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A review by indahmarwan
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
5.0
Let me say it. This is the kind of book that makes you crushed to the bones.
“I know in alone here. I’m not delusional. But the way memory animates the past is more real than the present.”
The story of Nahr (Arabic: River) began in The Cube, a solitary confinement where she spent countless days of being political prisoner. In The Cube, she shared her life journey, the stories of her family, three countries of Kuwait, Jordan, and Palestine which she passed before being a prisoner.
The main issue of being a Palestinian and woman are my main appeal of picking this book. Nahr experienced loss of love and faith on men, forced to seek refuge to Jordan in the US Kuwait (Iraq then) invasion, and the most painful one for me is Nahr to choose being a sex worker in order to become the breadwinner of her family. Once Nahr visited Palestine, she was charmed by the culture and the resistance; that she eventually joined one.
Susan Abulhawa writes fiction with facts that I found very intelligently beautiful. The pro-Palestine perspective I had really enjoyed and become familiar with it. Despite the main character, I am saddened by the minimum mention of the male characters in most reviews, Nahr’s former husband, Muhammad, her brother Jehad, and the love of her life, Bilal. Three men who encountered imprisonment of the resistance the involved in and the different impacts of it especially in their masculinity.
What I mostly learned is from the Israeli occupation the characters went through not in the identical time, they have different effect for everyone: from Sitti Wasfiyeh, Mama, to Nahr, Jehad, and Bilal; from tired of being displaced or being resilient to changes to being resistant and in readiness to the predicament.
Above all pains and horrors, I love the emotions I felt when reading parts of Nahr and Bilal, I could soon smile while tears still hanging on my eyes because of how deep their affection to one another.
Abulhawa quoting James Baldwin,
“Here you were: to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.”
“I know in alone here. I’m not delusional. But the way memory animates the past is more real than the present.”
The story of Nahr (Arabic: River) began in The Cube, a solitary confinement where she spent countless days of being political prisoner. In The Cube, she shared her life journey, the stories of her family, three countries of Kuwait, Jordan, and Palestine which she passed before being a prisoner.
The main issue of being a Palestinian and woman are my main appeal of picking this book. Nahr experienced loss of love and faith on men, forced to seek refuge to Jordan in the US Kuwait (Iraq then) invasion, and the most painful one for me is Nahr to choose being a sex worker in order to become the breadwinner of her family. Once Nahr visited Palestine, she was charmed by the culture and the resistance; that she eventually joined one.
Susan Abulhawa writes fiction with facts that I found very intelligently beautiful. The pro-Palestine perspective I had really enjoyed and become familiar with it. Despite the main character, I am saddened by the minimum mention of the male characters in most reviews, Nahr’s former husband, Muhammad, her brother Jehad, and the love of her life, Bilal. Three men who encountered imprisonment of the resistance the involved in and the different impacts of it especially in their masculinity.
What I mostly learned is from the Israeli occupation the characters went through not in the identical time, they have different effect for everyone: from Sitti Wasfiyeh, Mama, to Nahr, Jehad, and Bilal; from tired of being displaced or being resilient to changes to being resistant and in readiness to the predicament.
Above all pains and horrors, I love the emotions I felt when reading parts of Nahr and Bilal, I could soon smile while tears still hanging on my eyes because of how deep their affection to one another.
Abulhawa quoting James Baldwin,
“Here you were: to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.”