Mornings in Jenin
Page 31
8 After surviving a week underground during the 1967 conflict, Amal denies knowing Dalia. Why does she renounce her mother? What are the consequences of Amal’s “disgraceful lie” (74)?
9 Haj Salem tells Amal, “We’re all born with the greatest treasures we’ll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart” (133). How does Haj Salem’s speech influence Amal’s decision to go to school in Jerusalem? Explain why Amal considers his words “the greatest wisdom ever imparted to me by another human being” (133).
10 Amal and Yousef both lose the people they love most in the attacks on Lebanon in 1982. How do brother and sister react differently to their tragedies, and why? How does this tragedy drive them further apart, instead of closer in their grief? How do you think Amal’s reaction might have been different had she not been pregnant?
11 Amal associates Dalia’s stoic behavior with a line of her mother’s advice: “Whatever you feel, keep it inside” (204). When does Amal follow Dalia’s example, and when does she break from it? How does Amal’s behavior with her daughter, Sara, resemble Dalia’s mothering? Discuss how Amal comes to the following realization: “Dalia, Um Yousef, the untiring mother who gave far more than she ever received, was the tranquil, quietly toiling well from which I have drawn strength all my life” (274).
12 Consider the Israeli characters within Mornings in Jenin: Ari Perlstein, Moshe, Jolanta, and David’s sons. How do their experiences compare to the experiences of the Abulheja family? What do these Israeli voices add to the novel?
13 What layers of meaning can you find in the title of part III, “The Scar of David,” which was the original title of the book?
14 On page 270, when David asks if Amal still sees him as an abstraction, she thinks, “No . . . You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.” What do you think Amal means by this? How do you see this statement in the context of the Palestinian struggle?
15 In their final conversations, as tanks roll through Jenin, Amal explains many of her hardships to her daughter, Sara. Why did Amal grieve “three thousand times” on September 11th (300)? How was Amal’s experience similar and different from the widows’ of 9/11? How did Sara misinterpret her mother’s grief at the time?
16 Nearly all of the characters in this book are transformed in one way or another by personal and international events. How are the transformations of Moshe, Dalia, Amal, and Yousef similar and how are they different? Of them, who undergoes the most dramatic change?
17 Why does the novel end with words from Yousef, who lives in exile? What mood does Yousef ’s perspective create at the end of the book? Is it a surprise to learn that Yousef had not driven the bomb truck into the U.S. embassy in 1983? Considering that the PLO fighters who were exiled to Tunis in 1982 lost their families in the Sabra and Shatila carnage and none chose to respond with violence, why do you think the author chose this ending? What is the significance of the chapter title “The Cost of Palestine”?
18 If at all, how has this story changed how you view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Did you learn things that surprised you?
19 In the chapter where the story comes full circle to the prelude, how do you think Amal can face this soldier holding a rifle to her head with “a mother’s love and a dead woman’s calm” (305)? In this same chapter, consider the following passage in the context of how you think of soldiers and war, whether in your own country or elsewhere:
The power he holds over life is a staggering burden for so young a man. He knows it and wants it lifted. He is too handsome not to have a girlfriend nervously waiting for his return. He would rather be with her than with his conscience . . . But he has never seen his victim’s face. My eyes, soft with a mother’s love and a dead woman’s calm, weigh him down with his own power and I think he will cry. Not now. Later. When he is face-to-face with his dreams and his future. I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.
Suggested reading
Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns; Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree; Jean Said Makdisi, Teta, Mother, and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women; Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir; Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood; Sari Nusseibeh, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life; Rajah Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape; Ghada Karmi, In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story; Mourid Barghouti, I Saw Ramallah; Elizabeth Laird, A Little Piece of Ground.
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Abulhawa
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury
USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Abulhawa, Susan.
[Scar of David]
Mornings in Jenin : a novel / Susan Abulhawa.–1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-60819-046-1 (paperback)
1. Palestinian Arabs–Fiction. 2. Arab-Israeli conflict–Fiction. 3. Jenin–Fiction. 4.
Refugees, Palestinian Arab–Fiction. 5. Palestine–History–Partition, 1947–Fiction. 6.
Palestine–History–20th century–Fiction. 7. Middle East–Politics and government–1945–
Fiction. I. Title.
PS33601.B86S33 2010
813’.6–dc22
2009024957
This novel was published in a different form, by Journey Publications in 2006, under the
title of The Scar of David. The test of Mornings in Jenin has been fully revised and edited.
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2010
This e-book edition published in 2010
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-148-2
www.bloomsburyusa.com
Table of Contents
Prelude
I. El Nakba
1 The Harvest
2 Ari Perlstein
3 The No-Good Bedouin Girl
4 As They Left
5 “Ibni! Ibni!”
6 Yehya’s Return
7 Amal Is Born
II. El Naksa
(the disaster)
8 As Big as the Ocean andAll Its Fishes
9 June in the Kitchen Hole
10 Forty Days Later
III. The Scar of David
11 A Secret, Like a Butterfly
12 Yousef, the Son
13 Moshe’s Beautiful Demon
14 Yousef, the Man
15 Yousef, the Prisoner
16 The Brothers Meet Again
17 Yousef, the Fighter
18 Beyond the First Row of Trees
19 Yousef Leaves
20 Heroes
21 Tapered Endings
22 Leaving Jenin
23 The Orphanage
IV. El Ghurba
(state of being a stranger)
24 America
25 The Telephone Call from Yousef
V. Albi fi Beirut
(my heart in Beirut)
26 Majid
27 The Letter
28 “Yes”
29 Love
30 A Story of Forever
31 Philadelphia, Again
32 A Story of Forever, Forever Untold
33 Pity the Nation
34 Helpless
35 The Month of Flowers
36 Yousef, the Avenger
VI. Elly Bayna
(what there is between us)
37 A Woman of Walls
38 Here, There, and Yon
39 The Telephone Call from David