Mornings in Jenin

Yousef is Hasan and Dalia’s firstborn child, their first son, and, therefore, a great source of pride in the family. He is born in Ein Hod in peaceful times, although his family is sent to the Jenin refugee camp when he is still very young. The book details his transformation from an innocent and carefree child into a freedom fighter for Palestine. The structure of the book mirrors this development with chapters in his voice entitled “Yousef, the Son,” “Yousef, the Man,” “Yousef, the Prisoner,” “Yousef, the fighter,” “Yousef, the Avenger,” and finally, “Yousef, the Cost of Palestine.” He is also an allegorical figure, representing Palestine in the plot (in contrast to David’s Israel).

Yousef’s early formative experiences include his brother’s kidnapping and his grandfather’s death at the hands of Israeli soldiers. These events instill fear and trauma in Yousef, which spark the growing resistance that he carries through his life. He carries his father’s love of education and literature and becomes a university lecturer in Bethlehem. He is also a loving son and protective brother. He has a passionate and enduring love for his childhood sweetheart, Fatima, whom he plans to marry. However, when war is announced in 1967, his plans are derailed as he joins the Palestinian resistance. He is unable to take another’s life and surrenders, but he is shown no mercy in the prison camp. He is tortured, and his friend Jamal is killed as an example. This brutality hardens Yousef, preparing him for action later.

Yousef is confused and distraught when he learns that his missing brother, Ismael, is alive and has become an Israeli soldier named David. David brutalizes Yousef multiple times, an extended metaphor for the partition of Palestine and the ongoing violent expansion of the Israeli state. In the face of this violence, he turns away from his loved ones and leaves to join the PLO. His letter to Amal explains, “I’m going to fight. It’s my only choice. They have scripted lives for us that are but extended death sentences, a living death. I won’t live their script” (120). He fights in the battle for Karameh, where the Israeli forces lost to the Palestinian forces.

In 1979, he is still a PLO member but works as a teacher in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon as a teacher. He is married to Fatima, who is pregnant with their second child. Their happiness is tangible, and Amal is reunited with them in Beirut. However, while Yousef is away with the PLO, Fatima and their daughter are killed in the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. Yousef is devastated and disappears, and in 1983, he is suspected of killing 63 people in a terrorist attack at the US Embassy in Lebanon. The text leads the reader to believe he is the perpetrator and contextualizes the attack in the context of Yousef’s rage and pain. However, the book ends with a twist: Yousef did not carry out the attack but let it be done in his name. Yousef goes into hiding, alone and in poverty, but with his humanity intact.

Ismael Hasan and Dalia’s second child and Yousef and Amal’s brother. He is a few months old when Yousef accidentally drops him on a nail in his crib, causing a wound: “The physical remnant of that day was a distinctive scar that would mark Ismael’s face forever, and eventually lead him to his truth” (22). This wound establishes Ismael as an allegorical figure representing Israel in the book; the scar represents the partition, dividing Palestine into Israel. This allegory is rounded out when Ismael is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier in 1948, who renames him David.

David grows up as an Israeli and is raised by Moshe, the soldier who stole him, and Jolanta, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. While Moshe is a callous, fervent Zionist at the beginning of the story, he shows remorse for his actions by the end of his life. Jolanta is also characterized as a loving mother. Through the characterization of this Jewish couple and their struggles, Abulhawa humanizes Israelis in the text, providing a counterpoint to the many instances of Israeli cruelty. This aspect of the book allows it to be more balanced than if only the Palestinian point of view were included.

David follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes a soldier, and he treats Palestinians violently. When he encounters Yousef, he is enraged and confused by their similar appearances and brutalizes him. David only comes to terms with his actions later in life, when Moshe confesses to kidnapping him. David has an identity crisis, during which his Israeli wife leaves him because of her anti-Arab bias. Eventually, he is able to begin healing by reconnecting with his birth family through Amal, and seeking reconciliation and redemption. With this, Ismael/David represents the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine, which will require honest reflection and taking responsibility for terrible actions.

Yehya Mohammad Abulheja is the patriarch of the family. The three generations that descend from him lead through the book and its events, ending with his great-grandchildren: Falasteen, Uri, Jacob, and Sara. The other name by which he is known, Abu Hasan (father of Hasan), indicates the importance of family and having sons in Palestinian culture. When his son, Hasan, asks to study in Jerusalem, he forbids it. Nonetheless, Yehya is deeply sensitive and expresses his emotions openly, including his later regret at this decision. His sensitivity to his son’s feelings overrides his pride and his wife’s pleas when Hasan wants to marry the Bedouin girl, Dalia.

Yehya’s presence on his ancestral land, among his beloved trees, is as solid as the traditions and history that are vital to him and his society. The regularity of the seasons, the climate, the harvest, his old rival and friend Haj Salem, the call to prayer, and the villagers’ faith conspire to present the image of a man in the place where he belongs, content and undisturbed. His age is not given and is irrelevant; he is as solid and timeless as the land itself. He is described, as he proudly surveys his sons and the olive harvest, as “Sweat-drenched, […] a sturdy man with a black and white kaffiyeh swathing his head, the hem of his robe tucked in his waist sash in the way of the fellaheen” (4). He is used to getting up before dawn to pray and work, but he is light-hearted and affectionate with his neighbors, sons, and wife. He cannot read or write but plays the nye (the traditional flute) beautifully, and this is one of the ways he shows his deep respect for his forefathers and their history.

Yehya is one of the first to realize how serious the approaching threat of Zionist armed militias is. He is angry and defiant when the neighboring village Al Tira is attacked in December 1947, yet his faith in Allah and human nature allows him to stay out of the situation at this point. His optimism goes as far as inviting the Jewish soldiers to a feast as a gesture of friendship and conviviality. However, his faith is misplaced as Ein Hod is attacked and destroyed the following day. Yehya’s strength and faith fail him at this point and continue to crumble as all that is good is taken away from him, and he is no longer able to convincingly offer hope to his remaining family. The importance of his heritage and history is emphasized again as he counts “forty generations of living, now stolen” (35).

Yehya’s spirit is almost quashed by the squalid and restricted life he and his family endure in the refugee camp in Jenin, and he is no longer described as ageless. He is able to regain some of his former self when he sneaks back to his land and returns to the camp with a bountiful harvest. Two weeks later, however, he tries to do so again and is killed by Israeli soldiers. The death of the family’s beloved patriarch represents their enforced separation from the past, their heritage, and land and symbolizes the end of the Palestinians’ hope to return and occupy their true home.

Hasan Yehya Mohammad Abulheja is Yehya’s first son. Born about a decade before the Zionist invasion, he is another link between the Palestinians’ lives before and after the Nakba. He develops from a young boy living in the peaceful, rural idyll of Ein Hod to a studious scholar, passionate husband, and responsible father who survives great tragedy. Hasan reinforces the importance of education, literacy, and poetry, as well as the value of intercultural and interfaith relationships.

Hasan is first introduced as a strong young man helping his parents harvest olives, reverent and loving toward them and his brother, Darweesh. However, Chapter 2 reveals that “at twelve he was a sickly young boy whose lungs hissed with every breath” (9). This physical weakness leads him toward Ari Perlstein, a Jewish boy with a limp, the legacy of beatings by the Nazis in Germany. His parents fled to the safety of Jerusalem where, before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began, the two boys’ friendship could develop without restriction. Ari’s parents welcome Hasan, and his mother helps Hasan study, secretly providing him with books against Yehya’s wishes. This is the beginning of the deep and lasting alliance between the two boys, who are of different faiths and backgrounds but are united by their love of poetry and languages. Despite Israel’s destruction of all that he holds dear, Hasan never betrays or falters in his friendship with Ari and even saves his family’s life when they need to escape. His childhood link with the Perlsteins is also the start of Hasan’s dedication to reading and learning, which he later transfers to his children.

Hasan’s strength of character is shown by his insistence on marrying Dalia, a passionate Bedouin girl looked down on by all. The theme of intercultural relationships is depicted in their marriage. Hasan’s tenacity helps him endure various tragedies and losses. When the Israeli soldiers attack Ein Hod, “Hasan somberly wrote the names of his fallen friends and countrymen on the sleeve of his dishdashe as he hollowed the earth in such shock that he was unable to grieve” (30). When his son Ismael is kidnapped, he gets the rest of his family to safety.

Hasan is a loving and protective father to Yousef and Amal. Amal recalls how she felt in the mornings as he read to her, smoking his honey apple tobacco, on the roof of their camp home: “I have never known a place as safe as his embrace, my head nestled in the arch of his neck and stalwart shoulders”(61). Her “Baba” is her rock and transmits his love of the Palestine she has never seen: “Palestine owns us and we belong to her” (62). His love of poetry allows him to express his thoughts and feelings eloquently and openly. These words and moments become his enduring legacy that Amal holds in her heart after he disappears in 1967 during the attack on the camp in Jenin.