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The Strange Facts of the Disappearance of Said Abu al-Nahhas, also known as The Methebaleh, is a satirical novel written by the Palestinian writer Emile Habibi in 1974.

Plot of the Novel
The story revolves around Said Abu al-Nahhas, a Palestinian from the occupied territories in 1948 during the military rule imposed by the Israeli occupation on Palestinian citizens.

Habibi coined a new word by combining the words "Tafawul" (optimism) and "Tashawum" (pessimism), to describe the state of Arabs living in the occupied territories in 1948, which is a mix of optimism and pessimism. If something bad happens to Methebaleh, he thanks God that it was not worse, as described in the novel: "Take me for example, I do not distinguish between optimism and pessimism. I ask myself: Am I a pessimist or an optimist? I wake up in the morning from my sleep and thank God that He did not take me in my dream. If something bad happens to me during the day, I thank Him that the worst of it has not happened, so what am I: A pessimist or an optimist?"

Narrative Style
The novel's style is characterized by its difference from traditional narrative styles. Emile Habibi combines elements of Arab heritage, such as biography, maqama, and proverbs, with modern and postmodern narrative techniques influenced by Kafka, Voltaire, and others.

Habibi was able to move from the scope of Arab heritage to the literature of the Enlightenment era and break away from the dominant narrative style in Arabic novels. This form of novel takes you at times to the stories of One Thousand and One Nights due to the author's use of separate and fragmented letters, totaling 44 letters.

The novel relies heavily on Palestinian cultural heritage. The story begins with a flashback and a reconstruction of the temporal circular structure. The narrative depends on the principle of shock, where levels of expression intersect with realistic references and supernatural/strange ones in fantastic literature.

Parts of the Novel
Book One: "Yada": Includes twenty scenes. The letters begin with Said Abu al-Nahhas' disappearance with two extraterrestrial beings coming from other worlds, and his escape/exit from his small village. The extraterrestrials are a symbolic model, and here the duality is reflected on the level of the Palestinian earth, which has become oscillating between Israeli and Jordanian identities.

In this book, Said Abu al-Nahhas attributes his family's ancestry to a Cypriot slave from the city of Aleppo, which means the first Nahhas. The second Nahhas represents the modern era; then he tells the story of his love for the Lebanese gazelle, but the label "refugee" prevents him from communicating with her, and here we read a symbolic context for the Palestinian's rejection or contempt for what led to the disappearance of his humanity.

He also recounts his ability to return to the new state (Israel) after he had fled during the Nakba war with his family to Lebanon. Then Said meets Yada, his companion since school days in Akka around 1940, who had sought his help to free her father, a prisoner, but Israeli soldiers besiege Said's house and throw them beyond the borders, losing their trail.

Book Two: "Baqiya": Includes thirteen scenes. Here Said recounts the story of meeting a girl from the village of Jisr al-Zarqa named Baqiya in 1950, whom he takes as his wife, who reveals her strange secret to him, which she had kept throughout her life. She had hidden a metal box in a cave on the coast of Tartous by her father before he left behind the borders. Baqiya gives birth to a son named Walaa.

Walaa learns this secret and had established an armed organization with his comrades...