“I knew that, despite everything, I was loved. I was loved hard. At once and forever against the loveless world.”

- Susan Abulhawa

2023 reads / storygraph

Against The Loveless World

Follows a Palestinian woman imprisoned alone in a cell, as a high profile political prisoner in Israel

she retells her life: from growing up in Kuwait in the 70s, when after a brief marriage she’s forced into sex work to keep her family out of poverty, made a refugee after the US invasion of Iraq, and eventually makes her way to Palestine, where she falls in love and gets involved in the resistance, up until her arrest

BOOK 5: Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

What a moving book of fiction - I devoured this book in less than a week despite crazy work deadlines. I think it's fitting that I followed up my last read with this book, also about a Palestinian political prisoner. While this is a work of fiction, Susan mentions that she based her story within historical research and interviews. I don't want to say much about the plot, just that the displays of resistance throughout the book were moving and inspiring. Resistance takes many forms, but it's interesting to note that the revolutionaries in this book as in Rafeedie's The Trinity of Fundamentals one of the key elements of resistance is love. Deep love for those around you, deep love for the world you live in, and a loving imagination for what things could be. I would definitely recommend reading this as we all try to imagine what the world could look like if we make things anew.

"Abandoning the imposition of a calendar helped me understand that time isn’t real; it has no logic in the absence of hope or anticipation. The Cube is thus devoid of time. It contains, instead, a yawning stretch of something unnamed, without present, future, or past, which I fill with imagined or remembered life"

"التخلي عن إلزام التقويم ساعدني على إدراك أن الزمن غير حقيقي ؛ ليس منطقيا فى غياب الامل أو السعي ، و بالتالى فأن الزنزانه مجرده من الزمن و تحتوي بدلا من ذلك على تشعب ممتد من شىء غير مسمي ، بلا حاضر ، مستقبل أو ماضٍ ، و الذي أملأه بحياه متخيلة أو متذكره "

It's amazing how little context we get surrounding major events. Reading the conditions leading up to Palestinian throwing rocks at Israeli amazes me at the clarity of it all. We always tell each other about the 75 year occupation, but still I forget the all-consuming reality of it. To millions of people this is their life, it is all they know.

Everybody has a little bit of love for the same sex, some people more than others. ... But I'm saying that strict heterosexuality is probably a small minority of humanity. If you take society and religion out of the equation, we're probably all a little homo.

Nahr

Against the Loveless World (Chapter: Um Buraq) by Susan Abulhawa

Book: Against The Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

#REVIEW: Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa

You might remember a few years ago that I did a project called Read Around the World, where I read one book from every US state and from as many countries as I could manage in a year. The final-final-final update never got published, and has a few more countries on it than the “final” 2021 update did, but I never managed to read anything from Israel during that time. I can remember thinking about…

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about halfway through against the loveless world this narrator is so like. striking like even in scenes that are ~mundane~ like conversations with her grandmother i can’t stop reading

A sweeping and lyrical novel that follows a young Palestinian refugee as she slowly becomes radicalized while searching for a better life for her family throughout the Middle East, for readers of international literary bestsellers including Washington Black, My Sister, The Serial Killer, and Her Body and Other Parties. As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation.

Miscellaneous

hey yeri!! i hope you're having a good week!! is there anything have you've read or watched recently??

my week's off to a good start, ty anon 💕! most recently i've been reading naveed noori's translation of the blind owl by sadegh hedayat, freud and the non-european by edward said, against the loveless world by susan abulhawa, transmigrated as a fake daughter in a cultivation novel by luo xiaopai and dreadful night by moan! i've been super busy with school so i'm reading really slowly HAHAHA

i'm not big on watching things (because i can't sit still long enough to finish entire eps sjfjdjsdf) but i've started the spirealm (the adaptation of kaleidoscope of death!) and it's been fun so far!

this must go hand in hand with supporting, protecting, and funding Palestinian businesses & establishments about and from Palestinian culture. if anyone can recommend their favorite Palestinian authors, to add to the ones I'm currently reading, I'd love to hear about them

"Although those had been happier times, I recalled them now with a sense of tragedy and a desire to assure my younger self of her worth and intellect; of her capacity to learn, to believe she was not dumb, as the world had convinced her she was"

"على الرغم من أن تلك كانت أوقاتا اسعد بكثير، الا أنني استذكرها بشىء من الاسي و برغبه فى أن أؤكد لنفسي الصغري أهميتها و ذكائها و قدرتها على التعلم ، لتصدق أنها لم تكن غبيه كما أقنعها العالم "

Starting on Susan Abulhawa's 'Against The Loveless World'. It's told from the perspective of a Palestinian prisoner as she shares her life story. I'll be using this blog to process my thoughts as I read.

Part 1. Kuwait

Chapter: The Cube, East. P.7

Our protagonist, Nahr is being interviewed during solitary confinement in an Israeli prison (?). At this point we already have to deal with the dehumanisation of Palestinians, like the interviewer who clearly only cares about the explosive details of Nahr's life for her scoop or something

Palestinians learned the first time in 1948 that leaving to save your life meant you would lose everything and could never go back.

Nahr

Against the Loveless World (Chapter: Dance, Ruby River) by Susan Abulhawa