1. EXILE, TRAUMA AND MEMORIES: STORIES OF SURVIVAL OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN SUSAN ABULHAWA'S MORNINGS IN JENIN.
- Author
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Pal, Payel
- Subjects
PALESTINIANS ,FICTION - Abstract
Since the latter half of the twentieth century, the Israel- Palestinian conflict has emerged as one of the most pathetic and complicated cases in the history of migration and displacement. The Jewish infiltration in the middle-east in 1948 as a consequence of the escalating anti-Semitic waves in the post-war Europe had in turn led to forced expulsion and exodus of the Palestinians from their native land. Piteously, even after decades, majority of the Palestinian-Arabs are segregated and surviving in straightened conditions in other countries. For the Palestinians, the issue of rehabilitation is as much problematic as their return to their land. This paper seeks to study how Susan Abulhawa's novel Mornings in Jenin (2006) unravel and brings to foreground the dichotomies of development for the Palestinian-Arabs. Beleaguered by the sudden eviction, the community is still entrapped in a complex web of transgenerational trauma. Abulhawa chronicles the turmoil of Abulheja family over four generations and shows how each one of them confronted the ramifications of the dispossession. While some have been detained, imprisoned and tortured by the Israeli forces and spent their lives in the refugee camps, others have vainly fled to the Western countries in search of peace. But in no way, life has been redemptive to them. Rootless and scattered, Abulhawa depicts that the Palestinians are being incessantly pushed toward more psychic disruption. In probing the terrible psycho-social repressions, the novel thus represents a compulsive portrayal of the Palestinian predicament marred by a cycle of trauma, memories, hopes and disillusionments. In light of such an intimate delineation, the paper will finally posit, that Abulhawa's novel not only offers a strong commentary on the uniqueness of the Palestinian refugee status that has stymied the possibilities of healthy development but more significantly also throws a scorching light on the political negligence of the global institutions in assuaging the deeper undercurrents of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018