Palestina y el patriarcado: el

doble despertar de la nueva

novela de Susan Abulhawa
El nuevo libro de Susan Abulhawa, Against a Loveless World, es una poderosa
contribución feminista a la escritura palestina que nos dice que la lucha por la
liberación sexual y la descolonización del poder patriarcal no están separadas de
la liberación nacional.
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/08/palestine-and-patriarchy-the-dual-awakenings-
of-susan-abulhawas-new-novel/
P O R   B I L L V . M U L L E N   24 DE AGOSTO DE 2020

UNA MUJER PALESTINA MUESTRA UN SIGNO DE VICTORIA MIENTRAS GRITA A LAS

FUERZAS ISRAELÍES TRAS UNA PROTESTA CONTRA LA EXPROPIACIÓN DE TIERRAS
PALESTINAS EL 19 DE JULIO DE 2013 EN LA ALDEA DE KFAR QADDUM, CERCA DE LA
CIUDAD OCUPADA DE NAPLUSA EN CISJORDANIA. (FOTO: NEDAL ESHTAYAH / APA
IMAGES)

CONTRA EL MUNDO SIN AMOR

una novela de
Susan Abulhawa
384 págs. Atria Books $ 27
National liberation struggles have thrown up galleries of male heroes we
often come to understand as their embodiment: Ho Chi Minh, Che
Guevara, Patrica Lumumba.  To the distant observer, this is true of the
Palestinian liberation struggle, where with the notable exception of Leila
Khalid, the face of resistance is generally wearing pants. 

Susan Abulhawa subverts these commonplaces in her exceptional new

novel Against the Loveless World.  The revolutionary Palestinian hero of
Abulhawa’s novel is both a woman and a one-time sex worker whose
revolutionary consciousness emerges not from the barrel of a gun but
within an inferno of colonial sexism, patriarchy, homophobia and male
violence.   The book explores post-Nakba Palestinian history as a
continual struggle for women—and to a lesser extent Queer Palestinians
—to take and make their place in revolutionary history.  

Abulhawa’s novel is set against the backdrop of crucial events in

contemporary Palestine: the 1948 Nakba; Saddam Hussein’s invasion of
Kuwait in 1990; the Oslo Accords of 1993; and the first and second
Intifadas.  Yet Abulhawa strategically backgrounds History with a
capital H to foreground the intimate, gendered sphere of Nahr’s
revolutionary awakening.
This awakening begins with her father.  Separated from his family by the
1967 Israeli war, he takes up with various women she never knows and
names Nahr for one of them.  Displaced and dispossessed herself in
Kuwait, Nahr ends up a dancer and sex worker both to stay alive and to
raise money to put her brother, Jehad, through University.  She is
sexually assaulted on the job by a group of men the night that Hussein
invades Kuwait.

Yet Um Buraq, the woman, who recruits Nahr into sex work, also
becomes her protector, provider and political tutor.  They meet after
Nahr’s abusive marriage to Mhammad Jalal AbuJamal, a legendary rebel
figure who initially puts stars in Nahr’s eyes.  Um Buraq, herself
abandoned, loves Nahr, but tells her never to trust men.  “Until I met Um
Buraq,” she thinks, “it had never occurred to me that patriarchy was
anything but the natural order of life. She was the first woman I met who
truly hated men. She said it openly and without apology. I found her
persuasive.”

Nahr moves quickly to reinterpret events of her life.  She comes to hate
Mhammad, and the men who have abused and exploited her.  She
denounces marriage.  She begins to reassess the lives of her mother and
grandmother as survivors of two oppressive histories: as women, as
Palestinians.

The revolutionary Palestinian hero of Abulhawa’s novel is both a

woman and a one-time sex worker whose revolutionary consciousness
emerges not from the barrel of a gun but within an inferno of colonial
sexism, patriarchy, homophobia and male violence.
Nahr’s new political consciousness is tested when she meets Bilal, a
former leader of the Palestinian Communist Party, freedom fighter, and
brother to Mhammad.   She learns surprising information from him about
Mhammad that complicates her anger and makes her feeling a second
level of political betrayal. 

Here Abulhawa unwinds a theme introduced early in the novel: that

Nahr’s energy and talent for dance—what she calls “chaos”—can
become a tool for political liberation.  She persuades Bilal to try
unorthodox tactics to catch the Israeli occupiers by surprise.  They
succeed.  Eventually Nahr, Bilal and other members of the cell are
arrested.  Nahr is placed in an Israeli prison, called “The Cube,” from
which she recounts the story we read.

This bare bones account of Abulhawa’s compelling narrative barely

touches the novel’s resilient, intersecting ideas about the lives of women
and the lives of Palestinians after the Nakba.  

By having Nahr narrate her story from prison, Abulhawa gives symbolic
voice to the thousands of Palestinians held as political prisoners in the
diaspora (It is significant that Bilal carries the surname of Mumia Abu-
Jamal, the African-American prisoner currently on death row in
Pennsylvania).   In Abulhawa’s hands, Nahr’s soul-killing isolation cell
is transformed into a space of critical imagination and literary resistance.

The theme of writing as resistance also manifests as part of Nahr’s

political awakening.  After she learns to read, Bilal introduces her to the
writings of James Baldwin.  Abulhawa’s novel in fact takes its title from
Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time, his manifesto calling for the
destruction of racism in the U.S., and for a kind of Black political love
“against the loveless world.”   This line from the book also resonates
with Nahr’s own political awakening and becomes a kind of mantra for
the novel: “To be committed is to be in danger.”  
Pero la contribución más importante de la novela puede ser su
representación radical y valiente de la vida de las mujeres palestinas. La
historia de Nahr está destinada a que veamos dentro de la miríada de
espacios de la diáspora palestina el significado de vidas que de otro
modo podrían desaparecer. Es un tributo a los cientos y miles de mujeres
"sin rostro" que lucharon contra los sionistas en la Nakba, llevaron armas
y socorro durante la primera y segunda intifadas, y que a menudo
terminan en prisión. El grupo de apoyo a los prisioneros y de derechos
humanos Addameer estima que 10.000 mujeres palestinas han sido
encarceladas desde la guerra de 1967 .
De hecho, la recuperación y el despertar político de Nahr se deben tanto
a su red de apoyo matrilineal como a su educación política formal. Al
final del proceso de despertar político de Nahr, ella es tanto la mentora
política del revolucionario Bilal como él de ella. Es este proceso
dialéctico recíproco el que constituye su propio amor contra un mundo
sin amor. 

El libro de Abulhawa es una poderosa contribución feminista a la

escritura palestina. Su libro nos dice que la lucha por la liberación
sexual, la descolonización del poder patriarcal, no está separada de la
lucha por la liberación nacional sino que es parte integral de ella. Ella ha
dado a los lectores de la escritura palestina un hermoso horizonte nuevo
dentro del cual imaginar la libertad.