boys in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals. Echoing very old myths of secret cultic practices in many prehistoric societies, the claim, as it is leveled against Jews, was rarely attested to in antiquity. According to Tertullian, it originally emerged in late antiquity as an accusation made against members of the early Christian community of the Roman Empire. Once this accusation had been dismissed, it was revived a millennium later as a Christian slander against Jews in the medieval period. This libel—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—became a major theme of the persecution of Jews in Europe from that period down to modern times.
John of Damascus or John Damascene was a Christian monk, priest, hymnographer, and apologist. Born and raised in Damascus c. 675 or 676; the precise date and place of his death is not known, though tradition places it at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem on 4 December 749.
The Damascus affair of 1840 refers to the arrest of several notable members of the Jewish community in Damascus on the accusation of murdering Father Thomas, a Christian monk, and his Muslim servant for the purpose of using their blood to bake matzo, an antisemitic accusation also known as the blood libel.
Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole, based on religious doctrines of supersession that expect or demand the disappearance of Judaism and the conversion of Jews, and portray their political enemies in Jewish terms. This form of antisemitism has frequently served as the basis for false claims and religious antisemitic tropes against Judaism. Sometimes, it is called theological antisemitism.
Menahem Mendel Beilis was a Russian Jew accused of ritual murder in Kyiv in the Russian Empire in a notorious 1913 trial, known as the "Beilis trial" or the "Beilis affair". Although Beilis was eventually acquitted after a lengthy process, the legal process sparked international criticism of antisemitism in the Russian Empire.
William of Norwich was an English boy whose disappearance and killing was, at the time, attributed to the Jewish community of Norwich. It is the first known medieval accusation against Jews of ritual murder. These accusations occurred at a time that religious centres had begun to compete for visitors and their donations by setting up local shrines, after martyrdoms and other mysterious events. In addition, the monks of Norwich which promoted the supposed martyrdom lacked a patron saint and associated cult; it has been suggested that they exploited the accusations for their own institutional benefit.
The siege of Acre of 1799 was an unsuccessful French siege of the Ottoman city of Acre and was the turning point of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria, along with the Battle of the Nile. It was Napoleon's third tactical defeat in his career, after three years previously being defeated at the Second Battle of Bassano and the Battle of Caldiero during the Italy campaign. As a result of the failed siege, Napoleon Bonaparte retreated two months later and withdrew to Egypt.
Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai was a Sephardic Jewish rabbi, and one of the influential precursors of modern Zionism along with the Prussian Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer. Although he was a Sephardic Jew, he played an important role in a process widely attributed to the Ashkenazi Jews. Alkalai became noted through his advocacy in favor of the restoration of the Jews to the Land of Israel. By reason of some of his projects, he may justly be regarded as one of the precursors of the modern Zionists such as Theodor Herzl.
Herod Archelaus was the ethnarch of Samaria, Judea, and Idumea, including the cities Caesarea and Jaffa, for nine years. He was the son of Herod the Great and Malthace the Samaritan, brother of Herod Antipas, and half-brother of Herod II. Archelaus came to power after the death of his father Herod the Great in 4 BC, and ruled over one-half of the territorial dominion of his father. Archelaus was removed by the Roman emperor Augustus when Judaea province was formed under direct Roman rule, at the time of the Census of Quirinius.
Mustafa Abdul Qadir Tlass was a Syrian senior military officer and politician who was Syria's minister of defense from 1972 to 2004. He was part of the four-member Regional Command during the Hafez Assad era.
Alon Ḥilu is an Israeli novelist.
Syrian Jews had predominantly two origins: those who inhabited Syria from early times and the Sephardim who fled to Syria after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 CE. There were large Jewish communities in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. In the early 20th century, a large percentage of Jews immigrated to Israel, the U.S., and Latin America. The largest Jewish community is now located in Israel and is estimated to number 80000.
Antisemitic tropes are "sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since the Middle Ages, such reports have been a recurring motif of broader antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Raphael Levy was a Jewish inhabitant of the city of Metz who was burned at the stake, accused of having ritually murdered a Christian child, Didier Le Moyne. For some years after his execution, the Jewish community in Metz marked the anniversary of his death as a day of fasting.
Haim Farhi, was an adviser to the governors of the Galilee in the days of the Ottoman Empire. Among the Jews he was known as Hakham Haim, because of his Talmudic learning.
The Rhodes blood libel was an 1840 event of blood libel against Jews, in which the Greek Orthodox community accused Jews on the island of Rhodes of the ritual murder of a Christian boy who disappeared in February of that year.
The 1834 looting of Safed was a prolonged attack against the Jewish community of Safed, Ottoman Empire, during the 1834 Peasants' Revolt. It began on Sunday June 15, the day after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, and lasted for the next 33 days. Most contemporary accounts suggest it was a spontaneous attack which took advantage of a defenseless population in the midst of the armed uprising against Egyptian rule. The district governor tried to quell the violent outbreak, but failed to do so and fled. The event took place during a power vacuum, whilst Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt was fighting to quell the wider revolt in Jerusalem.
Antisemitism in Turkey refers to acts of hostility against Jews in the Republic of Turkey, as well as the promotion of antisemitic views and beliefs in that country.
Abdullah Pasha ibn Ali was the Ottoman governor (wali) of Sidon Eyalet between May 1820 and May 1832, with a nine-month interruption in 1822–23. Like his predecessors Jazzar Pasha and Sulayman Pasha, Abdullah Pasha ruled from the port city of Acre. During his reign, all of Palestine and the Syrian coastline came under his jurisdiction. Among his major military victories was his survival of an imperial-backed siege of Acre in 1822 instigated by the Farhi family in retaliation for Abdullah's execution of his mentor Haim Farhi, the suppression of revolts in Mount Lebanon and Jerusalem in 1824 and 1826, respectively, and the 1831 capture of the Sanur fortress.
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