The Israeli-Palestinian conflict had long ago been discarded from the main headlines, but Susan Abulhawa pulls it right back, bringing along a new and long-awaited perspective through her novel Mornings in Jenin.
Born as a refugee herself, Abulhawa tells the story of the Abulheja family that led a simple life as farmers in the simple village of Ein Hod, and followed four generations of an established and reputable bloodline. The Abulhejas led a life filled with love –of God and of their land – until they were forced to leave their village in 1948 and flea to Jenin. They settled in a massive refugee camp teaming with people who faced similar circumstances, and grew closer to strangers through a shared allegiance to a lost land. Torn apart, only to find ways to fall in love and become reunited again, this family bore the deepest scars the injustices of war could inflict. They grew stronger through their resistance and perseverance.
Mornings in Jenin is a heart-wrenching story about lost loves, stolen rights, painful historical events, but, perhaps most importantly, a story about the endurance of the Palestinian nation. Indeed the Abulhejas emerge as an analogy of every Palestinian whose daily life has been transformed into a struggle.
This novel is absolutely not for the lighthearted: it will have you sobbing your heart out long after you’ve read the last sentence. Incredibly candid, Susan Abulhawa’s story will gnaw at your consciousness late at night and leave you wondering about what can be done to save an entire nation.
Talking about Mornings in Jenin
Interview with Susan Abulhawa by A’zza El Masri
Because this incredible novel touched my heart, and made my tears pour like Niagara Falls, I set out to reach the author, Susan Abulhawa, to express my gratitude for writing this story, and awe for its lyrical prose and images it conjured. Soon enough, I’d been able to approach Ms. Abulhawa and ask her a few questions that have been haunting since I read the last line of the book. She graciously and kindly answered my inquiries:
1.What drove you to write this story about this simple family that goes through so much, faces so many losses for six decades, but still stands her ground, hence bringing forth the Palestinian perspective on this everlasting conflict?
I describe the birth of this novel in the author’s note of the book. You might want to refer to that in addition to what I write here. I had been writing political commentary while working as a biologist for a drug company. When the massacre in Jenin was happening, I decided to use my vacation time to go and see for myself. I didn’t know anyone there or what I was going to do when I arrived. I just knew I wanted to be there. I was one of the first international observers in the camp when Israel finally withdrew. What I witnessed was sheer horror. I had only ever read about things like this before. It was a life changing experience to see death so close and personal. To smell it everywhere. To see the pieces of so many lives strewn in the rubble. To see despair so close to resilience. More than that, I was humbled by the people of Jenin, who showed so much love for one another, so much solidarity and community. They had lost everything. The entire camp was heavily damaged or completely destroyed. And with only the clothes on their backs and their grief, they shared what little water and food they could get. It was humbling to see so much humanity in the midst of what remained of a merciless onslaught that rained death from the skies and shot it from tanks. I left that camp wanting to tell their story. But it was only after I lost my job months later and I kept writing what I thought was an essay, that I realized I was writing a novel. So I just kept writing. I had no outline or vision of where it was going initially.
2.How did people around you react to this book, its content? What feedback did you get from Americans, specially, concerning this heart-wrenching and truthful story?
You can see some of the comments from readers on my website: http://www.morningsinjenin.com/guestbook-4/
It has mostly been overwhelmingly positive. I believe people want to understand this conflict better. A novel is a place where we can all meet as human beings, and I believe that readers want that – people want to find the common humanity that unites us all.
3.Amal, whose character dominates the story, shows great strength and awesome courage throughout the events in the novel. Where did Amal’s character come from? From where did you find inspiration to weave such a complicated, scarred and beautiful character? And how do you relate yourself to Amal?
Funny, I don’t see Amal that way at all. She is scared at her core. She just survives and does the best she can. But she’s all broken inside and that’s where she lives – inside. Her pain does not abate until the end when she finds redemption in the extraordinary love of a mother for her daughter. In truth, although I loved Amal tremendously, I liked her character the least.
Although there are parallels between my life and Amal’s (being a lone in the US as a single mother), we are not the same person at all. However, there is one chapter where I put Amal in my life for 3 years. The time she spent at the orphanage is an autobiographical narrative of my time in that same place in the early 80s.
4.Who was your favorite character in Mornings in Jenin and why?
Dalia. I loved all the characters, but Dalia haunted me. She was intended to be a relatively minor character and even though she left the story early in the book, her presence lingered throughout the book. To me, she remained a mystery I wanted to both protect and explore. She was a kind of endless but secret and silent love personified that evolves somehow from hurt and tragedy and poetry and innocence.
5.I found myself, at times, closing the book and squeezing my eyes shut while in the middle of a rather “harsh” scene. Did it seem hard for you, knowing these were true events in Palestinian history, to reawaken these emotions of horror ad terror through your writing?
The process of writing was labor intensive and it consumed a lot of time, a lot of heart, a lot of emotion. Writing wasn’t awakening horrors of these true events. It was rewriting and rewriting capture the characters in their most honest and vulnerable selves. I cried myself once when I was writing a passage that came out initially as it appears in the final version. It was the only part that I never rewrote or edited. It came out raw and it made me cry. So I left it the way it was. It’s the chapter when Amal delivers her baby.
6.Now that it’s out, how has writing the story affected you? Has it changed your perspective on things?
I’m not sure what “things” you’re referring to. I poured much of my heart into this novel and I took a lot of risks (financial) to write it. It was an intense and transforming period in my life. I think we are changed any time we invest so much of ourselves into creating something – whether it’s a novel, a relationship, a family…
7.When and how did the writing bug hit you? Did you find support when you first started writing?
I’m a biologist by education. But I suppose I’ve always written – mostly things for myself. When I was a child, I used to write poetry – mostly in Arabic since that was my first written language.
But I’m not sure I have ever considered it a bug. Writing is a refuge, and at the same time, it can be a scary place. Assembling words to create something of value and maybe beauty has given me a place of my own. It’s where I construct and deconstruct the world I see, or the world I want to see. But it’s scary too, because I am always full of self-doubt. No matter how many times I surprise myself with a piece of writing that makes me feel proud; no matter how many people compliment my writing, I still doubt myself as a writer. And so, when I sit down to write, I often begin with fear of failure. Ironically, that’s mostly been happening since I had some success.
For more information about the author and this extraordinary book, head to Susan Abulhawa’s official site: www.morningsinjenin.com
