Grateful to the publisher and PublishersForPalestine for making this title free during Read Palestine week! Sabawi shares her family’s story in engaging and moving prose, weaving in a few strands of fiction to emphasise the breadth of lives that come out of Palestine - most of which do not get told. I do wish that the afterword had been a foreword, where the author shares that a few anecdotes were fiction, as I did wonder a couple of times how on earth she could have found that out - which took me out of her family’s story. But not to worry, it all makes sense in the end, and the rest of it has been written through extensive interviews with family members and historical record.

Every book I read by a Palestinian takes my breath away, the resilience of a people history has tried to erase so many times, ongoing today. It never stops being shocking that people living on their own land suddenly found themselves refugees in their own country in 1948. There’s a quote about the beginning of the occupation and the mindset of the settlers and their international supporters: ‘Desperate to believe that God had given them a land without a people for a people without a land’. But the crucial part is Palestine was never without a people, something the British chose to ignore when handing it over.

Stylistically, it’s lovely to read. Sabawi brings her family’s history to life, their personalities, loves, petty feuds, all of it sparkles. The women especially. There was a bit of ableist language used which I feel could have been edited out. 

Stories like Sabawi’s must never stop being told, and we must never stop listening to them and supporting an end to the occupation.