Real RAD Reads

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I’m finishing up my current topic of Palestine by reading a novel about a young man who is ready to marry the girl he loves.

A story set in 1947 Jaffa, Mandatory Palestine. We know from the history we read about Palestine, that the Balfour Declaration was thirty years prior to the setting of this book; but coming up on May 14, 1948, the date that British troops would be leaving the region.

The first half of the book is building to the Nakba, which was slow and I wasn’t sure if I would finish it. What kept me going was the loving way that Amiry wrote about Jaffa. This is a coming of age love story of a young man as much as it is a love story about Jaffa. You could smell the citrus of the orange groves and the sea in the air.

The first attack described in the book was in January 4, 1948, when the Lehi (a Zionist terrorist group) detonated a truck bomb in the heart of Jaffa killing twenty-six Palestinian civilians. The book really picked up from there – in fact it took me several days to get through the first half and I finished the second half in one day.

A coming of age love story with the Nakba as the backdrop is wild. Man, growing up is hard enough on its own, let alone a civil war and losing everything. Everything. Amiry writes:

And from the air, the British forces dropped leaflets giving us a day to evacuate our houses. Before we knew it, all hell had broken loose. Like ants, thousands and thousands of British soldiers filled the streets and the narrow alleys of the old city where we lived. And in no time, they sealed off the whole area and started blowing the houses up – one after another. Like cards, they fell. The British soldiers started from the East and kept dynamiting until they reached the sea. Gone were the beautiful houses. Gone was the mosque. Gone were the holy shrines. The schools. And gone were the alleys, the shops, the people… We called it a massacre while the British claimed it was a face-lift.

It’s from the middle point here that you get to see how the story splits. So far, we’d been seeing things from the main character’s perspective. Subhi is fifteen, a mechanic who is in love with Shams, a thirteen year old student that he is certain he will marry one day. Since the story of Subhi and Shams get pulled in two very diverse ways as the Nakba continues, Amiry does a wonderful job balancing the focus between the two and showing the reader how diverse the experience is for each character.

My heart loved the innocence of Subhi, his curiosity and hope. But when we started to see things from Shams perspective is when I really feel in love with the story. Incredibly inspiring and overwhelming and sad.

At the end of the book, I’m left wondering if Subhi would ever find Shams. If their paths every cross again.

Then you get the epilogue. I don’t always read the epilogue – mostly depends on how I felt about the book. I’m glad I did on Mother of Strangers. It added a whole layer of emotion to the story and made me what to read it all over again.

Truly the sign of a good book.

RAD Rating:

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Byeeee!