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POSTED: 05 APRIL 2010 Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin Bloomsbury | 352pp paperback | $32.99 What is it about humans that they won't learn from history? For the supposed smartest of the species it is a pretty dumb trait. And perhaps most demoralizingly, when a group that has experienced the longest and most horrific episodes of violence and dislocation in human history falls into the same abyss when circumstances change ... it's enough to make you wail and tear out hair. In Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa (originally released by the Palestinian born writer as The Scar of David) we see this human failing play out on both the macro and micro levels. The paramount story is based on the State of Israel, post WW2, and begins with the callous clearing out of the land by Israeli soldiers intent on establishing their new homeland. The story revolves around Amal Abulheja, born in a refugee camp after her family and neighbors are forced from their village, their ancestral land remapped to form the new territory of Israel. Amal's brother disappears without trace in the mayhem of their ejection — he is stolen by an Israeli soldier who, with his childless wife, raise the boy as their own Jewish son. Amal's family endures much hardship and tragedy through war, massacre and internment, and their lives as refugees induce strong emotions — impotence, thwarted pride, resentment, fear, anger, depression and inevitably the desire for revenge. There are stories of soldier's cruelty and war's atrocity, with the Palestinian villagers dwindling as they die waiting to return to their beloved homes. The discovery that Yousef, Amal's eldest brother, has likely become a terrorist is suddenly unsurprising in the context of what we know has happened and how humans will respond. At the micro level, Amal visits the same loneliness and rejection she suffered from her mother's emotional distance onto her own daughter. Despite knowing the hurt her mother's behavior caused her, Amal replays the protective “withdrawal of self” following extreme personal trauma, and in a sad cycle denies her child the overt demonstration of her maternal love. But at the same time there are kindnesses throughout, between estranged kin and between people from differing races and religions — part of the generosity of spirit that typifies the inexplicable nature of humanity. There is good luck and opportunity as well as hardship and pain. Mornings in Jenin is a one-sided, passionate tale, and the more compelling because of it. It is a story from the heart, not a treatise on the Middle East. |
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