Mornings in Jenin: A story of every Palestinian family
A novel by Susan Abulhawa
Review by Aya Alghazzawi
Dear Susan Abulhawa… I will never forget how you caused tears to well in my eyes and made them stream down my face. From the bottom of my heart, however, I want to thank you for the incredible work of Mornings in Jenin.
This novel, realistic and expressive, speaks history as much as it speaks literature . Its events are fantastically, yet painfully narrated. It is unequivocally an important increment to the Palestinian literature of Resistance. You, by this marvelously knotted plot, gave the Palestinians a platform for their voices to be heard across the world.
It is such a great endeavor that cherishes Palestine with its fullness of symbols and richness of vocabulary. In short, it is Palestine in words.
As a Palestinian refugee who lives in Gaza after my ancestors had been forcibly ethnically cleansed from Yaffa, I identified myself with most of the characters included. I understand the constant fear and ever-haunting death. I lived in every heartless strike Jenin and Sabra and Shatilla endured, I related to every victim of the bigotry of Zionism and complicity of US and so-called international community in which my faith faded away.
It is not a story of one family. It is the story of every Palestinian family. A collective narrative that keeps resonating over the years. It is the number of years that has changed, but not the Palestinian maze.
The abyss of ever-inherited Palestinian eyes that Dalia passed on to Amal, with long vowel, keeps chasing us. It is rebirthed and rebirthed in every single Palestinian.
What does it mean to be a Palestinian? Is a very difficult question that inflicts a huge burden on us all.
How can we answer this question without going back in history tens of years, without talking about our Nakba in 1948 and all the suffering that followed: all the martyrs whom have been falling for refusing to concede that land of their forefathers and their forefathers’ forefathers; all the mass graves dug because of Israel; all the cages that we have been packed in; all the ghurbe in the diaspora, entire generations who never stop being traumatized and psychologically disordered; all the years that Palestinians spend in Israeli jails for nothing but being a Palestinian; all the homes flattened to ground, assassinated memories, the futureless 1948 that reoccurred in 1967 and still reoccurring endlessly?
Being a Palestinian entails living through the labyrinth of loss and sadness but also resistance and steadfastness over and over again. We cannot explain the inexplicable bond binding us to Palestine.
Palestine needs a voice like Susan Abulhawa to hold the banner of Ghassan Kanafani and Edward Said. To keep the memories alive.
