Falasteen Ka Matlab Kya? (What Does Palestine Mean?) in Riaz Shahid's Zerqa (1969)

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The year 1969 saw the release of the Pakistani political fantasy film Zerqa, directed by socialist filmmaker Riaz Shahid. At once a leftist critique of the Ayub Khan regime and an endorsement of Palestinian armed struggle, Zerqa refracted Pakistan's political crisis through the question of Palestine. This paper historicizes Zerqa against Pakistani and third-worldist creative responses to Palestine in the 1950s and 1960s. Through textual analysis of the film and its ephemera, I argue that Zerqa's approach to solidarity, gender, and the figure of the Arab-Jew both captures the nuances of the identities imbricated in the Palestinian struggle and universalizes Palestine toward its own political ends.