3gs

From “the Chuck D of Palestinian hip-hop,” (Los Angeles Times), a memoir of three generations of one family of Palestinians up against loss, oppression, and a shape-shifting past, present, and future, in a work of stunning originality and kinetic energy 3Gs tells the stories of a father, his son, and his son’s future daughter - Fawzi, Tamer, and Shaden Nafar - three generations of fracture and dissonance, stubborn insistence, love, hope, and the will to create. It’s also the story of a town - Lyd to the Palestinians who fled there in ’48, Lod to Jewish Israelis - built of people from elsewhere, swamped by crime and poverty, and, in the not-too-distant future, off-limits to those who call it Lyd. Fawzi, Tamer’s father, keeps his head down as the 1948 expulsion lives in his bones. He gets by, passing as a postman though he can’t read, installing boilers, and playing in a wedding band, until an accident puts him in a wheelchair. Tamer keeps his head up and his voice loud, spitting punchlines and cries of fury, not leaving Lyd even as the violence comes for his own. He will come to a point of understanding and gentle respect for the father who, he always thought, hadn’t fought back. Shaden is the future - Lyd is in her past, but she risks returning to save its artefacts and memories to live in Palestine-in-the-Cloud, a place beyond conquest and capture. Part oral history, part fable, part self-analysis, 3Gs defies the expectations of memoir with the emotional vastness of a multi-generational novel and the rhythmic force of rap. It is a wildly innovative work of power and pathos that introduces a master storyteller.