Enter Ghost

In Enter Ghost, the characters are haunted by the ghosts of themselves, the past, and the Israeli occupation. The titular ghost refers to the ghost of Prince Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. He appears in the play to tell Prince Hamlet that Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, murdered him and has since married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Enter Ghost is a stage direction in the script of the play. The character who plays the ghost in the production is Majed. The Israeli authorities later summon him for interrogation about the funding of the play. This is the first clue that suggests one of the ghosts that haunt the play is the Israeli occupation itself. It appears at inopportune times and disrupts the characters’ lives, much like the Ghost in Hamlet. For instance, after Sonia watches Israeli authorities detain and interrogate Wael at the checkpoint, Haneen comments, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost” (157). The author clarifies this association by the ending of the novel when the Israeli soldiers storm the stage at the moment of the stage direction, “Enter Ghost.”

Relatedly, the character Dawud/Yunes acts as a ghost haunting both the university and the theater; the novel later reveals him as a spy for Israel.