Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa

 

Some book you just don’t want to put it down because it forges so much of reality into you. Such is the story of Nahr, a Palestine woman whose fate is wrenched in the political chaos of Israel-Palestine. Also I would certainly consider her as my favourite main character so far, such an endearing one. At one point, I didn’t want to continue reading this book because there was a lot to grief upon and my every single priviliges felt unfair. I have been trying to explore fictions from Middle East and this book was a priority. I knew relatively less about Palestine until the attack around Gaza last summer. I was very uninformed about the Israeli occupation about Palestine. If I was heartbroken by what I saw on the news, it was nothing compared to what I felt reading this book. We know nothing about their pain, NOTHING!

Imagine not belonging anywhere? Not in the country that you were born in. Also not in the country that fate took you to. Nahr recalls her life story from an isolation cell in Israeli jail; from her brief first marriage where her husband abandons her, through all the war and life as a refugee to getting into prostituition to save her family from the brink of poverty, the pain is UNIMAGINABLE. I literally found myself crying over the pages where she was being sexually exploited, traumatized. And when you think it’s the time for happy ending, BOOM! Nahr defied every sterotype of a meek Muslim women. I tried to put myself in Nahr’s shoe and imagined how I would have reacted to certain situation. Honestly I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. She didn’t deserve this life would be an understatement. I could feel the discomfort in my gut to see this lady keep going with the riot against oppression, shame and misogyny. What an unfair and unjust world this is to so many people.      

This book is a reminder that though this is just a fiction story, it still is a reality for so many Palestinians till today. It also fights the mainstream media who just wants people to follow a trend. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about Palestine suffering – Palestine-Israeli conflict.