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Quote by Susan Abulhawa

“Arab society revolves around the extended family. No one had “no family.” But Palestinians, who became scattered and dispossessed following the Nakbe, proved so many exceptions to Arab society.”

Quote by Susan Abulhawa

Author

Susan Abulhawa
Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa (born 1970) is a Palestinian-American writer and human rights activist. She is best known for her novel 'Mornings in Jenin', which explores the impact of the 1948 Nakba on a Palestinian family. Her work focuses on Palestinian identity, exile, and resistance, blending personal narrative with historical context. Abulhawa also founded the nonprofit 'Palestine Children's Relief Fund', supporting children in Gaza. Her writing and activism have gained international recognition, though her stance has sparked debate. more

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“The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there. Books about birds show pictures of the peregrine, and the text is full of information. Large and isolated in the gleaming whiteness of the page, the hawk stares back at you, bold, statuesque, brightly coloured. But when you have shut the book, you will never see that bird again. Compared with the close and static image, the reality will seem dull and disappointing. The living bird will never be so large, so shiny-bright. It will be deep in landscape, and always sinking farther back, always at the point of being lost. Pictures are waxworks beside the passionate mobility of the living bird.”

“The gyrfalcon Dan flew that day was a bird of the year who was just learning to hunt. When he brought her out, I shook my head at the size of her. She was massive; Dan had aptly named her Jabba the Hut. As with all falcons, female gyrfalcons are a third larger than the males. ... She thought that she was a person and treated Dan as her mate.This gave new meaning to the term "henpecked.”

“That an Israeli soldier could bulldoze 189 olive trees on the Land he claims is part of the "God-given Land" is something I will never comprehend. Did he not consider the possibility that God might get angry? Did he not realize that it was a tree he was running over? If a Palestinian bulldozer were ever invented (Haha, I know!) and I were given the chance to be in an orchard, in Haita for instance, I would never uproot a tree an Israeli planted. No Palestinian would. To Palestinians, the tree is sacred, and so is the Land bearing it. And as I talk about Gaza, I remember that Gaza is but a little part of Pales tine. I remember that Palestine is bigger than Gaza. Palestine is the West Bank; Palestine is Ramallah; Palestine is Nablus; Palestine is Jenin; Palestine is Tulkarm; Palestine is Bethle- hem; Palestine, most importantly, is Yafa and Haifa and Akka and all those cities that Israel wants us to forget about.”

“Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on.”

“His importance to the century just past, and therefore his status as a figure in history as well as in literature, derives from the extraordinary salience of the subjects he ‘took on,’ and stayed with, and never abandoned. As a consequence, we commonly use the term ‘Orwellian’ in one of two ways. To describe a state of affairs as ‘Orwellian’ is to imply crushing tyranny and fear and conformism. To describe a piece of writing as ‘Orwellian’ is to recognize that human resistance to these terrors is unquenchable. Not bad for one short lifetime.”