MORNINGS IN JENIN BY SUSAN ABULHAWA

 BOOK NAME: MORNINGS IN JENIN

AUTHOR NAME: SUSAN ABULHAWA

GENRE: HISTORICAL FICTION

PUBLISHER: BLOOMSBURY

BOOK BUY LINK: https://www.amazon.in/Mornings-Jenin-Susan-Abulhawa/dp/1408805871

BOOK COVER IMAGE

BOOK REVIEW

"The earth is closing on us,

pushing us through the last passage,

and we tear off our limbs to pass through...

Where should we go after the last frontiers?

Where should the birds fly after the last sky?"

This book, my God! Words fail me when I try to put my feelings down in letters. Never once did I imagine them as mere characters but as real people who lived through the horrors of it.

This multigenerational historical fiction starts with Israel invading Ein Hod, a small town in Palestine. People are forced to seek refuge in Jenin camps after losing their homes in the Nakba to zionists. Amal is born to Dalia and Hasan in the refugee camp, and she fails to understand why her mother is dead inside even when she is alive. As Amal grows, she realises her father, a man filled with compassion, love and happiness, also hides arms in their kitchen to protect her family. As the atrocities by the IDF intensify day by day, her family shatters away. Her brother Yousuf leaves for Lebanon as the leader of PLO while she makes it to the UN-funded school for orphaned Palestinians. Their destinies bind them back to Jenin as David (Ismael), their long-lost brother taken away by a Jewish soldier, returns home after learning his history.

I can't believe that as I read this book and try to review it, millions of Palestinians are living its horror in real-time. What destroyed me more than the book was the realisation that it took me an escalation of genocide to notice that such books existed all along, and I had never known about them. This book talks of the pain and anger of living as a refugee in your own land, watching it being taken away by intruders, living through multiple bombings to see your near-and-dear ones dead and destroyed, and being called a terrorist for resisting and fighting back and above all calling the oppressor 'a victim'. 

One can't turn deaf to the cry of Palestinians - their homes ravaged, their skulls dented, their abdomens split open to kill the fetuses that weren't assured of safety. It's hard not to notice their sorrows, pain, rage, and, above all, their strength and resilience. Even amidst all this, their hearts are full of love and patience, and I loved those beautiful moments filled with hope in the book. Even as a few helpless Jewish friends watched their Palestinian friends fall, the history they shared in the same land stood tall against the evil. Their love for the homeland binding them together even when faced with oppression is sure to sweep the readers away.

Like Khaled Hosseini's 'The Thousand Splendid Suns', the sorrow and rage in this book were so palpable that it left me fuming. It shook me how the people of Palestine were anaesthetised to bombings and cruel murders that they accepted them as a part of their daily lives. From this book, it was clear that, indeed, they murdered them all and buried them in their headlines. 

With the current situation in Gaza and the West Bank, this book is a must-read to understand what goes behind these people's history and strengths in the face of terror. I cannot recommend this book enough. 

MY REVIEW: 5/5 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan abulhawa is novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, human and animal rights activist, and a mother. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was translated into 30 languages and is considered a classic in Palestinian literature. Her most recent, Against the Loveless World, likewise received literary acclaim and was lauded as a "masterpiece." The number of books sold and linguistic reach of her books have made abulhawa the most widely read Palestinian author of all time. 

In 2001, abulhawa founded Playgrounds for Palestine, an international children's NGO upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children. She is also the Executive Director of the 'Palestine Writes Literature Festival.'

Other works by abulhawa include The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2015), My Voice Sought the Wind (poetry, Just World Books, 2013), and several anthologies.

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