Mornings in Jenin

Mornings in Jenin is a historical novel that spans the years between 1941 and 2003 and is focused on the Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestine. The author, Susan Abulhawa, is the child of Palestinian refugees and was brought up in several countries, including the United States. She writes the novel from the points of view of several members of a Palestinian family who lose their land, home, and loved ones. The novel relates the suffering of individual family members but represents the Palestinian people as a whole and demonstrates their resilience and the strength they gain from their history and culture. The importance of family and the unbreakable ties that hold them together through decades of suffering is a major aspect of the book, which also explores intercultural conflict and its long-term effects, as well as love and loss.

The book was first published in the United States in 2006 under the title The Scar of David. It has since sold more than 1 million copies and has been translated into over 20 languages.

This guide refers to the Bloomsbury edition of the text, published in 2010.

Content Warning: The source text depicts graphic depictions of wartime violence.

Plot Summary

The novel begins in the Palestinian village of Ein Hod, where patriarch Yehya’s family has lived for generations. In 1941, the family is still living peacefully on their ancestral land. However, the Nazi atrocities against the Jewish population during World War II and the growing Zionist movement in response to this persecution threaten Palestinians as the international community and the colonial British government considers creating a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly votes to partition Palestine and create the state of Israel. As a result, Palestinian land is taken by Jewish settlers, while Palestinians are moved to refugee camps, first in Jenin, a city on the West Bank. Yehya’s sons and their wives and children’s stories unfold over the next 60 years, against the backdrop of the continuing conflict between the Israeli authorities, their military forces and settlers, and Palestinians.

Yehya’s wife, Basima, dies of shock as the first bomb drops on their land in 1947. Yehya’s sons, Hasan and Darweesh, and their families are eventually expelled from their village and forced to move to the refugee camp in Jenin, living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. Israeli soldiers treat them brutally, and one of Hasan’s children, Ismael, is stolen by a soldier whose wife is experiencing infertility. This loss irrevocably impacts the boy’s mother, Dalia, a once wild and spirited young woman. Her children, Yousef and Amal, grow up in the shadow of their lost brother.

Hasan works hard and shows his love for Amal by reading her poetry in the mornings in the camp, inculcating her with a love of education and poetry. Life goes on in the camp, but in 1967, the six-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict brings tragedy again when Hasan disappears. Yousef’s urge for retaliation slowly builds as he is brutalized by soldiers, witnesses a friend’s murder, and sees Amal get shot as she runs away from a soldier. Yousef and Ismael, now called David, come across each other as soldier and refugee but do not acknowledge their mutual recognition. Yousef joins the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and eventually leaves to fight with them, leaving behind a devastated Amal and Fatima, his beloved.

Dalia dies, and Amal goes to study and live at an orphanage in Jerusalem. When she graduates, she leaves for the United States with a university scholarship. In 1981, she returns to Lebanon, where Yousef is now married to Fatima and is a father.

Amal meets Majid, and they fall in love and marry. Tensions are growing again, and the pregnant Amal returns to safety in the States to wait for Majid. However, he is killed when Israel invades Lebanon. In 1982, Fatima and her baby, Falasteen, are killed in the massacre carried out by a Christian militia in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. Yousef goes again to fight with the PLO. Amal gives birth to Sara but lives a tormented life.

In 1983, the American Secret Service questions and follows her as Yousef is accused of being the terrorist who drove a truck into the US Embassy in Lebanon, killing 63 people. Ismael/David contacts her, and the two meet in the States. They are reconciled through family history, shared loneliness, and David’s guilt at his treatment of Yousef and others of his own people.

Amal and Sara return to Jenin to visit Huda, Amal’s lifelong friend, whose family has experienced great atrocities. There, Amal is killed by an Israeli soldier. Sara sets up a website in her memory and campaigns for Palestinian liberation. Yousef reveals at the end that he did not carry out the attack in 1983 but allowed his name to be used. He is now a poor, solitary, itinerant worker, who is living incognito in Middle Eastern countries. He maintains that he will not let hatred destroy the love he holds inside him.