08 September 2025

Susan Abulhawa: Mornings in Jenin

Der Roman, der hier vorgestellt wird, ist von einer US-Bürgerin und  Palästinenserin geschrieben worden, die als Flüchtlingskind von Palästinensern als Waise in unterschiedlichen Betreuungssituationen aufwuchs, bis ihr mit 13 Jahren eine Sozialisation als US-Bürgerin ermöglicht wurde, die ihr eine erfolgreiche Karriere als Journalistin und Schriftstellerin ermöglichte. Mit 30 Jahren hat sie Palästina ihre Ursprünge kennen zu lernen versucht und ist darüber zur Aktivistin für eine Gleichberechtigung der Palästinenser geworden. Man erwarte also keine ausgewogene Darstellung des Nahostkonflikts.

Durch das, was gegenwärtig im Gazastreifen geschieht und das, was sich anbahnt, ist er von erschreckender Aktualität geworden.

Doch anders als viele gegenwärtige Publikationen verbreitet die Verfasserin keine Hassbotschaft, sondern versucht, beide Perspektiven: aus palästinensischer und aus israelischer Sicht zu zeigen. Da das gegenwärtig von beiden Seiten kaum noch versucht wird, stelle ich hier ihren Versuch vor. Nicht weil ich ihre Perspektive übernehmen wollte, sondern um auf die Ernsthaftigkeit des Versuchs aufmerksam zu machen. Der Nahostkonflikt, der sich anders als der Nord-Süd-Konflikt  nicht in eine multipolare Konstellation wandeln wird, wurde wiederholt - immer wenn sich eine Lösung anbahnte - künstlich wieder belebt, zuletzt durch den Überfall mit Geiselnahme durch die Hamas im Oktober 2023. Am Schicksalhaftesten wohl durch den Mord an Rabin, der das Oslo-Abkommen vorangetrieben hatte, durch einen israelischen Nationalisten.  

Angesichts der Vorgeschichte des Konflikts scheint er so gut wie unlösbar. Dass eine denkbare Lösung durch einen Israeli vereitelt wurde, hat Züge einer klassischen Tragödie. 

Zu dem ursprünglich geplanten Titel der Buches The Scar of David

die Erläuterung einer KI mit Kommentar von mir.

Mehr zum Nahostkonflikt: in der Wikipediain diesem Blog, aus aktueller Perspektive und in Fontanefans Schnipsel


Susan Abulhawa

Prelude (2000)

AMAL WANTED A CLOSER look into the soldier’s eyes, but the muzzle

of his automatic rifle, pressed against her forehead, would not allow it. Still,

she was close enough to see that he wore contacts. She imagined the soldier

leaning into a mirror to insert the lenses in his eyes before getting dressed to

kill. Strange, she thought, the things you think about in the district between

life and death.

She wondered if officials might express regret for the “accidental”

killing of her, an American citizen. [...]

I. El Nakba (the catastrophe)

1 The Harvest (1941)

IN A DISTANT TIME, before history marched over the hills and shattered

present and future, before wind grabbed the land at one corner and shook it

of its name and character, before Amal was born, a small village east of

Haifa lived quietly on figs and olives, open frontiers and sunshine.

It was still dark, only the babies sleeping, when the villagers of Ein Hod

prepared to perform the morning salat, the first of five daily prayers. [...]


Kapitel 4 S. 28ff.

As They Left

1947–1948

[...] Less than a day passed before Israeli soldiers reentered the village. The

same men who had received the offering of food now marched through,

pointing guns at the people who had fed them. Hasan, Darweesh, and other

men were ordered to dig a mass grave for thirty fresh corpses. The village

men were able to identify all but two of them. Hasan somberly wrote the

names of his fallen friends and countrymen on the sleeve of his dishdashe

as he hollowed the earth in such shock that he was unable to grieve. Al

Fatiha. Dust to dust . . .

Stunned—is this a dream?—their nerves cracking, children crying, the

villagers were tractable.

“Gather the valuables. Assemble by the eastern water well. Move! This

is only temporary. Go to the well,” ordered a voice from a loudspeaker like

a hidden god, distributing destinies. The sky still infinite. The sun

unforgiving. Dalia put the gold in the chest pocket of her thobe and

gathered the valuables as told, Ismael on the left hip, Yousef in the right

hand.

“Mama, I want Baba to carry me,” Yousef pleaded.

“Go, habibi. Allah be with us all.” Dalia released his little hand and the

boy jumped on his father. Allah be with us all.

The area around the well teemed with faces, all creased and twisted with

alarm. But for the fright, Yehya thought they could have been gathered to

prepare for the harvest. The harvest, he thought.

“Now what?” Haj Salem wondered.

Darweesh and his pregnant wife were the last to arrive. He approached

stooped, one foot after the other, leading his heartbroken mare, Fatooma.

Ganoosh, Darweesh’s delight and Fatooma’s lifelong companion, the horse

that once had broken Dalia’s ankle, had been killed in the fighting and it

had taken much persuasion to pull Fatooma away from the massive carcass

of her mate.

Now what? [...]


II. El Naksa (the disaster)

Kapitel 8: As Big as the Ocean and All Its Fishes 1960–1963

I SPENT MUCH TIME IN my youth trying to imagine Mama as Dalia, the

Bedouin who once stole a horse, who bred roses and whose steps jingled.

The mother I knew was a stout woman, imposing and severe, who soldiered

all day at cleaning, cooking, baking, and embroidering thobes. Several

times each week, she was called to deliver a baby. As with everything else

she did, she performed midwifery with cool efficiency and detached nerve.

I was eight years old when Mama first let me help her deliver a baby. [...]


Kapitel 9: June in the Kitchen Hole1967

 Die Erzählerin ist Amal, die Tochter Hanans, sie hat den Krieg in einem Loch in ihrer Küche im Lager überlebt.

Das Loch war mit einem Platte zugedeckt und hatte ursprünglich dazu gedient. Die Waffen, die ihr Vater dort versteckt hatte, unauffindbar zu machen. Jetzt hat sie zusammen mit Huda und einem Baby, was ihnen anvertraut worden war, dort gelegen und hat in der Dunkelheit nur die Geräusche gehört, die von dem Angriff der Israelis für sie zu hören waren. Gesehen hat sie mal die Beine von israelischen Soldaten. Als sie etwas aus dem Loch heraus kommen, werden sie von einer jordanischen Nonne entdeckt, und ihnen wird behelfsmäßig geholfen. Sie werden nach Bethlehem in die Geburtskirche Isas gebracht, wo sie in eine Badewanne steigen dürfen.


The church where Master Esa was born had been shelled and still

smelled of fire. Inside, hundreds of children, most of them orphaned by the

war, sat on the floor. No one spoke much, as if to speak was to affirm

reality. To remain silent was to accommodate the possibility that it all was

merely a nightmare. The silence reached up to the cathedral ceiling and

cluttered there, echoing sadness and unseen mayhem, as if too many souls

were rising at once. We were existing somewhere between life and death,

with neither accepting us fully.

Sister Marianne arrived, carrying an urn of water.

Follow me, dears. You’ll need to bathe together to save water,” she

instructed us as Huda and I walked behind her to the washroom. The good

nun poured the water and left us. We were so bewildered that we got into

the metal tub with our filthy garments. The warm water traveled over my

body like a loving embrace, whispering a promise of safety.

Huda and I disrobed in the tub and sat across from one another.

Browned water separated us, but our legs rested together. Face to face, we

stared at one another’s thoughts, seeing each other’s terror and knowing that

we had crossed some unmarked boundary beyond which there could be no

return. The world we knew was gone. Somehow we knew that. We cried

silently and moved into each other’s small arms.

We lay that way, in the quiet of a foreboding for which we knew no

words. I looked at my toes protruding from the water. Chipped red polish. It

had been only one week since we had passed around the nail polish, giddy

over something that had made us feel older. Now, in that bathtub inside the

church where Master Esa was born, Huda’s nails and mine still bore the

chipped red remnants of that day. I calculated one week as the distance

between girlish vanity and hell.

Slowly, I let my body slide, pulling my head beneath the water. There, in

that silent world, like the stillness I had heard after the blast that had torn

the kitchen and killed Aisha, I had an odd desire to be a fish.

I could live inside water’s soothing world, where screams and gunfire

were not heard and death was not smelled.“ [...]


Kapitel 10 S.74 ff.

Forty Days Later  1967

LOOKING OUT THE BROKEN window in our devastated camp, the sun

was still hidden from view, but the sky was already ablaze with the purples

and oranges that announce its coming. Amazingly, the cocks had survived,

keeping to their regimen of crowing, unaware of the portentous shadow that

hung over us. As always, I was up before dawn. Sunrise belonged to Baba

and me, when he would read to me as the world around us slept. It had been

forty days since the war had ended and Sister Marianne had returned us to

Jenin and I had found Mama with a broken mind. Baba and my brother

Yousef were still missing.

Soon, the melody of the adan came through the air, into our makeshift

homes, to call the faithful to prayer. Decades later, after a life in exile, that

unmistakable cadence of the Arab soul would summon a calm certainty in

my heart that I had made the right decision to return to Jenin.

Although it was still dangerous to venture outside, little Samer, our fiveyear-

old neighbor, was running through the refugee camp yelling

incoherently, his high-pitched voice slashing the stillness of “curfew,”

which was now a fact of our lives.

I guessed that the poor child was reliving the terror of recent events. It

would not have been surprising, for lately most of the young ones wailed in

their sleep.

“They’re naked,” Samer panted, struggling to order his thoughts. “They

need clothes. They told me.”

Little Samer sounded hysterical and people began to stir. Exhausted and

bewildered eyes peered from windows. Old women cracked their

improvised doors for a look.

“What’s going on?” called a voice down the alleyway.

“Are we at war again?” asked another. In these moments of confusion,

despair, and anticipation, the rumor pulsed like a wave of hope through the

living dead.

People began to shout, “Allaho akbar!”

Faces appeared at the windows of every shack and more cries were

heard as excitement surged through the camp. From a window opening

blackened by fire came a euphoric note: “The Arab armies are coming to

liberate us!” But the people remained hesitant, for we could see Israeli

soldiers perched on their lookout posts. Arrogant conquerors, they.

Murderers and thieves. I hated them as much as I hated the sea of white

cloth fluttering over our homes—signs of our humiliating surrender.

But as quickly as the euphoria rose, so it fell when Samer began to make

sense.

“Enough! There is no more war. The boy says our sons are alive,” came

a man’s voice, quieting the war songs. It was Haj Salem. He survived! I

wondered where he had taken refuge.

Haj Salem had seen it all. That’s what he used to tell us youngsters. (S.75)


III. The Scar of David  (S.86ff.)

Kapitel 11, S.87 ff.

A Secret, Like a Butterfly 1967

WATCHING DAVID, HIS BROAD shoulders bent over the dinner table,

Jolanta could scarcely comprehend how much time had passed since the

first day Moshe had brought him to her, a frightened, wounded little bundle.

She thought of that beautiful creature, now a man kissing her cheek and

saying, “I love you, too, Ma!” He was so small in her arms then; she would

hold him to suckle at her dry breasts when no one was around.

She had doted and fussed over him. Made him dress in too many clothes

in the winter, something he had tolerated until the age of seven, when he

had realized he could refuse to wear what she picked for him. She had

adored even his defiance and could barely conceal a smile when he would

assert his independence.

She always worried and he always said, “Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll be fine.”

When he had his first sleepover at the age of eight, she worried that he

would feel homesick and she made him promise to call no matter what time

of night. During his first weekend camping trip when he was ten, the list of

her worries had been so long that even she couldn’t remember it now. She

worried that he had not eaten enough breakfast before school, that he would

hurt himself playing football, that a girl would break his heart. She worried

when he went to his first party, where she knew there would be alcohol.

And when everything seemed fine she worried that there was something he

was keeping from her that she should be worrying about.

She worried that someday he would find out that he was not really her

son. Jolanta worried most of all the year David turned eighteen.

She did not want her boy to join the army. But she had no choice, nor

did her son. Israel was a tiny haven for Jews in a world that had built death

camps for them in other places. Every Jew had a national and moral duty to

serve. So in June 1967, when his country went to war, David already had

served in the Israeli army for one year.

The army sent him north to the Golan. He was strong, ready to serve his

country. Ready to fight.

He was part of the battalion that was supposed to provoke the Syrians

into retaliation so Israel could take the Golan Heights. General Moshe

Dayan instructed them to send tractors to plow in an area of little use, in a

demilitarized zone, knowing ahead of time that the Syrians would shoot. If

they didn’t start shooting, David’s unit was told to advance the tractors until

the Syrians were provoked into shooting. They used artillery and later the

air force became involved. But on the last day, when Israel attacked the

USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean Sea, David was sent home because of an

injury to his hand.

He had been wounded by friendly fire that had burned his right palm.

Jolanta’s heart sank when she learned that her son had been injured, and she

could find no peace until David returned home.

She threw her arms around him. “My boy! Let me see your hand.”

“It’s okay, Ma. They fixed it all up.”

She inspected him to be sure, unable to thank God enough for her son’s

safety. “Are you hungry?” Jolanta was delighted to watch David eat the

kreplach she had made. 

My heart won’t survive if anything happens to him. Somewhere in the corner 

of her love, the secret lay in wait. She had not intended to keep the truth from David. 

Since the day he arrived in July 1948, everything she was or had been had converged

to make her simply David’s mother. How he had come to be her son

remained unsaid, a harmless butterfly in a field of love.

Now, seeing his bandaged hand, she could not bear the possibility of

losing her son. Jolanta had no control over his serving in the army, but she

could keep the truth hidden. He’s my son, that’s the only truth he needs, she

decided, caging the butterfly. (S.87/88)


26. Kapitel, S.167 ff.

Amal ist von einer amerikanischen Familie aufgenommen worden, sie hat erstmals in ihrem Leben in einem warmen weichen Bett geschlafen. Es war schwierig, sich in dieser Welt zurechtzufinden, wo alle sie als fremd ansahen, sie für alle ein Außenseiter war.

Aber was war die Gefahr, von unbekannten Jungen verprügelt zu werden, gegen ein israelisches Gewehr, das man im Rücken spürte und wo eben vor ihren Augen vertraute Menschen erschossen worden waren und wo sie wusste, dass sie den Befehlen gehorchen musste, wenn sie überleben wollte.

13 Jahre gibt sie sich große Mühe, sich in dieser Welt zurecht zu finden. Sie will Amerikanerin werden und hält die Verbindung zu ihren Verwandten nicht mehr aufrecht.

Da erhält sie ein Lebenszeichen von ihrem Bruder Yousef , der in die PLO eingetreten ist und jetzt in Libanon lebt. Er hat Fatima, seine große Liebe geheiratet, und sie erwartet ein Kind von ihm. Sie leben in einem der drei goßen Flüchtlingslager im Libanon. Da beschließt Amal hinzufliegen.

MAJID  1981

A GUST OF WARM, DRY wind greeted me as I stepped off the plane onto

Lebanon’s soil. Beirut International Airport was an ominous place, made so

by too many rifles strapped to too many uniformed soldiers. But the guttural

silk tones of Arabic rippled through me as I heard the melodic calls and

responses of my language. It’s a dance, really. A man at a desk was offered

tea as I walked through the metal detectors. He said, “Bless your hands” to

the one making the offer, who responded, “And your hands, and may Allah

keep you always in Grace.” Calls and responses that dance in the air.

Emerging from tense immigration lines, I found a tall, haggard man

standing impassively behind a sign that bore my name. His dark eyes were

set deep beneath straggled eyebrows. Sparse hairs sprang haphazardly at his

jawline in a vain struggle to become a beard, and a meticulously

symmetrical mustache could not conceal the fullness of his lips. When our

eyes met, recognition pulled his face into a smile.

“Al hamdulillah ala salama,” he said, extending a hand. “My name is

Majid. Your brother sent me to pick you up.”

“And God keep you in safety, too,” I replied. Calls and responses.

“I knew you right away. You look like Yousef.”

“We take after our mother.”

He smiled, taking my luggage.

Beirut’s traffic moved in jolts amid a bedlam of honking horns. Bicycles

darted between cars [...]


Dispersed in the pandemonium, peddlers sold newspapers, flowers, and

Chiclets while the aroma of freshly baked bread— the streetside displays of

sesame kaak with crushed thyme and cheese—crawled through my senses

into memories of Palestine.

“It’s good to be on Arab soil again,” I thought aloud.

“I hear you’ve been gone quite a while,” Majid said after a brief pause.

“Yes, quite a while.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s okay. I went on a scholarship and couldn’t go back to Jenin.

You know how it is when you’re gone for a while. The Israelis don’t let you

come back . . .” Furthermore, I had nothing, no one, to go back to. And to

be honest, I wanted to be an American. I wanted to pack away my baggage

of past and tragedy and try on Amy for size.

I turned my head to the open window to end the subject and inhale more

of the hot jibneh and zaatar on sesame kaak from the sidewalk carts.

Majid called out the window and a vendor, a slender, kindly old man,

approached with two large kaaks wrapped in newspaper.

“May God give you a long life, haj,” Majid said to thank the old man,

and paid him.

“And may he grant you and your family happiness, son,” the old man

replied.

“I’ll bet you haven’t had one of these in a while.” Majid turned to me

with a jibneh kaak. That smile again.

Thrilled, I thanked him: “Bless your hands. They’re made of kindness

and chivalry.”

“I knew something could make you smile.” [...]


The heavy, turtle-paced creep of gravity prodded Yousef to rise on his

legs. And the frail waft of honey apple tobacco, as he uncovered our

father’s smoking pipe, turned those legs to clay. Yousef ’s shoulders

drooped and I saw my brother cry for the first time in my life.

“How did you get this?” he asked, composing himself and wiping tears.

The constant, background-humming craving for just one more moment

with our father moved to the forefront of our yearnings, crowning the next

hours between brother and sister getting to know one another as adults. He

was sorry for having left me in Jenin. He’d have taken us with him, if he

could have. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when Mama died.” He hadn’t

heard about my being shot until a year after. Life hadn’t been easy. Nor for

me. But we were a family again and now there was a baby, a promise that we could live on.

“I didn’t know what else to do, Amal. But I want to make it up to you. I want to be here for you now.”

“You did the best you could, brother. I know that,” I said.

“There are some things I never told you,” Yousef began. He looked

down at his hands, as if placing the words in his palm first before uttering

them. “Our brother Ismael, the baby we lost in forty-eight, is alive,” Yousef

said, looking intently at my face.

He was surprised when I told him that I already knew, or at least I had

always suspected ever since Huda and I had overheard him talking so many

years earlier about the Yahoodi they call David.

“Does Huda also know?”

“I don’t think your conversation that day left the same impression on her

as it did on me. Anyway, we never spoke of it.”

My brother and I served Fatima in bed when she awoke [...]


27. Kapitel 

The Letter 1981

MAJID PERSISTED IN AMAL’S thoughts. He filled her daydreams,

where she replayed their time together, searching for hidden meanings to

his words. She began to grow agitated when a full week had passed without

word from him. And for another two weeks, Amal tossed in the anxiety of

waiting for Majid’s next visit to her brother’s home. [...]


28. Kapitel

“Yes” 1981

WE MET IN SECRET two days later. Majid wanted my answer in private,

away from voices and expectations. So it was, at our favorite spot just

outside the quaint seaside village of Tabarja, that Majid and I held each

other for the first time. The blue Mediterranean lapped at our bare feet and

stretched at its far edges into a cloudless sky. You could not discern where

the ocean ended or the sky began, and somewhere in all that blue the

startling enchantment of love found me.

Majid turned to me, his penetrating eyes black in the blue light.

“I talked to your brother. You know I had to do that first . . . ,” he said,

breaking into the tension. “Will you marry me, Amal?” he asked in sincere,

committed blue, the ocean and the sky his comrades and conspirators in the

question.

I had been waiting to answer. I had practiced in the mirror saying “Yes.”

A surprised, happy “Yes.” A matter-of-fact “Yes, of course, I will.” So

much preparation just to utter that little word.

But all I could do was nod my head in assent, and my body took him in

its arms, absorbed the lovely blue crackling with love.

He brushed his lips against mine, pulled me closer, and I felt as if I had

lived all my life for that kiss.

“I love you,” he said.

The most perfect words.

Whatever you feel, keep it inside. Mama was wrong. “I love you, too,” I

whispered at his ear, willingly falling into my words. [...]

29. Kapitel

Love 1981

THEY MET DAILY DURING their monthlong engagement. Majid came in

the very early morning that had been so magical in Amal’s childhood. She

waited eagerly each time, her heart suspended in the mist of daybreak, until

she heard his steps approaching. He walked briskly, impatient to see passion

expand her bottomless black eyes when they set upon him. Though when

they beheld each other, their desire to hold and feel one another was

tempered by rectitude, by loyalty and respect for Yousef ’s and Fatima’s

good names, and by their approaching wedding.

They talked, less for meaning than to hear the other’s voice. Majid

learned the nuances of an earnest love, the lines it drew from the eyes of the

woman who loved him truly, the fullness of his own breath in her presence,

the way time passed too quickly when they were together and too slowly

when they were apart. [...]


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