I believe you can never separate scars of war from your skin. It ages within you, memory by memory. It becomes an ache on your skin and you can’t let it go. You live it and it’s unlivable consequences for as long as your existence doesn’t end up being a mere remnant of life.
I couldn’t read it in a single sitting. This book demanded to be read like you’ve never read a book before. . It left a mark so deep, I don’t know what else to feel, as of now. No amount of words can do justice to the beauty, honesty, and clarity with which Susan Abulhawa has weaved, every single page, thought, an emotion of this heart-breaking piece of work. This book echoes with you.
Overview
This book feels like a Palestinian soul with a heart dripping ache and love. Through the heartbreaking story of the Abulheja Family, a Palestinian family massacred with the confinement of the word like “refugee”, this story seeks to belong within you. Belonging for the ache of the homeland. Belonging for the ache of a family ripped by the merciless grip of war.
It builds within you, page by page, misery by misery, ache by ache. It makes your heart feel heavy In a way you might never have known heaviness. It seeks room in your heart, ends up adding glistening tears in your eyes, and leaves a memory of pain on your skin, a wound that will hurt you over and over again. It’s pain yearning love and everything “wrapped in a storm of paper & ink “
Synopsis
Each character feels like your own. Amal, Yousef , Dalia. Becomes the name you feel like adding to the long lists of your prayers. You feel like ache, loss and bliss of motherhood, siblings, family sleeping in your bones, tugging at the tight knots of your soul, making you feel miles beyond yourself.
Amal was 12 years old when the war of 1967 came to Jenin. She watched those around her die as she hid in a hole beneath the kitchen floor. The refugee camp that her relatives and friends had tried so hard to build, was flattened. Amal leaves the camp not long after the six-day war and takes us with her as she starts a new life in Jerusalem, America, Lebanon, and back to Jenin.
Her story is heartbreaking and powerful. Susan Abulhawa’s anger is clear in the pages, as is her love for her country, Palestine. She brings to our attention another massacre in Jenin in 2002 that the world barely got to hear about. It was covered up
I asked myself many times while reading this book “how could this happen?” It’s almost beyond belief that human beings can do this to each other, yet they do. Although this book is only 330 pages long, it felt like an epic to me. I have spent 60 years with this family, watching them love, lose, fight, cry. I’m going to miss them. I cried at the end – not just because of their story but because of all the other thousands of peoples' stories – real people.
Loopholes
The minor flaws in the novel are that some of the plot “twists” don’t really twist, and to be fair, Abulhawa doesn’t seem to expect them to be. I also felt that the style in about 50 pages of the book felt more like a lecture (but I can understand why). The other flaw is that the love between the main character, Amal, and her husband does not seem as real or even as believable as the love Amal’s brother has with his wife. Those passages are some of the most beautiful in the novel.
Conclusion.
This novel opened my eyes to this situation and made me sad, but most of all it made me angry. Angry that in a world of mass media and all the technological advances we possess that these atrocities are still going on in many parts of the world. I do understand that this novel is biased in its storytelling but even if only parts of these events are true it’s too many. This novel is the perfect example of how fiction has the power to change/inform us and that’s why novels like this should be read. I sincerely sympathize and ache for all of the innocent victims of this conflict.
Read an honest book review on ‘Working with emotional intelligence’.
Written By - Ifrah Amin
Edited By - Pavas Shrigyan
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