Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

Book Review: The Waiting Place by Dina Nayeri with photos by Anna Bosch Miralpeix

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I received this large, square, hardback book with an eye-catching cover from i’m your neighbor books as part of Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2023. The title, The Waiting Place, lays in bright, red, capital letters over a photo of a scene that one might drive on the way to somewhere else. There’s a child upside down in an impressive cartwheel, evoking childhood joy, next to the incongruous subtitle: “When home is lost and a new one not yet found.” To be honest, the cover and its implications made me want to look away; it took a while for me to open the book.

The Waiting Place is a 64-page book of stunning photographs with limited words. Marketed for 12-17 year olds, The Waiting Place is a must read for everyone, regardless of age. It is compelling and disturbing, as it should be.

There are 82.4 million forcibly displaced people, author Dina Nayeri notes in the afterword. Some of them will experience part of their childhood in refugee camps, as Dina did. They will grow up, become writers and doctors and teachers and programmers. They are our neighbors. This book shows a slice of the experience that some of them have lived.

Nayeri personifies the refugee camp, the waiting place, and it becomes a predator: “At first the Waiting Place welcomes you. It has heard of the wars, the famines and the bombs in your home; it is very sorry. It has been waiting for you.” Then: “Inside its gated mouth is a dreary, lazy encampment where there is nothing to do but drift. Children wait, let time slip away. They forget things: first their sums, street names, their best books. Then beloved faces, stories. The Waiting Place doesn’t mind. It wants more children and mothers and fathers. It doesn’t want you to visit the nearby lake, to hike the frosted mountain, to learn your new language, or to work or build or learn. It craves your hours, weeks, years.”

But Nayeri relieves the reader by interspersing the chilling text with the most mundane, familiar details of life. Brothers fight. Kids make artwork. Families cook. And the photos are not sad. There is adorable, five-year old Matin from Afghanistan making a monster face. His ten-year old sister, Mobina is shown lost in her thoughts, examining a flower, in a field of weeds. Kosar, a Hazara girl from Iran, jumps on her bed in her striped pajamas. The raw description of the place alongside pictures of children being children left me disquieted. I can’t stop staring at the photos, completely taken in by the spirit in these children’s eyes–the same spirit I see in my own children’s eyes. I suppose that’s the point.

Nayeri doesn’t offer a sugar-coated ending because there isn’t one. We don’t know if these specific children are still at Katsikas camp in Greece, and if not, who are the children who might now be living in the lined-up shipping crates that they called home. From my own life advocating for Palestinian rights, I know the only way to process hard truths and still avoid despair is to take action. Candlewick Press offers a discussion guide and there are engagement ideas at https://imyourneighborbooks.org/waiting-place-engage/. 

But for engagement to be anything other than guilt-driven charity, readers of The Waiting Place will need to understand that while refugee camps may feel like perpetrators to children, it is people who continue to cause displacement through decisions that lead to war and other conditions that force people to run from their homes. And it is well-intentioned people like me who too often remain silent and let those bad leaders get away with it. As I recently posted in relation to Palestine, angst is not an act of solidarity. For me to live up to the expectation of this #MustRead book, I will have to take political action. I will have to do my part to influence my own government to stop creating the conditions that lead to the need for refugee camps that steal childhoods.

Later: I keep pondering this book! I’m thinking about Palestinian kids who are born, live and die in refugee camps just waiting. They go to school, waiting. They get married, waiting. They become grandparents, waiting. What’s it like when generations live without a home, without papers, without hope – waiting?

The Waiting Place

Dina Nayeri with photographs by Anna Bosch Miralpeix

Candlewick Press, 2022

978-1-5362-1362-1

Fragmented Love in Alison Glick’s “The Other End of the Sea”

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This Palestinian book review originally appeared in The Markaz Review.

It would be easy to focus on the Jewish protagonist in Alison Glick’s debut novel The Other End of the Sea. After all, it was the search for her roots that first took Rebecca Klein to Israel. But like the author, whose visit to Israel “opened her eyes to the realities for Palestinians living under Israeli control,” the protagonist, too, was captivated not by Israel, but by Palestine.

Palestinian Book Review: The Other End of the Sea - Alison Glick (Book Cover)
Available from Interlink

The premise — a US Jew who evolves to support Palestinian rights — is more than plausible. Increasingly, Jewish Americans are becoming informed about Israeli history, and they are more vocal in critiquing Israel’s policies — Peter Beinart being only one case among many who are speaking out and taking action based on the principle of liberation for all.

But The Other End of the Sea is not another pro-Palestinian screed, it is a bona fide love story, complete with the tenderness, pain, intimacy and miscommunication that define any romantic relationship.

In this narrative, Rebecca Klein meets Zayn Majdalawi in the early 1980s in a taxi cab as both try to find a way out of Gaza. Zayn is a refugee from Shati camp studying in the West Bank, where Rebecca works as a teacher in the Quaker school. Even this plot point — a US Jew falling in love with a Palestinian Muslim — is conceivable. In fact, I myself am an American Jewish woman who married a Palestinian Muslim, and in our nearly forty years together, we have met many other “mixed” couples.

The rest of the plot, however, is completely far-fetched. Despite already serving fifteen years as a political prisoner, Zayn gets exiled by Israel and over the next several years, the couple move between Egypt, Lebanon, Libya and Syria trying to find a safe and secure place to raise their daughter. On the way, Rebecca sees the inner workings of Palestinian families, refugee camps, the life of exiles, political strategizing, and so much more. The protagonist, Rebecca, takes the reader deep into places and situations that no non-Palestinian could ever see.

Except for one thing: The Other End of the Sea is a fictionalized memoir, based closely on the life of the author, Alison Glick. Those “far-fetched” events and forays into the depths of Palestinian experience really happened. It is a story that no one else could have told.

Glick takes readers through a unique and important experience — that of Palestinian exiles. Her masterful storytelling is gripping, pulling us fully into every scene. Over the course of the 30-year-long story, each historical event, place, situation and person erupts into Technicolor. Something as mundane as watching her husband eat melons is told in a way that makes the reader salivate:

In the late morning light, juice the color of a harvest moon ran in rivulets down his smooth arms as, one after the other, he sliced through the fruit’s flesh, scooped out the seeds, and quartered them, methodically eating each one down to the rind. The waiting garbage can registered each fruit with a clunk.

I related deeply to the charged moments at which Rebecca and Zayn just couldn’t understand one another. In one situation, Rebecca expresses her liberal values around gender relations, values that Zayn had always shared. But in a foreign country, and beaten down by his exile, Zayn is overwhelmed. He throws up his hands and says, “You just don’t get it, do you?” Neither is able to explain themselves across the cultural divide, widened by trauma and despair.

Like all good fiction — and effective memoir writing — Glick tells a story that is not only entertaining, but one that matters. Even though politics and culture pervade every aspect of the story, the book centers on one thing: The impact of Israel’s fragmentation of Palestine on a family.

Of course, the story of Palestinian fragmentation cannot be fully captured in a single novel, and it did not end on the last page of Glick’s book. With a population of around 13 million today, there are over 2 million Palestinians living as second-class citizens in Israel, 2.5 million under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and 2 million living under Israeli siege in the Gaza Strip. Another 3 million Palestinians live in Jordan, with the rest scattered across the Arab world, Europe, Latin America and North America, each group with a different, often precarious, legal status. Nearly every Palestinian is touched by this fragmentation: grandparents are strangers to their grandchildren, aunts miss their nieces’ weddings, and brothers are absent from their brothers’ death beds.

It’s not surprising, then, that love, no matter how strong, can choke from the toxicity of this fragmentation. This shows up poignantly, and tragically, in Glick’s life and her brilliant novel. At one point in the story, Rebecca returns to the house in Gaza she shared with Zayn, a house to which Zayn can no longer go. She says:

“Standing in that hushed house, I understood that it wasn’t the Palestine Street chickens or leftovers that shifted the course of our relationship. It was the realization that despite all we had lost — friends, family, our home, our work — there was still more left to lose.”

Pushing back against right wing attacks on education by centering Palestinian voices

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This book review was first published by Mondoweiss on March 24, 2022

Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village by Jody Sokolower is one of the rare non-fiction, young adult books that center contemporary Palestinian experiences and voices.

Teachers and students will quickly recognize that this valuable resource was written by a skilled educator, and one with deep knowledge about how to teach social justice issues to youth. After working as a classroom teacher in middle and high school settings, Jody spent eight years as managing editor of the social justice publisher Rethinking Schools, during which she edited two groundbreaking books. She now works as co-coordinator of the Teach Palestine Project at the Middle East Children’s Alliance and helps lead the National Liberated Ethnic Studies Coalition.

PALESTINIAN YOUTHS CONFRONT ISRAELI SOLDIERS DURING THE CLASHES IN THE EAST JERUSALEM NEIGHBORHOOD OF SILWAN, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22, 2010. (PHOTO: MAHFOUZ ABU TURK/APA IMAGES)

The structure and content of Determined to Stay utilize and model best practices in teaching material that is unfamiliar to students and about which there are different and potentially conflicting perspectives. For example, a compare-and-contrast approach is woven throughout the book enabling readers not only to learn about Palestine, but about their own communities. This starts right at the beginning with a framing introduction by Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux), co-founder of Red Nation, a Native American resistance organization. Past and current examples of US colonialism are integrated throughout the book, giving readers a home base from which they can venture out to understand what’s happening in Palestine. She also includes the stories of Palestinian-Americans, who only infrequently get to see themselves in books. The inclusion of Palestinian-American stories helps non-Palestinian readers understand that the issues in the book are relevant in the US, not just “over there.”

The bulk of the content is Palestinians telling their own stories. The reader “hears” about Palestinian youth’s lives in their own words. Sokolower does not explain what Palestinians say or give her own opinions. She lets Palestinians’ voices stand on their own. She models self-reflection for the reader by gently commenting on her own experiences in light of what she learns from the Palestinians she interviews. She also models for readers the importance of considering one’s own social location and biases. She reminds the reader that she is an older, white, Jewish woman from the US, and that reality shapes her experiences and perspective.

The chapters are short, between 5-10 pages, and can be easily woven into lessons in various disciplines at different levels. Given that the material is heavy and may be new to readers, these short bites are perfect for taking in an aspect of Palestinian youth’s lives, and connecting the learning to previous chapters and other material they are discussing in school.

Available from Interlink Books

It is refreshing that Determined to Stay starts small. It doesn’t try to explain the entire background and history of what’s going on. Context and history are included in reference to Silwan, the village that is the subject of the book. Most importantly, it doesn’t try to “balance” what Palestinians say with opposing views, a tactic used in US media and educational settings to undermine Palestinian voice.

Showing her expertise in social justice education, Sokolower addresses hard issues like arrest of youth, demolition of homes, harassment by Israeli soldiers, the lasting effects of trauma, and more. But in every instance, she highlights the way that Palestinian youth cope, find agency, support one another and resist.

In this way, the difficult aspects of life under military occupation and siege do not define Palestinians, nor do they overwhelm readers. They are actors who think and act and offer hope for change. Seeing them act inspires us to consider how we, too, can act to improve our situations.

There are some maps, artwork and photos. The most important photos are of young Palestinians in a variety of settings, including dancing and playing as well as being arrested and resisting. Since many US readers never meet a Palestinian, they are subject to the ways Palestinians are framed, often as “terrorists,” in US media. Humanizing images are critical for young readers to be able to relate to and connect with the stories of their counterparts in Palestine.

Although Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village is clearly about youth, it is not immediately obvious from the cover that it is for young readers. Adult readers, including teachers, will also benefit from the book, but there are plenty of other books for adults that address Palestinian topics. Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village fills a void because it is aimed at youth readers, and it raises the bar for forthcoming books for this audience.

Sadly, despite increasing interest in Palestine and Palestinians in the US, it is getting harder for K-12 teachers to bring Palestinian perspectives into the classroom. Attacks on what is erroneously called “Critical Race Theory” are the most recent indication of the politicization and divisiveness of public discourse around education. Educators with social justice sensibilities, however, understand that the key to constructive civic discourse is not banning certain books or ideas, but rather prioritizing skills in listening, evaluating facts, analyzing different narratives, forming opinions, and engaging in civil discussion across lines of difference. Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village is a valuable resource for all of us who want to keep education relevant, honest and effective in our struggle to improve the world in which we live.

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