Against the Loveless World

Smoking is one of the novel’s most important motifs. Many different characters use and enjoy tobacco, with Nahr being the only notable exception. Nahr believes that tobacco is an example of Western decadence; she also asserts that because tobacco usage carries so many health risks, it is a kind of Western “soft power” attempt to weaken the Middle East through introducing unhealthy habits to its population. Nahr repeatedly refuses to use tobacco, and she also, on numerous occasions, tells her friends and family why she is so opposed to its use. Although much of the novel’s narrative depicts Palestinian resistance fighters in their opposition to Israeli occupation, Nahr’s anti-tobacco, anti-Western position is another example of resistance. She cites on multiple occasions the damaging impact that Western intervention has had on Middle Eastern geopolitics. Nahr’s staunch anti-smoking position thus emerges as another facet of her conception of Resistance in the Face of Occupation and Oppression.

Dancing is another important motif, speaking both to Nahr’s cultural identity as a Palestinian woman and the novel’s thematic interest in The Complexities of Sexuality and Women’s Autonomy. Nahr clarifies early in the