Mornings in Jenin is a sensuous and poetic narrative.  The author’s exquisite descriptive capacity gave life to each character and a vivid sense of the places where the story is set.  Although her translation of the proverbs, phrases and prayers captures the essence of the Arabic culture and tradition, Abulhawa’s insistence on the use of the Arabic words exemplifies (especially to a native speaker) the lyrical and passionate nature of the Arabic language and people.  Abulhawa evokes the senses with her depiction of the colors, clothes, the aroma of trees and flowers, the glowing images of Arab features, the eroticism, the skill and pride with which food is prepared and offered, the imperative virtue of generosity that every Arab must possess.  The oneness of a people and a land bonded together by olives, figs and citrus fruits. 

“Trees like beckoning grandparents, hundreds of years old, wrinkled and stooped with heavy arms that stretched to every direction, as if in prayer.”

She eloquently exposes the brutality of everyday life in a refugee camp, in an occupied land, while trying to connect with the reader on a personal level as she integrates poetry, sibling rivalry, love making, friendships and breakups, death and heartaches, fears, distance, longing, lust, betrayal, inferiority and disappointment.  She walks the reader through the transformations that earn oppression, war and subjugation a guilty verdict under the laws of any land.  “Nothing could be counted on to endure.” A “fiery Bedouin girl with a bright colored thob and jingling footsteps” becomes a woman with a “deflowered spirit.” A once handsome and gentle son/brother/husband and father describes “a storm that brews inside” and “demonic wrath bubbling in his veins.”  Children who can’t play. A land once fertile owing to 40 generations of experienced Palestinian farming now barren.

Abulhawa also seems to have gone on a personal journey of self-discovery through her characters.  Amal’s experience of being both Amal “the Palestinian” and Amy “the American” is one example.  Challenged by living in two opposing worlds simultaneously, both externally and internally - one of deprivation, abandonment fear and despair and another marked by a sense of excess yet void of feelings and meaning.

“In my bitterness and fear, I felt as alone as loneliness dares to be”. 

She describes her character’s sense of being known to others and to herself as two different people and the impact of that experience on the psyche. 

“I shut down and my defenses pricked anyone who dared to come near me” 

Abulhawa’s book offers a new voice to an old crisis.  The integration of politics and fiction leaves some room for the reader to agree or disagree with the facts of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.  In many ways, it bridges the gap between the enemies in the form of everyday human relatedness and shared experiences of being victims of hatred and injustice.  The final chapters of the book show the footprints of war evidenced by the destruction of so many lives and the urgency with which reconciliation must be found in the truth. 

“Healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed.”

A righteous message and a worthwhile read.