Customer Reviews

Mornings in Jenin: A Novel

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What I write pales in comparison to what you will find in the writing style and story within the pages of this book. If I could adequately describe how this book made me feel, I still would not do the book justice.

Mornings in Jenin is the story of four generations of Palestinians living through the birth of Israel and the never ending war that follows. The story centers on Amal, a women who is born in a refugee camp. Her story is one of loss, love and redemption.

I asked to review this particular book because I have always questioned the war between Israel and Palestine. I am torn between understanding the need for a permanent homeland after living through the horrors of WW2 and the way in which the country of Isreal was settled. When I was younger I would ask my elders to explain the actions of the two nations but try as they might, none could truly explain both sides. The issue of the two nations within one setting is very polarizing. I would hear about the Palestine terrorist but not the people. As a result I know little about the human story of Palestinians and thought this book may offer some insight into their world.

Abulhawa's writing style is nothing short of amazing. Though this book is heartbreaking at every turn Abulhawa's words sing out. Yes, they sing out and you as a reader are caught up in her song. Never mind that at times the pain becomes unbearable, the song of her words compel you the reader to stay with her. A little past half way I wanted to give up; there was too much death and heartache, but I stuck with it as the story needed to be told. As much as it hurt to hear it, this story does need to be told. We need to hear about the aftermaths of war. Not because we need to take one side or the other, but because we should pause before we pick a side. Abulhawa shows us that war scorches the lives of those who lay in the path of triumph. No one really wins in war expect death and pain as Abulhawa so vividly tells us.

After finishing the book I sat for a moment trying to collect my thoughts. A part of me disliked having to deal with the emotions and questions that washed over me while another part was so taken by the character and lives in Mornings in Jenin I was almost sad to have come to the end of the tale. For a few moments I was not sure if I could recommend this book or not as it is so full of loss but it dawned on me that one of the reasons I kept reading was because it opened my eyes to what real sadness and pain are. Sometimes we Americans get so caught up in our daily drama we tend to forget we are blessed, even when we are struggling. Mornings in Jenin will make you think, question and maybe cry. It is a testament to a people that before now had no voice. I highly recommend this book.

I told my high-school English class about a wedding I had been to over the weekend. It was a joyful wedding, as weddings should be, but there was also deep sorrow over the family members who couldn't be there; it was a wedding of some refugee friends of mine whose family members had been killed oversees in a clash between Christians and Muslims. I told my students that I was still feeling emotional over the tears of my friends. Tarek, one of my students, raised his hand and asked whether it was a Christian or Muslim wedding. Knowing he was Palestinian, I hoped to help him see that both sides suffer in war, so I told him: "It was a Christian wedding." He cheered about their loss and high-fived another boy in the class who was also Muslim. I suppose I gave the wrong answer. I should have said, "It was a human wedding." That was in the year 2000. To this day I have wanted to understand more about how and why Tarek and others could be so angry toward Americans, Jews, and Christians. So I read this book.

I will say in the author's favor that she had a more balanced perspective than Tarek had. Although she is clearly angry and describes Jewish people as thieves, murderers, and terrorists, she also includes a few Jewish characters who are kind and compassionate. She seeks to understand why Jewish people have taken her land, and concludes that it was because they themselves had been mistreated and without a home; she attempts to have a merciful, balanced perspective. But she is still overtly angry, and she definitely led me as the reader to understand why she is so angry.

It is truly grotesque that I, an educated 34-year-old American citizen, who has even spent 6 years overseas, had never stopped to consider WHY Palestinians are angry with Israel and America. All I knew was that we Americans were nice people who had helped the Jewish people return to their homeland. Pretty ignorant. I guess our textbooks are still teaching a one-sided story.

Thanks to Susan Abulhawa's book, I now see the other side of the story.

The author follows three generations of fictional characters through every atrocity that happened to Palestine since World War II.

"Mornings in Jenin" is not a pleasant read. I doubt that anyone in their right mind could get through this whole book without having a motive of wanting to understand more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mean no one will pick this up at Costco and read it cover-to-cover just for the heck of it. Murder, murder, and more murder are what this book is about. It is something we should know. But who wants to? Honestly, I think this book could be made more palatable by telling more story, more romance, more life, and less horror. I feel bad saying that, because of course the truth is what we need to hear, but this book is really like reading the worst world news headlines over and over. I am horrified to think that men, women, and children are living like that (and dying like that), but it is human nature to avoid it--they would if they could, and so do we as readers.

This is a book you should read. I will say that. I'm glad I read it, and I'm glad I'm done reading it. It has definitely given me more perspective.

Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa, is the story of one Palestinian family over four generations. It can be argued, however, that it is also a story about any and every Palestinian family. The novel begins in the picturesque village of Ein Hod in the north of Palestine. The Abulheja family leads the simple life that most Palestinian farmers led before their tragic dispossession in 1948. Love was plentiful in Ein Hod. Love for life, for family, for God, and for the land. This was the essence of a farming society for generation upon generation.

The Abulhejas and their countrymen are forced out of their villages and homes only to find refuge in foreign towns and lands. They find themselves in a refugee camp in Jenin, their lives totally turned upside-down after losing everything they knew in their simple but beautiful, Palestinian village.

As they struggle in the refugee camp, in the early period after their exile, olive harvest season approaches. Haj Yehya, the family's patriarch, sneaks across the armistice line to tend to his olive groves despite the threat of death from an Israeli bullet. When he returns to the camp in Jenin where his family anxiously waits, he brings them the fruits of his labor, and the labor of generations before him, plucked from their trees in their village. Nothing could stop this old man from returning to his village, but on his next trip, he never made it back to Jenin.

That was the last time any Abulheja attempted to return, but the dreams of return only grew stronger. Amal, with a long vowel (a name meaning "hopes" in Arabic), was born in the refugee camp of Jenin to Haj Yehya's son Hasan. Her older brother, Yousef, spent his early years in Ein Hod before the Nakba. Another older brother, Ismael, was taken from his mother's arms during the exodus from Ein Hod. It would be through Amal's eyes, however, that the family's story is told.

Susan Abulhawa's masterful writing is delightful to read. She writes with an element of metaphor, undoubtedly owing its origins to the Arabic language, which brings color and feeling to every page of this novel. The characters are well-developed and one cannot help but grow attached to them. After each tragedy, be it 1948, 1967, and 1982, a new generation of the family is born, providing hope not only for the characters, but also for the reader who will inevitably experience a sense of depression in parts of the book.

Amal is born into refugee life. She grows up in the shadow of a mother that was devastated by the loss of a child. In 1967, Amal experiences 6 days of horror in a hole in the ground that will forever change her family's life. The father that read poetry to her in the early hours of the morning, the scenes that lend the book its title, is never seen again. Her mother slips into dementia, and her brother Yousef will soon leave to join the resistance.

She grows up away from Jenin, and seeks an education in the United States. Her father's wish was that she be educated and a scholarship makes this possible. In her ghorba (life away from home) Amal experiences western life and the contradictions it poses for Palestinians like herself. She will eventually travel to a refugee camp in Lebanon to reconnect with her brother. In Lebanon, she remembers her past, her love for the land and her family, and starts a family of her own. And just as stability seems to be coming back to her life, anchored by the cornerstone of family, tragedy strikes again. The massacres at Sabra and Shatila will devastate the Abulhejas in 1982, just as 1967 devastated them in Jenin, just as 1948 devastated them in Ein Hod.

Amal raises her daughter, Sara, as a single mother. She wants her to have nothing to do with Palestine, politics, and the wars that scared Amal literally and figuratively for decades. But a twist of fate, which brings Amal's long-lost brother back into her life, sparks an interest in Sara who is now old enough to start hearing about the secrets of her mother's past.

Ultimately it will be Sara, and her generation, which will carry the hopes of Palestine and Palestinians after Amal is gone.

Mornings in Jenin is a must read. It is sure to be an eye opening experience for those who know little about Palestine and an eye-watering experience for those who do. Abulhawa's style is magnificent, descriptive and passionate. While the story is fictional, it is built on entirely plausible circumstances and entirely factual events and places.

Many have waited for a literary contribution capable of explaining the Palestinian experience to the West. The wait is over, Mornings in Jenin is it.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This book review may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

Ms. Abulhawa has composed a marvelous story that weaves history with fiction, personal experience with imagination into a dynamic novel that offers points of contact for readers of many backgrounds. Her narration thick with motherly affection and human virtue invites the reader to read slowly and truly experience the story she is trying to tell. Ein Hod, outside of current-day Jenin district, is the village of the Abul Heija's, a rural Palestinian family who are forced to flee during the war in 1948. Amal Abul Heijah, the granddaughter of the family, takes center stage as a symbol of hope and the tenacious will of survival, creativity, and love, even if doubt, depression, and poverty cloud her dreams and opportunities. Amal's struggle for self-identification, caused by several layers of displacement from family, land, and home, is constantly accompanied by her detailed memory, which ultimately leads her to her destination. A must read.

What is life like as a perpetual refugee? Most in the West can't even conceive of living in a stateless society, where two peoples are constantly at war, both having been wronged by society and history. This is Palestine in the modern world. It's about as foreign an environment as most readers could imagine.

Before reading "Mornings in Jenin," my only real insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had come from dry news reports of atrocities on both sides over the years. This book is a life changing force. It won't necessarily change your political leanings, but it will take you far into the Palestinian mindset and make apparent just how impossible this conflict is for any side to "win."

There is no common ground, and yet these two groups are exactly in the same spot, each seeking the security of being able to live in peace on a land they can call their own.

Although it is a fictional account, there are plenty of real news events included in the book, including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the bombing of Beirut. The story told here is that of one Palestinian family, whose roots are in the olive groves of Palestine before the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. In particular, the novel is told from the point of view of the youngest daughter, Amal, who was born after the family had been exiled to the refugee camp of Jenin.

As one would expect, this novel is one of heartbreak and loss, of coping with unimaginable tragedy and hope for a restoration of what was taken. An interesting component in the story is the circumstance in which one brother of the family (presumed dead) is raised as an Israeli Jew. More than anything, this duality and tenuousness of life is what sets this book apart from merely being a diatribe about Palestinian loss. It is so easy to see how both sides feel and why they take the actions they do to defend what each considers to be "their" exclusive homeland.

As if all this weren't reason enough to read "Mornings in Jenin," author Susan Abulhawa has written one of the most lyrical and prosaic books I`ve ever read. There are passages that will cause a reader to stop mid-story in awe, so beautifully written are they. It is this beauty that helps carry the heavy meaning of loss. Understanding what land means to a landless people is made more bittersweet by this compelling writing, of her beautiful descriptions of the land, the family`s love for one another, and the stoic endurance that is adopted when one suffers a fatal loss.

This is the story of loss that no political solution can solve. Yet despite the tragedies heaped on one family, there is still reason for hope and humanity, to carry on, to love again. It's a powerful book, beautifully written.

"Mornings in Jenin" challenges that premise through the story of the Abulheja family. Although the novel spans years from 1940 to 2003, it focuses on the life of Amal, the daughter of Hasan and Dalia. Through Amal's life, the reader is drawn into the Palestinian Diaspora and given a glimpse of the consequences it has for every individual, regardless of national origin, who is touched by that region's conflict.

Before her birth, Amal's brother, Ishmael, is stolen by an Israeli soldier who wants to give his wife the one thing she desires, a child to love. Later, her beloved father is imprisoned and disappears; despair causes her mother to withdraw emotionally and mentally from living. Her brother, Yousef is driven to follow Yassar Arafat. Eventually orphaned, Amal enters a private school where she earns high grades and receives a scholarship to study in the United States. Following her graduation from Temple University, Amal returns to Jerusalem where she meets and marries a doctor, Majid. As conflict with Israel increases, a pregnant Amal returns to the United States; her husband is to follow. However, he is killed when the apartment where the couple lives is bombed. The destruction of dreams, family separations, the fostering of hate, and anonymous, mindless killing are all elements which combine to impact Amal both physically and psychologically. Further and as a result, the way Amal perceives her relationship with her daughter Sara is affected. Only after 9/11, reconciliation with her brother David (Ishmael), and the realization that she can and does love Sara, does Amal's story reach its climax.

Written as both a first person and third person narrative, "Mornings in Jenin" moves seamlessly between the two voices. As a result, the emotional impact of the novel on the reader may be greater than had the book been written from a single perspective. The reader feels and sees the environment in which Amal lives. Amal's narration of her life is so realistic that one cannot help but be affected by her situation. Characters in the novel are complex individuals who grow through the years; their reactions and emotions are very real.

This is a novel which packs an emotional impact far beyond the regional conflict it highlights. At one point, Amal has "...no wish, save to be loved and whole as she had been in the early mornings with her father..." That wish will never be granted, but in the end Amal realizes she can love and, as a result, sacrifices herself to save her daughter Sara. "Mornings in Jenin" is a story of lives destroyed, of selfless sacrifice to save others, and of the conquering power of love. Susan Abulhawa has written a book which takes those concepts to new heights. This is not a novel to be skimmed, but one to be savored and to be thoughtfully read.

This is a novel from a Palestinian point of view, the first I've ever read. It is a story of a family, displaced in 1948 by the Israelis. The reader gets to know them all, especially the narrator, Amal, born in a refugee camp in 1955. Through her eyes the story unfolds. We get to know her mother, her father, her siblings, her friends and all the people she loves. There are romances and joyful occasions as well as the horror that is imposed on them by the Israelis.

To me, this was an awakening. I was deeply moved and identified completely with the plight of each of the people the author so beautifully brought to life. There's her strong mother who is driven to insanity by the horror about her. There's her brother who is fights the Israelis and is brutally abused. There is her father who reads beautiful literature to her and teaches her to be proud of her roots and who is lost in one of the many wars with the Israelis. There is her childhood friend with whom she hides in a cellar for six days while a bloody battle rages around them. And then there is her other brother, kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised as a Jew.

Amal is lucky. Like the author, she gets an education and immigrates to America and we get to see America through her eyes. When she finds out that her Palestinian brother and his family have gone to Lebanon, she goes to visit. Here she meets the love of her life and a happy marriage follows. But she must flee again to protect her unborn child, leaving her husband, brother and sister-in-law behind to meet a horrible fate. It is not until twenty years later that she returns to Palestine with her grown daughter. Again, tragedy strikes.

At 325 pages, this is a fast read, and I read it all in a couple of days, having it haunt my thoughts whenever I put it down. I loved the characters, loved the writing and hated the political events that have brought such suffering to the Palestinian people. This is an important book. It has opened my eyes and I don't think I will ever be able to think of middle-eastern politics in the same way again.

Everyone should read Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin. This story of a Palestinian family's journey through four generations of Israeli occupation offers beautiful, balanced, and intensely humanistic insight into the experience of both Palestinians and Israelis. Abulhawa artfully demonstrates how both occupier and occupied fall victim to this conflict, yet she paints a clear picture of the magnitude of its effect on Palestinians - that over and over again Palestinians find themselves at the [...] end of an Israeli or American rifle, in the groping hands of soldiers at checkpoints, and as the targets of missile massacres, always looking over their backs at a homeland razed by bulldozers and overrun by soldiers and settlers. However, what is most impressive is that she attains this degree of complexity around the Palestinian experience without dehumanizing Israelis or minimizing their fears and suffering. Rather, by telling the story as a series of first person narratives punctuated with third person accounts, Abulhawa is able to connect the personal with the political and give readers the sense that we are all ensnared in the same terrible situation, though its impact is certainly felt differently on each side. Anyone who seeks to understand how this conflict affects the real people who live it every day must read this book, as Abulhawa leaves us with the hope of change and a strong sense of the vastness of what it means to live under and within occupation.

But it is not merely the structure and the story of the book that makes it such a good read. Abulhawa's masterful narrative voice, splendid poetic prose, and dialogue that dances alive in a reader's head glued the book to my hands, and I was unable to put it down, often overcome with strong emotional reactions to the characters' experiences. I finished this book in just 24 hours - it is rare to encounter such a compelling read!

Mornings in Jenin is a family saga of a Palestinian family. It begins in the bucolic village of Ein Hod, and I read happily about the Palestinian family and their happy but simple lives. However, the British partition of Israel/Palestine then occurs, and unrest begins. It is never quite explained why, but the Israelis attack the Palestinians and drive them out of their homes, and into refugee camps. There forward, they are attacked within the camps seemingly at random and without reason. The protagonist of most of the story is Amal, a sweet girl who survives the most horrible experiences to follow her father's dreams for her - that she become educated. She ends up in the United States but never quite separates from her home, frequently returning for visits in Palestine and Lebanon.

This book was uncomfortable to read at times. At first, I really felt that there was a vitriolic, anti-Israeli sentiment in this book that went beyond the usual for an narrative of the oppressor/oppressed. As a friend to many Jewish people and someone who knows quite a few Israelis as well, it was hard to reconcile what I was reading with the people I know. However, it's probably also hard to reconcile everyday Palestinians with suicide bombers. There are always extremists on either side. In time, I think the book came to show that - with her reunion with her brother David/Ismael, and her daughter's acceptance into the Jewish side of her family, as well as Hasan's lifetime friendship with Ari Perlstein, and finally, showing the moral dilemna of the Israeli soldier in the last chapter, where he does a terrible thing but then tries to redeem himself. Certainly, there is another side of this story to be told, but this book is about the Palestinians and their experience.

At times, the story felt strident and contrived. It felt like a vehicle to push a political agenda, more than a heartfelt story. Of course, there are many such novels that have been written. I guess the word for it is "tearjerker", when something seems contrived to make people cry. I liked the book and finished it, but I do think that it could be improved such that the people's story in the book was as strong as the political message. I would have liked to have lost myself in the story more than I was. I think one of the reasons that I couldn't' fully immerse myself was that the protagonist changed, as did the "person" (first-person, vs. third-person), and in some sections - particularly the sections without Amal - the protagonist at that moment didn't feel three dimensional. Amal was the only three dimensional character of the novel.

Khaled Hosseini infuses Kite Runner with a wealth of individual characters of every stripe, and a subtlety and humanity that spans its pages from the first to the last. While I liked it slightly less well, Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns is an equally artistic work. Expecting that sort of depth and literary development, I ordered this book through Amazon's Vine program.

Alas, I must agree with two previous Vine reviewers: This book does not remotely fulfill its buildup. This is a shallow tale, laying totally flat and uninspired on its pages, populated by caricatures, not well-developed personalities with a genuine range of human emotion. Everything here is predictable, recited as if by rote.

The book opens into a 1941 November dawn pastoral scene in Ein Hod, a small Arab village east of Haifa during the olive harvest. Alas, the author almost immediately launches into statements on Muslim prayers and declarations of faith, painting the flimsiest of verbal landscapes. One might expect details of the sounds and sights on the land greeting local peasants, as they rise at 5 a.m. to reach their groves with baskets before their neighbors.

But one finds no landmarks described, no special home or grove, no familiar hillside. Instead, the author regularly splashes her first pages of prose with trite and formulaic phrases --- e.g. "noble fruit" and "sun-bleached hills" --- ringing hollow and false notes from the start. Already on page three, stick-figure characters begin insulting one another, albeit smilingly, but without explanation.

One begins to know the family with the introduction of the Bedouin girl Dalia, in chapter three. The friendship previously described, between Hasan and the crippled Ari Perlstein, whose parents settled in Jerusalem after fleeing from Germany, hangs on the weakest, most superficial language. It also puts words into Ari's mouth that no self-respecting young Jewish man, in 1942 Jerusalem, would have uttered.

Readers are supposed to believe that Ari, like all others who broach the topic in the first 25 pages, damns Zionists, considers them dogs and sons of dogs, and opposes a Jewish homeland, too. The author also implies that Arabs in Ein Hod thus far have been completely peace-loving and aliens to violence --- despite their rabid hatred of Jews, whom they freely label "Yahood, Jews, Zionists, Dogs, Sons of Whores, Filth" (pp. 24-25) --- entirely in keeping with the age-old jihad doctrine, especially fervent when directed at the Jewish people. Israel's creation had and has nothing whatever to do with its espousal.

Uneducated readers may be swayed by this one-sided portrayal of events. But by late 1947 and early 1948, Arab gangs had mass murdered hundreds of unarmed men, women and children in Jerusalem, Hebron, and villages throughout northern Israel, Etzion, the Jezreel Valley and east. Hitler's ally, Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin el-Hussaini, who sealed the mass murder of Hungarian Jews, also sought to slaughter all Israel's Jews. And in January 1948, Arabs cut the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem road. Their sniper fire indiscriminately killed everyone who ventured there. Even armored convoys and vehicles were dubbed rolling death traps.

The author neither relates these undeniable facts --- nor correctly recounts Ein Hod's early history. Ein Hod did not endure Roman, Byzantine, Caliphate, Crusader and Mamluk rule, as the author claims.

Actually, the village was founded in 1189 by Iraqis --- relations of Saladin's commander Hussam al-Din Abu al-Hija. In 1596, just 44 people lived there; by the late 19th century, Ein Hod was still home to only 50.

But the author's greatest outrage is her description of supposed July 24, 1948 events, purportedly derived from an Associated Press report of Israeli planes and troops launching "a massive artillery and aerial bombardment" in "an unprovoked attack."

In fact, Ein Hod's Arab residents had abandoned the village by May 1948, Benny Morris' inaccurate "reports" of "July 15" events notwithstanding.

One can forgive some historical inaccuracies in an historical novel. It's a novel, of course. And to be sure, there are some tender moments, when characters take on sympathetic personalities --- momentarily expanding beyond their straw-man frames. For pages at a stretch, readers can sometimes get lost in the story.

Then along come figures spouting hateful slogans and propaganda, such as the Arab epithets for Jews quoted above. The author also portrays ridiculous paper-doll Israeli soldiers, framed by nuns or nurses shouting that they're no better than Nazis. Thus I must also agree with other reviewers that descriptions here of Israelis are far from the reality I've experienced, even at the tensest of border crossings or check points.

Overall, the novel is weak and its historical spine, unconscionably lopsided. The frame upon which this author hangs her feeble "plot" is but transparent propaganda --- far from the artistic work the publishers promise, with all the subtlety and beauty of a club.

One must presume that, under its previous 2007 title, Scar of David sold poorly. Why else repackage a lame four-year-old book and hype it under such a dramatically different new title?

---Alyssa A. Lappen