Susan Abulhawa

A heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that does for Palestine what The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home. The novel's voice is that of Amal, the granddaughter of the old village patriarch, a bright, sensitive girl who makes it out of the camps, only to return years later, to marry and bear a child. Through her eyes, with her evolving vision, we get the story of her brothers, one who is kidnapped to be raised Jewish, one who will end with bombs strapped to his middle. But of the many interwoven stories, stretching backward and forward in time, none is more important than Amal's own. Her story is one of love and loss, of childhood and marriage and parenthood, and finally the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has. Set against one of the twentieth century's most intractable political conflicts, Mornings in Jenin is a deeply human novel - a novel of history, identity, friendship, love, terrorism, surrender, courage, and hope. Its power forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining conflicts of our lifetimes.

A Novel

Mornings in Jenin

Marion

In the sorrow of a history buried alive, the year 1948 in Palestine fell from the calendar into exile, ceasing to reckon the marching count of days, months, and years, instead becoming an infinite mist of one moment in history. The twelve months of that year rearranged themselves and swirled aimlessly in the heart of Palestine. The old folks of Ein Hod would die refugees in the camp, bequeathing to their heirs the large iron keys to their ancestral homes, the crumbling land registers issued by the Ottomans, the deeds from the British mandate, their memories and love of the land, and the dauntless will not to leave the spirit of forty generations trapped beneath the subversion of thieves.

We were refugees, all of us. Those who had fled had become refugees once again, in another human junkyard dotting Israels brief history. And those of us who had remained became prisoners in Jenin.

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin.

Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel.

Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation.

"Never let them know they hurt you" was their creed.

But the heart must grieve. Sometimes pain emerged as joy. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference. For the generations born in the camps, grief found repose in a bed of necrophilia.

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“If they had a sense of the land then the land would compel in them a love for the olives,” Yehya said, staring at the palms that had caressed those majestic, beloved trees only hours earlier. Age-dappled and rough, his farmer’s hands were infused with the melanin truths of those hills. The truth that an olive branch flowers only once and if it isn’t pruned back will produce buds that become new slender springs by winter. The truth that an olive’s worst biological enemy is a small lacy-winged fly and that sheep are good to keep around because they supply the soil with needed nitrogen. Yehya’s hands knew those facts from a lifetime devoted to trees and their earth. 

How was it that a man could not walk onto his own property, visit the grave of his wife, eat the fruit of forty generations of his ancestors’ toil, without mortal consequence? 

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