Salt Houses

Salma is the matriarch of the Yacoub family. Born in Jaffa and displaced during the Nakba, she is characterized primarily through her reluctant position within the Palestinian diaspora. Although she never adjusts to life outside of Palestine, she remains focused on her family and her religion and finds solace in the preservation of Palestinian cultural traditions.

Salma is unhappy in exile. She “missed her home in Jaffa with a tenacity that had never quite abated. She spent the first years in Nablus daydreaming of returning” (6). Even though she is still in Palestine, she already feels the sting of removal from her home, and given Jaffa’s status as the center of Arab culture in Palestine, it can be understood that she feels a sense of having been cut off from a space that is central to her identity as a Palestinian Arab. After the family is forced to flee Nablus, Salma settles in Amman. Of the different spaces to which the various family members disperse, Amman maintains the closest cultural ties to Palestine, and her decision to settle in Jordan rather than Kuwait reflects her continued interest in retaining her cultural identity.

Salma further maintains cultural ties to Palestine through her religious faith.