47 pages • 1 hour read
Against the Loveless World
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Background
Authorial Context: Susa Abulhawa
Abulhawa is a Palestinian American writer and activist. She is the author of a collection of poetry titled My Voice Sought the Wind (2013) in addition to three novels, Mornings in Jenin (2010), The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), and Against the Loveless World (2020). Apart from her writing, she is involved in animal advocacy and human rights work related to various Palestinian causes, among them Al Awda (the Right to Return Coalition) and Playgrounds for Palestine, which she founded. She is a vocal critic of the Israeli government and its army, and has been active within the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Abulhawa’s parents, both born in East Jerusalem, were refugees of the 1967 war. They fled first to Jordan and then to Kuwait, where Abulhawa was born in 1970. Her parents’ marriage was brief and turbulent, and they divorced when Abulhawa was still young. She spent her childhood moving between Kuwait, Jordan, the United States, and Palestine, and this kind of diasporic migration is an important focal point in Abulhawa’s writing. Prior to dedicating herself to writing full-time, Abulhawa had a career in biomedical sciences as a researcher for a large pharmaceutical company.
Her novels focus on the experiences of diasporic Palestinians scattered across the Middle East and the United States. Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational family saga that examines the lives of a Palestinian family forcibly displaced from their olive farm in 1948, who afterward resettle in the Jenin refugee camp. The novel explores the way that Israeli government policy and instability in the Middle East impacted the lives of individual Palestinians and their families. It shares with Against the Loveless World an interest in diaspora and displacement, as well as examining the impact of history on Palestinian communities.
The Blue Between Sky and Water also focuses on a family displaced from a farming village by the Israeli occupation, who initially resettle in a refugee camp in Gaza. Like both of her other novels, a picture emerges of a diasporic people forced to flee their homeland. This novel shares with Against the Loveless World a particular interest in the gendered experiences of Palestinian women, while also spotlighting the impact that Israeli occupation had on rural communities. The novels emphasize how rural Palestinians were deeply connected to the land through farming, making their displacement even more difficult.
Historical Context: Palestine and Its Diaspora
Against the Loveless World is a novel deeply focused on the way that diaspora and displacement impact Palestinian individuals, families, and communities. Nahr’s family is first displaced internally within Palestine, then to Kuwait, and then to Jordan. Since they, like so many other diasporic Palestinians, end up scattered across the broader Middle East, their lives are ultimately shaped not only by Palestinian history, but by geopolitical shifts and conflicts within the entire region. Abulhawa builds her narrative around this history, engaging in particular with three significant events: The Nakba; Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the resulting Gulf War; and the Second Intifada.
The Nakba
During 1948, in events that Palestinians call “The Nakba” (“The Catastrophe”), The Israeli government expelled the majority of the Palestinian population of the city of Jaffa. Out of a pre-conflict population of around 100,000 Palestinians, approximately 4,000 Palestinians were allowed to stay. The remaining Palestinians were removed from their homes and concentrated into Arab neighborhoods in the southern part of the city.
The Nakba extended far beyond Jaffa and displaced thousands more Palestinians throughout the country, leading to occupation of these territories by Israeli settlers. In total, approximately several hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs were forced to flee and Palestinians living abroad were denied the right to return. The violence of the Nakba remains a source of collective trauma, even to contemporary Palestinians.
The Gulf War (1990-1991)
The (Persian) Gulf War was a conflict that began with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait in order to acquire Kuwait’s vast oil reserves, expand Iraqi power in the region, and to avoid paying a debt that Iraq owed to Kuwait. The Iraqi army quickly occupied the entirety of Kuwait, managing the country first through a puppet government, and then through full annexation.
There was swift international condemnation toward the invasion, and both the United Kingdom and the United States deployed troops and supplies into neighboring Saudi Arabia to aid the Kuwaitis. An array of other nations, including regional countries Saudi Arabia and Egypt, soon joined the American-led coalition. Iraq was unable to withstand coalition attacks, and Kuwait was liberated following a coalition ground assault into Kuwait in February 1991.
The Second Intifada (2000-2005)
The Second Intifada was a major Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation which took place between 2000 and 2005. It followed a period of tense, uneasy peace after the First Intifada (1987-1993). Although the roots of the Second Intifada are complex and disputed, it is sometimes regarded as a response to the failure of the 1995 Oslo Accords to satisfy either the Palestinian or Israeli authorities. Although Israel had committed to a gradual withdrawal of its troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and to allow the creation of a Palestinian authority, Palestinians complained that their freedom of movement was still severely limited and their property was still subject to unlawful seizure. The Israeli government was hesitant to grant full Palestinian self-determination.
In July 2000, the Camp David Summit brought together leaders from the United States, Israel, and the Palestinian authority in an attempt to broker a new peace deal. American President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestine’s Yasser Arafat were not able to come to an agreement, and the talks ultimately broke down. In Palestine, where Israeli settlers continued to expand their occupation of Palestinian lands, the situation led to outbreaks of violence. Israeli forces targeted both combatants and civilians with heavy artillery fire, while Palestinians responded with rockets, small weapons like rocks and stones, and a series of suicide bombings, some of which targeted Israeli civilians. By the time the violence stopped, Palestine had suffered higher casualties than Israel, and peace in the region seemed even less attainable.
