Rewriting the Story of the Palestinian Radical
Excerpt: We’re led to believe, as soon as we’re introduced to Nahr, in prison, that something radicalized her. But which factor—her childhood; her abuse; her propensity for risks; her love for Bilal, who takes up violence for his cause; or Palestine itself—most explains this turn? In real life, it has become popular to morally evaluate people based on who they are, not what they do—immigrants are dangerous, Muslims are extremists, and so on. In tracing Nahr’s journey, Abulhawa challenges that assumption, upending our image of the Palestinian radical. She knows that people are transformed by the world around them, and that fiction, when it works, helps us understand how that transformation takes root.
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Illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadban; Source photographs from Getty