A Long Walk From Gaza

 

A Long Walk from Gaza / Asmaa Alatawna
trans. from the Arabic by Caline Nasrallah & Michelle Hartman
Northampton, MA : Interlink Books, 2024.
180 p.

This newly released novel is quite timely, and it looks at a woman's life in occupied Palestine, and in Europe where she finds freedom. 

The book starts out in France, where the narrator, also named Asmaa, has ended up after fleeing her life in Palestine. She then works backwards, to explain how she left, and then takes the reader right back to her childhood to explain some of the why. The book ends at the point that she was making the connection that would give her a road out. This structure was really interesting, giving an unusual perspective to the narrator's decisions. 

She experiences the danger of living in an occupied zone; as a young girl she's a tomboy and sneaks out to play with the boys in an empty lot. Once she hits a certain age, this is absolutely not allowed. She and her sisters live in a tiny house in the Gaza Strip; their family is part Palestinian Bedouin. Their grandparents are also close by, but these are not warm and cuddly grandparents, they are strict and demanding. At some point, her father finds a job in the Emirates, so they all go to join him there in the desert. This section is brief, but evocative. When her grandfather becomes ill, though, they return to Gaza -- a harrowing experience to cross the border -- where they end up marrying off her 15 yr old sister.  

Asmaa stays in Gaza after this and studies English Literature at the university, which leads to her acquaintance with José, a Spaniard who takes her to Madrid with him; she soon leaves him to go to France. Her story is told from the perspective of this French life, after much adjustment. Much of this story is similar to Asmaa Alatawna's own biography, but this is a fictionalized account, published as a novel. It reads very quickly, and is engaging despite some of the awful things she relays. I appreciated the opening, in which Asmaa (the character) talks about her mental state when first starting to feel settled in France. 

I said that I had come here for one simple reason -- to find a few inches of calm, a safe space -- to live like an ordinary person with no extraordinary abilities. I wanted him to understand that I hadn't left the Gaza neighborhood I grew up in to carry my national cause in my back pocket. Nor to shape myself into the image of a militant woman of the Palestinian resistance. I left to find some personal space, a few square meters of my own where I could put a bed and a table. 

This was a different look at life in Gaza, from a woman's perspective, with all the issues of violence and oppression doubled for women in the occupied territories.  Really worth reading.