The Palestinian Re-experience of Historical Violence: “A Wound Never Completely Scabbed Over”

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the pitfalls of applying trauma theory to Palestinian American literature without considering the nuances of this group’s experience both in the United States and abroad. In the two Palestinian American novels Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin (2010) and Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses (2017), the aesthetic renderings of memories illustrate an ongoing tragedy manifested in the communal responsibility to remember catastrophic events such as the 1948 War known as the Nakba and their subsequent events. This act of remembering a traumatic past synchronises with wars, violence, land confiscation and living in diaspora. I argue that trauma theory should attend to both individual and collective Palestinian memory in these novels to understand the characters’ psychological ailment, not only as a persistent memory, which is interrupted by reminders of a traumatic past, but also as an ongoing re-experience of a historical violence started during the Nakba that continues to affect many Palestinians in the present.

KEYWORDS:

• Ongoing trauma
• individual and collective memory
• communal responsibility
• Palestinian American literature

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The 1948 War, described by Palestinians as the Nakba or catastrophe, resulted in the displacement, dispossession and expulsion of many indigenous people inside Palestine and in the neighboring Arab countries. According to Nur Masalha, more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their lands during the Nakba (4). The Naksa refers to the Israeli-Arab War in 1967, which resulted in Israel seizing the Gaza Strip, the Westbank, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Sabra and Shatila massacre happened when the Israeli army enforced a siege and checkpoints around the Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, in Lebanon in 1982. With the aid of the Israeli army, the Maronite Christian militiamen, known as the Phalangists, entered the Palestinian camps and conducted an ethnic cleansing by murdering innocent Palestinians, including children, women and old people (Shahid). The Battle of Jenin broke out in 2002 when the Israeli army bombarded and bulldozed Jenin Camp. Around 52 Palestinians were estimated to be killed according to the UN report of the Secretary-General, conducted by Martti Ahtisaari, Sadako Ogata and Cornelio Sommaruga in 2002.

2 Jaber.

3 Sa’di and Abu-Lughod, 21.

4 See Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa; Radwa Ashour’s A Woman from Tantoura; Emile Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist; Mourid Barghouthi’s I Saw Ramallah; Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks: Forays into A Vanishing Landscape; Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses; Elias Khoury’s The Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam.

5 Salaita; Fadda-Conrey; Salam and Abualadas.

6 Said, 189.

7 Sayigh, 56.

8 Khoury, 263.

9 Sa’di and Abu-Lughod, 10.

10 Farag, 18.

11 Abu-Manneh, 163.

12 Felman and Laub, xviii.

13 Ibid.

14 LaCapra, xi.

15 Rothberg, xii.

16 Visser.

17 Saloul.

18 Gana, 118.

19 Hala Alyan [interviewed by John Stintzi], n.p.

20 Aladylah.

21 Before the Gulf War, Palestinians built a large community in Kuwait. However, during the Gulf War, the PLO did not condemn the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (P Mattar, 33). Philip Mattar argues that the PLO’s neutral stance was interpreted by Western media as a sign of the Palestinian support of the Iraqi invasions. When the war came to an end, many Palestinians fled or were forced out of Kuwait.

22 Hankir; Boullata.

23 Aladylah; Salam and Mahfouz; Awad; Salam.

24 Salam and Mahfouz, 8.

25 Salam and Mahfouz.

26 Ibid.

27 Aboubakr; Salam and Mahfouz.

28 Susan Abulhawa rewrote Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa (1969).

29 AlJahdali; Raslan; Bruvik; Ebileeni; Abu-Shomar; Hartman; Fischer; Pal; Salam.

30 Ebileeni, 630.

31 Sa’di and Abu-Lughod, 10.

32 Taha; Gana; Jabr.

33 Taha; Gana.

34 Abu-Shomar, 108.

35 Majaj, 151.

36 K Mattar.

37 Sayigh.