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".