Return does not guarantee the same sense of home experienced before her departure to the US. Amal exclaims as she goes back to Jerusalem that she does not understand why the dignity of people hinges upon some soil and stones (Ibid 290). She goes to Jenin and no longer feels the same sense of home (Ibid 294). On that trip, she realizes that home had always been with her (Ibid 297) in her daughter Sara in whose arms she dies after being shot by an Israeli soldier (Ibid 307). As Amal dies, the Israeli soldier mumbles that he “cannot shoot anymore” (Ibid 313). He helps Sara and Huda (Amal’s childhood friend) to survive the remaining few days of curfew in Jenin. It is this gesture of humanity that ends the novel and underlines Abulhawa’s theme of the power of common humanity to end the conflict. This emphasis on common humanity is a recurring theme in the novel, in a way that is almost straightforward at times. In one chapter, the reader is presented with the image of David/Ismael, the Israeli soldier, holding the wrist of his brother, who is now part of the resistance, and exclaiming that the Arab’s wrist has a pulse (Ibid 99).
It is important to note at this point that although Abulhawa covers every single incident of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict starting with the Nakbah of 1948, passing by the Naksah of 1967, the Battle of Karamah in 1970, the Deir Yasin massacre, the Sabra and Shatila massacres, the invasion of Lebanon, the Palestinian Intifada and the massacre at Jenin refugee camp among other incidents, her narration ceases completely in the years that witness the failed peace process between 1993 and 2001. Neither Abulhawa nor Amal give a reason for the removal of the peace process from a novel that documents the narrative of the Palestinian struggle. It is these years, however, that precede the re-entry of David, or Ismael, into his sister’s life after being absent from the narrative. The reunion with David/Ismael is a critique of the failed peace process through which she claims that the only peace possible is one that takes place through common human understanding on both sides. It is only after this reunion that Amal returns to Jenin where she meets again with her childhood friend Huda and her sons, Ari her father’s friend and with David/Ismael and his son, allowing herself a final say on her views about the resolution of the conflict through a shared humanity and a common understanding.
5.3 1948: Refugees in Fact and Fiction
Abulhawa’s emphasis, however, on seeing the common suffering and common humanity as the basis of understanding between the Palestinian and the Israeli sides is not to be confused with a call for peace that neglects the suffering on the Palestinian side. In fact, the novel itself documents the decades of the Palestinian suffering without once losing touch with reality. Abulhawa uses both fact and fiction towards this end. The chapter in which Abulhawa covers the events of 1948 becomes marked with the sense of loss of Dalia and Hasan’s baby Ismael, who is kidnapped by the Israeli soldier in the midst of the panic of his mother and the rest of the people of the village. From that point onwards, loss changes Dalia and puts her in a state of pain from which she never has a chance to recover until her death. The pain and lament in Abulhawa’s words are quite evident as she states:
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 (Ibid 35).
What Susan Abulhawa provides her readers with in Mornings in Jenin is a timeline of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the perspective of a Palestinian refugee. Jenin is the refugee camp where Amal is born into a condition of statelessness, displacement and uncertainty that contrasts with the earlier account given of her grandparents’ and her parents’ life. While the earlier account is full of references to the mundane details of daily lives, adolescent love, plans for arranged marriages between cousins, friendly neighbourly competition and other day-to-day incidents that correspond to those experienced by millions around the world, the account of life in Jenin camp where Amal’s birth takes places shortly after 1948 sees this serene and ideal image of life in Palestine shattered. It becomes replaced with news of impending wars, curfews, checkpoints, military restrictions and the loss of the family home.
The historical and the personal continue to go hand in hand in Abulhawa’s narration, where every chapter is headed by a date that chronicles every relevant incident in the Palestinian struggle. She introduces the reader to the people of Ein Hod in her first chapter and explains their state of mind as the year 1948 approached:
Ein Hod was adjacent to three villages that formed an unconquered triangle inside the new state, so that the fate of Ein Hod’s people was joined with that of some twenty thousand other Palestinians who still clung to their homes. They repulsed attacks and called for a truce, wanting only to live on their land as they always had… Attachment to God, land and family was the core of their being and that is what they defended and sought to keep (Ibid 27). The narrative of the details of the displacement of 1948 is accorded generous space that highlights the scale of importance of this juncture. Abulhawa realizes this is a contentious issue that defines the Palestinian experience in the past, present and future. Her narrative calls upon actual news sources to give credibility to her account. She writes:
The next morning, July 24, Israel launched a massive artillery and aerial bombardment of the village. The Associated Press reported that Israeli planes and infantry had violated the Palestinian truce by the unprovoked attack, and bombs rained as Dalia ran from shelter to shelter with terror-stricken Yousef and a screaming baby Ismael (Ibid 28).
The archival source from the Associated Press that documents the historical reality of the account of the displacement takes place alongside the unfolding narrative of fiction to achieve the novelist’s main aim: to give a full account of the narrative of the Palestinian struggle.
It is the loss of 1948 that turns the people into refugees. Abulhawa traces their journey of realization of their new circumstances. As they find refuge in Jenin, none of them can accept that this could become a long-term solution. Expecting return at every juncture and pinning hopes on neighbouring Arab states give Amal her name when she is born in 1955. She embodies these hopes of return to a life that preceded the Nakbah. However, the refugees came to realize that “they were slowly being erased from the world, from its history and from its future” (Ibid 48). After almost 20 years, the Nakbah, which formed the first part of Abulhawa’s novel, is followed by the Naksah, the setback of 1967.
Abulhawa also paints a picture of the development of life inside the refugee camp after the displacement. Palestinians went about their daily lives in the shadow of uncertainty; they attempted to duplicate their past existence by growing the same trees and the same plants they had on their lands. Abulhawa also demonstrates the practical difficulties of living without an internationally recognized state. She talks of the colour-coded identity documents, the various permits needed to travel to different areas, the passes for medical treatment and others for university passes, the “piles of pink, yellow and green slips” (Ibid 114), the experience of inspections, investigations and checkpoints that come both from being refugees and from living under occupation.
When once again Amal’s serene life in Shatila refugee camp is shattered by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Abulhawa also intervenes to document the brutal Israeli attack with the support of facts from the historical archives. Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation: the Abduction of Lebanon (Ibid 219) is used to bring the image into the light of reality that shows the real magnitude of the violence of the Israeli invasion. Ronald Reagan, the American president, Philip Habib, who brokered the ceasefire, and the PLO dominate the pages that tell of the invasion, while the fictitious characters of the novel disappear from the narrative in dignified silent suffering. Later, with the occurrence of the uprising in 1987, Abulhawa resorts to Norman Finkelstein’s The Rise and Fall of Palestine (Ibid 249) to defend, support and uncover the myths levelled at the Palestinian uprising. An Associated Press photographer who captures the image of a dead woman is used by Abulhawa to give a picture of the suffering along with the historical fact.
Like Jarrar, Abulhawa is also aware of the sensitivities that surround the question of home in the Palestinian context. Recalling Svetlana Boym’s distinction between restorative and reflective nostalgia (referred to in Chapter One, section 2.2), one can see how Amal’s
nostalgia oscillates between the two. Amal’s memory shifts from the restorative nostalgia that reconstructs a replica of the remembered home and remedies the homesickness with a narrative of return to roots, to the reflective nostalgia that makes possible the inhabiting of different places as homes. Her reflections at the end of the novel that dwell on the common humanity of the two sides of the conflict are clear signs of a reflective nostalgia where “the focus is not on what is perceived to be an absolute truth, but on the meditation on history and the passage of time” (Boym, 2007: 15). At the same time, Abulhawa relentlessly highlights the justice inherent in the Palestinian struggle. She makes it clear that while a personal home might not actually coincide with one that is geographically determined, only a just resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict through a revision of its history will allow for a chance to transcend national attachments.