“Gaza Weddings” by Ibrahim Nasrallah is a beautiful yet devastating tale of families living in Gaza. The book is dominated by strong women — neighbors Randa, Lamis and Amna — who manage to keep life moving forward as the occupation crushes both the city and the spirit of its people.
Nasrallah is a poet, novelist and literary critic. He is the author of several collections of poetry, as well as 14 novels. This book was first published in 2004 by the Arab Institute of Research and Publishing as the third part of his Palestinian series, following “Time of the White Horses” and “The Lanterns of the King Galilee.” The book was translated by Nancy Roberts and published at the end of last year by Hoopoe, an imprint of the American University of Cairo Press.
Nearly every male figure in the lives of Nasrallah’s main characters are absent from his book, either on the run, in jail, missing or martyred, as the women dominate the scope of hope and resilience amidst the never-ending bombardment. At the forefront are neighbors Randa, an aspiring journalist, her sister Lamis, and Amna, or Umm Saleh, who looks like Egyptian actress Athar Al-Hakim and works as a supervisor at a rehabilitation center. Their lives are pieced together poetically by Nasrallah as the shattering reality of life under occupation is revealed on every page.
Nasrallah’s book is a long poem, the power of his verse and female characters palpable, as intense as the distress in their lives. The men are physically, mentally and emotionally beat, so the women are the ones who are picking them up and rallying for life.
The heartbreaking stories in Nasrallah’s book are overwhelming — of homes being destroyed, people losing their lives due to clashes with settlers and multiple women mourning at a grave of an unknown victim but assumed loved one. His every word is purposeful, to convey the conviction in survival and the grief that inevitably follows. The days and nights all blend into one when tragedy after tragedy befalls the women, but they do not allow their anguish to stop them.
Nasrallah writes of a reality that sounds like a nightmare. The conditions of life under occupation are torturously painful, but his characters are a source of strength. They are the light in a world of darkness.
Review: 'Gaza Weddings' is about finding hope in dark times
Review: 'Gaza Weddings' is about finding hope in dark times
- This novel tells the beautiful yet devastating tale of families living in Gaza
- Author Ibrahim Nasrallah is a poet, novelist and literary critic
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Organic Line’
- Once recognized, however, the line has seismic repercussions for rethinking foundational concepts such as mark, limit, surface, and edge
Author: IRENE SMALL
What would it mean to treat an interval of space as a line, thus drawing an empty void into a constellation of art and meaning-laden things? In this book, Irene Small elucidates the signal discovery of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark in 1954: a fissure of space between material elements that Clark called “the organic line.”
For much of the history of art, Clark’s discovery, much like the organic line, has escaped legibility. Once recognized, however, the line has seismic repercussions for rethinking foundational concepts such as mark, limit, surface, and edge.
What We Are Reading Today: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold
In Citizen Marx, Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism.
Marx’s relation to republicanism changed over the course of his life, but its complex influence on his thought cannot be reduced to wholesale adoption or rejection. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism.
One of Marx’s principal political values, Leipold contends, was a republican conception of freedom, according to which one is unfree when subjected to arbitrary power.
Placing Marx’s republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx’s shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad periods. One of Marx’s great contributions, Leipold suggests, was to place politics (and especially democratic politics) at the heart of socialism.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elusive Cures’ by Nicole Rust
Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected.
We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, from Alzheimer’s to depression, and many medications we do have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all.
Tackling brain disorders is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes readers along on her personal journey to answer this question.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Atlas of Birds’ by Mike Unwin
“The Atlas of Birds” captures the breathtaking diversity of birds, and illuminates their conservation status around the world.
Full-color maps show where birds are found, both by country and terrain, and reveal how an astounding variety of behavioral adaptations—from flight and feeding to nest building and song—have enabled them to thrive in virtually every habitat on Earth.
Maps of individual journeys and global flyways chart the amazing phenomenon of bird migration, while bird classification is explained using maps for each order and many key families.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘When the Bombs Stopped’
- Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land
Author: ERIN LIN
Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tonnes of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.
What began as a secret CIA infiltration of Laos eventually expanded into Cambodia and escalated into a nine-year war over the Ho Chi Minh trail fought primarily with bombs.
Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. In “When the Bombs Stopped,” Erin Lin investigates the consequences of the US bombing campaign across post conflict Cambodia.
