Wajib

Annemarie Jacir’s new fea­ture is apt­ly titled – ​‘Wajib’ is an Ara­bic term refer­ring to a manda­to­ry duty that will get you pun­ished if you ignore it. As such, the film deals with the com­plex­i­ties of liv­ing in – and leav­ing – a city like Nazareth.

Is there any­thing we owe to our home­land? To the peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ty that raised us? Can we ever ful­ly diverge from the path they have laid for us, and if so do we have any say in how those we leave behind choose to lead their lives? In the pri­vate set­ting in which she address­es these ques­tions, Jacir offers wider thoughts on Pales­tin­ian life, not least on the emo­tion­al price paid by those liv­ing under Israeli rule.

The film sees Sha­di (Saleh Bakri), a young archi­tect work­ing in Rome, return to his home­town to attend his sister’s wed­ding. Most of Wajib is set in his car or at the homes of rel­a­tives, as Sha­di dri­ves door-to-door to hand-deliv­er wed­ding invi­ta­tions with his father (Moham­mad Bakri). Ten­sion builds along their jour­ney as Shadi’s father, both pri­vate­ly and in pub­lic, tries to con­vince him to move back to Nazareth so that he can ​“do the right thing” and set­tle down with a wife.

It is clear, how­ev­er, that Sha­di has no inten­tion of com­ing back nor to aban­don the cul­ture he has embraced abroad. He strug­gles to readapt to the cus­toms of his home­land, which he now exam­ines through an eye informed by the new ideas he adopt­ed in Europe. Sha­di only has dis­dain for the way things are done in Nazareth.

Wajib depicts the effect that mov­ing some­where else – where the grass seems green­er – has on our per­cep­tion of the place and cul­ture we have always known. We might baulk at the ingrat­i­tude Sha­di shows to the peo­ple that brought him up and his lack of respect for every­thing his native land has to offer. Any­one who has ever moved abroad might find it eas­i­er to appre­ci­ate part of his reac­tion as inher­ent to the home­com­ing experience.

Jacir sub­tly oppos­es two visions of Israel in the char­ac­ters of Sha­di and his father. The lat­ter has accept­ed that some of his hon­our, con­vic­tions and patri­o­tism ought to be silenced in order to raise his fam­i­ly under Israeli sur­veil­lance. Estranged from the dan­ger­ous real­i­ties of his native land, Sha­di even­tu­al­ly con­fronts his father on what appears to him as cow­ardice and trea­son (of Pales­tine) over a pow­er­ful, cli­mat­ic argument.