[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_12

"I'm sad. Sad for this boy forced to kill. Sad for the young people betrayed by their leaders in exchange for symbols, flags, war, and power. For a moment, I think he might be my nephew." The voice belongs to one of the protagonists of “Mornings in Jenin” as she finds herself in front of an Israeli soldier with a rifle in his arms.

The book tells the story of four generations of Palestinians retracing through memories, loves, and hopes, the dismantling of a State, the erasure of a people, and the silence of the world. At the beginning of the novel, one of the children, during the first occupation, explains a complex and controversial History in a single, straightforward sentence: “The Jews had killed my mother's family because the Germans had killed Jolanta's.” The Jewish friend, Jolanta, was the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. Abulhawa proceeds that way, looking at the incomprehensible with children's and women’s eyes. “But they continued to throw stones at the Israeli tanks because kids are like that,” says another female charachter “and young people will never respect the fragile breath that keeps them alive. They didn't do it in the name of freedom, which was too vague a concept. They did it because they were encouraged by their friends. After all, it is like children to feel attracted by the adventures and exploits of adults. They threw stones under the aegis of abstract political ideas, which they did not understand, and because they were bored after Israel closed the schools”. Desperation and the certainty of fate flow from this speech like tears.

“The roots of our pain are so deep in loss that death has ended up living with us as if it were a member of the family. Our anger is a fury that Westerners cannot understand. Our sadness can make stones cry”.