Politicized Love in ‘The Reports of Sarah and Saleem’

A man counts colorful currency and dips two bags of tea in shot-size glasses of boiling water. An ambulance arrives to pick up the victim of a car accident and the first question the paramedic asks is, “Is he Jewish or Arab?” As Sarah (Sivane Kretchner) crouches low, gazing out the rear window of a car, hiding in Saleem’s (Adeeb Safadi) work van, the traffic lights, barbed wire, chain link fences, and sand-bleached walls of Jerusalem streak past. Only behind those walls is a risk they are willing to take.

Sarah and Saleem’s romance is simple: She is a bakery owner in West Jerusalem, and he is a delivery man from East Jerusalem. Their daily flirtations across the counter bloom into a lust that they satisfy in the backseat of his work van. They are both married, so from the beginning, the stakes are high in this affair — but they heighten drastically because Saleem is Palestinian and Sarah Israeli. With Saleem involved in an underground business and Sarah’s husband David (Ishai Golan) a high-ranking military official, neither Sarah nor Saleem knows the contexts of the other outside of their bakery and delivery professions. When their affair is discovered first by Palestinian intelligence and later Israeli intelligence, the implications and cover-ups quickly become complicated.

Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan’s film “The Reports on Sarah and Saleem,” inspired by real events, places the viewer in Jerusalem, at the border of Israel and Palestine, and into the heart of an ethnic and religious conflict that becomes excruciatingly familiar during the two hours in which the film unfolds. Alayan creates an experience that lets one vicariously live on the divide, juxtaposing gender roles from household to household or the kinds of sound and urban bustle per city quarter, be it the muezzin’s song or the European classical music Sarah plays while folding laundry.

The constantly shaky camera adds to an omnipresent suspense and disarray that projects a notion of life in Jerusalem. This is true of both the calm scenes that gaze out onto the stacked houses of Jerusalem beyond Saleem’s shoulder. Shaky camerawork also works in enthralling scenes, in which Saleem’s wife Bisan (Maisa Abd Elhadi), Sarah’s husband David, or Sarah elucidate the truth of the case once Saleem is convicted. The camera lingers on Saleem’s weathered face as he circles Jerusalem making deliveries on many nights, on Bisan in the bus going to university, and on David as he drives to the army office where he works, a star of David hanging from the rearview mirror. Dwelling on such moments of transition, Alayan emphasizes distance — physical but above all emotional — between the many worlds that exist within the limits of this city.

Rami Alayan’s well-crafted screenplay mixed with Muayad Alayan’s direction brings a refreshingly human perspective to a controversial region whose image permeates the world most often through media reportage — in fact pointing out fault in this politicization of humanity. When Sarah confides in her colleague about her affair, her colleague consoles her, saying that people make mistakes, but when Sarah adds that it was with a Palestinian man, she scoffs and asks if Sarah is “crazy” or “that desperate.” Their exchange exhibits how members of one side are incapable of conceptualizing love for the other, or seeing individuals as anything but the political entity they represent. In drawing attention to individual lives, none of whom are caricatured or dramatized in a way that film tends towards, Alayan elevates more profound aspects of characters that perhaps matter more. More often than not, his characters are sympathizable people doing what they feel is necessary given their situation and means, although superficially, these means may be illegal or reprobate. In a telling moment where Saleem is seeking an apartment, when the realtor inquires as to Saleem’s profession, he responds that he is the same as everyone — an astronaut. As he seeks an income and navigates an underground profession, Safadi’s portrait of pained masculinity and subdued wit render Saleem at once piteous and admirable.

Alayan masterfully exposes the power dynamics that frame and politicize Sarah and Saleem’s relationship. In one scene, David shoots a military rifle while Bisan’s Palestinian family throws rocks, showing their starkly different means of defense. In another, David manipulates Sarah by asking her to deliver a specific false testimony incriminating Saleem in order to preserve both their marriage and his career. Saleem finds himself in numerous encounters where he is beaten or tortured in which he cannot seek refuge with the government because his other work is illicit — although he only partakes in this job to sustain himself and his family — or in which he is being tortured by government and army officials, under its scrutiny.

Falling in love becomes inexcusable in a society that has dehumanized its cohabitants. The layers of implications of a rather uncomplex emotional betrayal give Alayan the opportunity to critique the biases of Jerusalem’s citizens. As Sarah, Kretchner’s earnest performance of compassion through her interactions with Saleem’s imprisoned, pregnant wife Bisan lend insight into humanity’s ideal. As Saleem enters his closed trial, his loved ones fear that he will be convicted of a political crime, as opposed to the illicit affair — but Alayan has shown that although it should not be, in Jerusalem, love can be political.