Mornings in Jenin

The Yom Kippur War of 1973, the signing of the Camp David Accords, and other turbulence in Palestine go by without Amal’s response. She enjoys her freedom from oppression and fear, her first swim in the ocean, and her anonymity. She graduates, moves to South Carolina, and starts further studies.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Yousef rose to a high position in the PLO, whose growing popularity in Jordan caused the Hashemite monarchy to massacre many resistance fighters and civilians in the 1971 atrocity known as Black September. This pushed the PLO into Lebanon. Now, Yousef, still a member of the PLO, is a teacher in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. Amal receives a phone call from him in December 1980 after he has searched for her for months. Yousef tells her that he and Fatima are married and expecting a baby. In June 1981, Amal graduates and goes to Lebanon.

Amal arrives in Beirut and is picked up at the airport by a friend of Yousef’s, Majid. During the car journey, Amal notices his lovely smile and gentle manner. He tells her Fatima’s daughter has been born. As they arrive at the Shatila refugee camp, children gather around the car and ask for sweets, reminding Amal of her childhood. Majid is generous with the children, and Amal finds out he is a doctor.

Amal is greeted by the neighboring women at Fatima and Yousef’s home. They have an emotional reunion, and Amal sees Yousef’s adoration of his wife and baby daughter, Falasteen, the original word for Palestine. Amal gives Yousef their father’s pipe, and Yousef cries, and then tells her that Ismael is alive. Amal takes a photo of the happy family, one which will later be taken away as evidence by the CIA.

Fatima and Amal bond that summer, discussing and sharing ideas and secrets about love. Amal starts to work at a girls’ school in the camp. She is introduced to Majid again by Fatima, who has been matchmaking the pair. Amal has a chance to help with a difficult birth; remembering Dalia’s teachings, she moves a baby that is wrongly positioned, saving the mother and baby’s lives. Majid is impressed. He and Amal have dinner by the Mediterranean Sea, and he reveals that he has asked Yousef about her.

Amal is lovesick, waiting for Majid to return to the camp, but she hears nothing from him. After two weeks, he leaves a book with a letter in it for her at Yousef’s home. In the letter, Majid reveals his love for Amal and asks her to be his.

Majid and Amal meet two days later at the sea, and he asks her to marry him. Amal accepts and feels the greatest happiness and hope.

Amal and Majid meet every evening and are in love. They eat with Yousef, Fatima, and the baby in joy and harmony. Amal dreams of having a child as she prepares for the wedding day.

Amal and Majid have a traditional wedding. Amal wishes her friends from the orphanage school and Huda could be there, but she is otherwise very happy. The couple go to their flat in Beirut and make love for the first time. Amal is deeply in love with Majid: “He became her roots, her country” (209). The couple moves to a house near Shatila but keeps their apartment in Beirut.

Amal and Fatima become pregnant at the same time. Meanwhile, there are rumors of war. Israel has been striking Lebanon to provoke the PLO’s retaliation. In July 1981, many civilians are killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut. By April 1982, Israel has made thousands of illegal maneuvers at sea and from the air. An Israeli invasion is expected.

Yousef, Majid, and Fatima persuade Amal to return to the United States and begin immigration proceedings for Majid, Fatima, and Falasteen, although Yousef will stay in Lebanon with the PLO. Amal leaves, pleading with Majid to come with her. He assures her he will stay in the hospital, theoretically a safe place. They vow their eternal love to each other.

Amal is received in Philadelphia by Doctor Mohammad Maher, Majid’s former mentor. He becomes Ammo Mohammad to Amal and sorts out a job for her in a clinic. Amal finds a flat but spends most of her time with the doctor and his wife, Elizabeth, who ensures Amal has a healthy pregnancy and sits by while she tries to contact her family in Lebanon.

On June 6, 1982, Israel attacks Lebanon. Amal manages to speak to Majid, who tells her he must stay and work in the hospital. However, when he hears that their baby will be a girl, Sara, he decides to come to the US.

Amal waits for Majid, but nobody can fly out of Lebanon. By August 1982, 17,500 civilians have been killed, 40,000 wounded, 400,000 left unhoused, and 100,000 left without shelter. The brutal attacks are documented by the journalist Robert Fisk, but Israel and some US press call the invasion a “peacekeeping mission” and assert it was carried out in self-defense. The PLO leaves Lebanon for Tunisia under an agreement brokered by the United States, in which President Ronald Reagan promises that the women and children in the refugee camps will be safe.

On September 10, Yousef calls Amal from Tunisia. He tells her that the Red Cross hospital where Majid works was bombed, but Majid survived and spent the next 26 hours with Yousef clearing up the carnage. He told Yousef he was going to London the next day to fly to Amal in the US. He went home to their apartment, but five hours later, the building was bombed, and no one survived. Amal is devastated, and her dreams are killed.

On September 16, 1982, despite there being a ceasefire, the Lebanese Phalange, a right-wing Christian militia, enters the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. They are allowed in by Israeli guards, who set up checkpoints preventing refugees from leaving. The militia carries out a brutal massacre.

Amal quotes at length from Robert Fisk’s book Pity the Nation, in which he describes the shocking sights he found in the camps. Hundreds of babies and children are dead; young men were castrated and shot, unarmed, at point-blank range; women were raped and killed. The massacre continued for 48 hours, overlooked by the Israeli soldiers in the watchtowers. Amal sees a photo in the Arab press and recognizes Fatima’s dress and Falasteen. Fatima’s stomach has been slit open, and the two lie dead in the rubble.

Yousef calls Amal and screams and cries, desperate with rage and pain. Amal walks outside and collapses, and her water breaks. She is taken to hospital and attended by Ammo Mohammad and Elizabeth. Her baby is born, but Amal wants to die.

The chapter begins with an extract from the poem “The Farewell” by Kahlil Gibran, which is about returning to life and light after suffering in darkness.

Amal describes her intense pain and loss and how she has shut down her emotions. She keeps even her love for Sara under tight control, except at night when she allows herself to inhale the baby’s scent.

The Sabra and Shatila massacres are quickly forgotten by the press, and Ariel Sharon continues to hold power in Israel. Amal comments that in 2001, he became Prime Minister and was hailed as a “man of peace” by US President George W. Bush.

Yousef calls Amal in January 1983, the last time she will hear from him. He has returned to Lebanon, having left the PLO, and refuses to answer Amal’s worried questions about what he is doing there.

On April 18, 1983, a man drives a truck into the US Embassy in Lebanon. The truck explodes, 63 people are killed, and many more are wounded. Amal and Elizabeth watch the news on TV. Later that day, the CIA knock on the door and take Amal in for questioning. They show her a photo of Yousef and tell her they think he was the truck driver. They also show her a note he wrote to Amal, asking for her forgiveness for the revenge he says “they” deserve. Amal is questioned for 10 hours. She tells them what she knows but that she does not believe Yousef is guilty. Ammo Mohammed and a lawyer come and collect her.

Amal is trailed by government agents, as she will be for years to come. She goes to a bar and drinks, and she runs into the father from her first host family. He makes insulting racist comments about Arabs in response to the TV news, and she attacks him. She is not arrested.

Yousef’s picture is broadcast all over the country, and he becomes known as “the poster boy for all things vile and evil in the world” (239). In contrast, Amal finds the photo she took of Yousef, Fatima, and the baby in Shatila. She reflects on their childhood and how Yousef was a happy, loving boy and brother as a child, and later, a devoted and adoring husband and father.

Yousef speaks in this chapter. He describes his intense and total love for Fatima and how when they said goodbye, she pledged to wait “until the end of time” (240). He compares his vision of her in that moment with the photo of her, dead after the attack on the camp. He expresses his torment and wrath and his determination to take vengeance.