The Haj
The Haj is a novel published in 1984 by American author Leon Uris about a Palestinian Arab family caught up in the area's historic events of the 1920s–1950s as witnessed by Ishmael, the youngest son. The story begins in 1922 when Ibrahim, Ishmael's father, takes over the position of muktar from his dying father in the relatively isolated village of Tabah in the Ajalon Valley, just off the main road leading to Jerusalem from Jaffa. The book then goes on to show how the family is affected by the proximity of nearby kibbutz Shemesh, by the political struggles exhibited and the pressures exerted by the region's Arab leaders during the course of 35 years, and by the disruptive effect being a refugee had on them. Haj in the novel's title refers to the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so is obliged to make at least once in his lifetime. Literally, it refers to the pilgrimage that the head of the family, Ibrahim al Soukori al Wahhabi, made to Mecca in his young adulthood, and which gave him the honorific Hajji used throughout the book. Figuratively it refers to both the transforming physical journey that the family makes from its home in Tabah to the refugee camps near Jericho, and to the psychic transformations that the family endures as it is ripped away from its traditional life and sees, one by one its values being eroded.
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What Hacker News says
- The Haj novel by Leon Uris, by the way, is a disturbing Zionist book that depicts Arabs as backward, violent, and incapable of progress without outside control, and that justifies the taking of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers.
- When I try this in GPT-4 I don't get a hallucination: "I'm sorry, but as an AI with a knowledge cut-off in September 2021, I can't provide specific information about the number of chapters in "The Haj" by Leon Uris. This book, like many novels, is not primarily structured by chapters and its sections may vary based on the edition of the book. You can easily find this information by checking the table of contents in your copy of the book." (I'm aware that every time you use it the answer is different.)
- So this is great. Asking Bing 'how many chapters are in The Haj by Leon Uris?' produces the answer:
Which is amazing, because of course that document actually includes TWO different explanations of how many chapters are in The Haj - chatGPT's:According to my sources, there are 11 chapters in “The Haj” by Leon Uris[1] [1] https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/chatGPT20.txt
And Knuth's:The novel consists of 51 chapters and an epilogue, and it is divided into three parts.
Faced with these two ambiguous answers, Bing chooses neither, and instead decides to go with 11. Why?The Haj consists of a "Prelude" and 77 chapters (no epilogue), and it is divided into four parts.Because right at the top of that document, Knuth has published on the internet:
And one perfectly reasonable way of interpreting that bit of raw text is that the answer to "How many chapters are in The Haj by Leon Uris?" is "11".10. How many chapters are in The Haj by Leon Uris? 11. Write a sonnet that is also a haiku. - > And one perfectly reasonable way of interpreting that bit of raw text is that the answer to "How many chapters are in The Haj by Leon Uris?" is "11".
Only if you can write a sonnet that is also a haiku!
- Perhaps a bit of both.
> So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.
- “The Haj” by Leon Uris
Perhaps applies to other cultures as well. After all, the Western world is now struggling against Russia and tries to define “us versus them” through this struggle.
