There Are So Many Words, and Yet I Cannot Hear Even One

So. I have finished "Mornings in Jenin", a book that traces the lives of a Palestinian family through several generations. This book is about similar subject matter as the previous book, and yet it is so very different. First of all, it is much more pro-Palestinian and very religiously influenced. Almost everything comes back to the Islam religion, whereas in the last book the characters were Moslem, but more culturally than religiously. This book is also less about showing "both sides" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and more about showcasing the Palestinian point of view. I have never read a book where Israelis/Jews are shown in such an unabashedly negative light (except for a couple select Jewish characters), and though this produced some discomfort in me, I think it was a very important book for me to read and sit with. I am not going to sit here and say I agree with all the political views of this book, but it was certainly a good thing that I decided to read this book, to be exposed to a personal reflection from the other side of the conflict, to learn of the Palestinian pain and suffering from a more personal account than we see on the news. And I tried to read it without judgment, without anger--it is a personal account, and I know very well, that the heart knows what the heart knows, and a writer cannot bend his/her words to be less "biased", or to appeal to the masses--that a writer can only write from his/her knowledge of pain, suffering, love, and life. And, despite the fact that Abulhawa's novel is written from a Palestinian's point of view, I, a Jewish woman born in Israel, who loves Israel, found this book extremely beautiful, and its characters easy to relate to.

But perhaps I don't want to talk politics. Perhaps that is not what I even care about, despite that being a large focus of the book, or a large presence anyways. Maybe that is why I delayed posting about this book--because I don't really feel like relating what I am "supposed" to talk about. So I am going to talk about what I want instead. The way this book deals with relationships and loneliness, about love found and lost. Secrets that are buried in the darkest of places: the heart. And how sometimes those secrets die with the owner--irretrievable, and unknown.

One of the things that strikes me about this book is its focus on the mother-daughter relationship. I have struggled a lot with my own relationship with my mother, and perhaps this is why I honed in on this particular aspect of the book. The main female character in the book has a mother who was once strong, brazen, and untamed. And yet over time this woman becomes subdued because of her arranged marriage, and her children, and because of the terrors of war. At one point in the novel, the girl, who is now a teenager, ultimately denies that she even knows her mother, and allows her to die alone, physically wounded from war and without anybody to help her. This is the ultimate betrayal, and yet this mother has become a non-mother to her, a figure faded in the background. Sadly, I often find myself ashamed of my mother, begrudging her. Why can't she be strong? A healthy role model? Brazen and untamed? I try to deny her, and yet to deny her is also to deny a part of myself. I see a shadow of her strength, a glimmer of wildness. I strain to see her in a good light. I leave her wounded all the time. And I am wounded too. A battle, a war, that extends beyond geographic borders, and beyond time.

There is so much more in this book about secrets, about human relationships, and yes, about politics in the Middle East and religious conflicts, if that is what you are interested in. For me, the battles that cut across borders of skin and soul are what keep me reading. Up next--a book I have been wanting to read for a long, long time--Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart".

On the Flip Side

I am continuing my journey into the Middle East with a book called "Mornings in Jenin" by Susan Abulhawa. I'm about a third of the way through, and can hardly put it down. And I must admit, I was somewhat reluctant to pick up this book to begin with. As an Israeli citizen, and someone with a strong love for Israel and pride in my culture and heritage, I knew it would be hard for me to relate to a book told from the perspective of Palestinian refugees in Jenin. Maybe "relate" is the wrong word. I guess I knew it would be hard for me to swallow. Things would be said that I would definitely have a strong reaction to. You would think in all my time as a Lit major, reading so many books, I'd be exposed to different perspectives and be comfortable with that. And yet that slight hesitation I had in even beginning this book shows me that I have a long way to go. Life is a constant process of learning to deal with discomfort, and deciding what to do with that discomfort. Yes, this book might make me uncomfortable. And yet it is in this discomfort that I'm learning to open up, to truly see through another's perspective and experience, and to question. To try to be on the flip side of a land I love, and understand, without guilt, without judgment,without answers, another's experience of this same land.

And yet I do relate. I relate because of course this book is about Israel but it is also about the core essential humanness that is not bound by any one artificial geographical locale, or culture, or ethnicity, or religion. It is about family and parenting. It is about seeing and witnessing. It is about the secrets we hold and never tell, the sacred and secretive spaces we carve out for ourselves. The private versus the public self. This is a story about the notion of the "enemy", an amorphous term that is often heard but cannot be seen. Or even named. It is about what the brain does when the heart can no longer take it anymore. The way we cope when we feel so much pain our bodies cannot comprehend it. Whether this occurs during war, or peace, in the heart of a young Palestinian girl named Amal or a Jewish woman born in Israel with her own demons to battle, whether it occurs in you or me, is almost of no significance other than the artificiality of plot. Yes, I can relate. And I am so glad this project forced me to pick up this book. There are so many themes I want to explore, as well as comparisons/contrasting with the last book, "A Girl Made of Dust". Next time I hope to address the recurring theme of parenting and the maternal/paternal relationship, and perhaps will touch on some more important themes. Until then...on the flip side...

From Dust to Water, From Part to Whole, Somehow

I just finished "A Girl Made of Dust", and I must say that in the end I became a lot more interested in the book than I had initially thought I would be. That is one reason I love this never-ending project--I am picking up books I would likely never glance at, and am learning about places and people I would have remained ignorant about otherwise.

As I detailed before, "A Girl" continues strong with themes of storytelling. A lot of times stories serve as a coping mechanism in this novel, especially as bombs literally fall on roofs and the children ask for stories to be told. Naji, Ruba's older brother, tells a joke/story about how G-d created Lebanon, and gave the people beautiful land and bountiful crops. When an angel asked G-d if he wasn't giving them too much by giving them everything, G-d started to laugh, and said, "Just wait and see the neighbors I'm going to give them!" There is tense laughter. Stories bring the characters a means to escape, a fairytale route, even if it is filled with dead birds, unrequited love, witches, and a reconstructed creation story full of ultimate doom.

Another theme that emerges in this novel is one of the specificity of history and fate, and the chance or lack of chance to reverse the past once it has happened. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will say that both Uncle and Papi experience major traumatic events in their lives that leave them emotionally scarred. Throughout the novel it is obvious how these painful events in the past haunt them, shaping their present lives with a forceful hand, and never relinquishing their grasp. However, there is always a hope, a what if, that lingers on, that prevents the characters from completely giving up. Is it possible to reverse the past, or make it right again by reliving the present and future a different way? Ruba ponders this question with the innocence of a child, and cannot comprehend how things could be any different than they are now. As a young child she sees the palpable, the physical, and the present, and cannot truly comprehend the adult's mourning for the way things could have been different. Yet with the sharpness only a child can have, she can grasp that the adults are dissatisfied, and that they do believe that things could have been different if only they had acted in another way in the past.

I know the haunting of the past very well, and they way my own childhood shapes my every day life. Probably not a moment goes by when I don't feel the effects of my childhood bearing down on the way I perceive life and act in the present. However I must believe that there is a chance not to shed the past, but to reshape ourselves according to what we want, and to transcend the apparently fixed nature chance has delivered to us. Some of us are rich, some poor, some have suffered abuse, some have unspeakable horrors in our past. But while I can never undo this past, nor would I want it any other way, I must believe that I can choose to use the mistakes of the past to make the present and future more fulfilling. For sure I am haunted. My body, my mind. There are ghosts everywhere. But I must make water out of dust. I must make whole from fragments and pieces. Like war, like history, this is a never-ending and futile cycle, but if I don't continue, I will be trampled by my history. Instead I must reshape my ghosts.

This story tells a lot about children, the way they are so impressionable and innocent, and often victims of war, both emotionally and physically. The story is told from Ruba's point of view, and she often hints at adult emotions and behavior without fully grasping the nuances and complexity. She catches a smile, a wrinkle, a tear, and tries her best to make sense of it with the complete abandon only a child can have. There is also the idea of children as perpetrators. When does the line end/begin? When do children become adults, responsible for violence and acts, or do they remain shadows and puppets of the adults they mimic all around them? Can bombs shatter childhood, or does it take more than that?

Of course this book deals with the complexity of war, of the blurred line between good/evil, of religions, but these are not themes that I wish to flesh out as much as the others I've mentioned. I do know that I know very little about Lebanon in the 1980s, and I'm inspired to do some relearning of history. Next up, I'm reading another book set in the Middle East, called "Mornings in Jenin". Perhaps I will see another point of view, and learn more about the land of so much conflict, a land close to my heart, as I was born in Israel. I'll keep you posted.

Because Stories Are Not Always Fairytales

To be honest, I didn't think I would really get into the plot of "A Girl Made of Dust", but I am finding myself unable to put it down as of late. And it's not the plot that's really driving my interest,anyways, I suppose, but rather the way I find myself relating to the characters and their relationships, cutting and pasting the archetypes of this small family in a war-torn Lebanon to my own world frame. I find that this is much more a story about the fragility of human relations than anything else. And it is also about how we tell stories. About how much is told and yet untold in every story we choose to speak or write, or hand down in some way, or entrust to some other person, or some other thing, even if it is just a story written in a notebook that nobody will ever see.

In one part of this book, eight year old narrator Ruba's Uncle comes to town, and he tells her a story that I can't get out of my head. It's about a man who loves a woman and spends all his money trying to woo her, to no avail. She marries someone else, and has a son, and then her husband dies. The man who tried to woo her is left poor, and all he has left to his name is a falcon. When the son is playing in the countryside he meets the man and his falcon. One day the son falls sick and asks for the falcon to make him feel better. The woman is determined to make her sick son happy, and goes to meet the man with the falcon to ask for the bird. But when the man sees her coming down the hill, he thinks he must prepare something for her, and he cooks the falcon. They eat is for supper, and then the woman asks for the bird for her son, but there is no more bird. They have eaten it, and the son dies without his wish granted.

I am trying to make sense of this story as it is placed within the narrative of this book. I think it might have something to do with the complete absurdity and senselessness of war, the way in which victims are so random and nothing makes sense. But it is about more than war. It is about a feverish yearning for relationships, touch, and love that make no sense. It is about wanting something so badly, and it always being out of reach. It is about a pain so shocking, so upfront, so deep-seeded, that we can only process it in bits and pieces, in story form. Stories can ease pain, but they can also be a regurgitation for the namelessness of loss. We are so used to the story as fairytale, as band-aid, but sometimes the story is just a festering wound, and we must sit with that.

With every story there is corresponding silence. And this book is filled with silences, where characters move but don't speak. Ruba says, "Uncle said there's no such thing as silence. He said that every silence says something: the silences between words, between notes in music, and between people." Silence is an alternate language, transposed on and between text. In this vein, even the story is a type of silence. Words say one thing, and convey quite another meaning. Like sediment, there are so many layers to the spoken and unspoken. If I could have any superpower, it might be to see every layer of meaning told in every word and (corresponding) un-word. If these layers were color-coded, the world would be a very colorful place.

Of course, the plot of this story is getting more interesting. Ruba finds out the secret behind why her father has pretty much gone insane. There is outright conflict between the Muslims and Christians. Ruba's own brother seems to be involved with military activity. And there is still a lingering sexual tension between Ruba's mother and brother-in-law.

But, the plot, sometimes, is not the story we read. We read fingers, corners of mouths upturned or downturned. We read about birds cooked for dinner, and think about old lovers, estranged mothers, and words we never spoke of, and never will.