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org © 2022 IJCRT | Volume 10, Issue 10 October 2022 | ISSN: 2320-2882

EXISTENCE IS RESISTANCE: PALESTINIAN

RESISTANCE IN SUSAN ABULHAWA’S THE
BLUE BETWEEN SKY AND WATER
Hiba Nabiha A, Dr Abdul Latheef V.
Full-Time Research Scholar, Associate Professor
Department of English
Government College Malappuram
Malappuram, Kerala, India

Abstract: Palestine has been unjustly occupied for well over half a century-the unpardonable atrocities
committed by the state of Israel continues to the present day. The worldwide acknowledgement of the Jewish
nation on Palestinian land was a betrayal of humanity. Regardless of their shortcomings compared to Israel
and the international support Israel has, Palestinians fight the apartheid state braving all odds. Despite the best
efforts of Israel to wipe them off, Palestine, Palestinians and the memory of historic Palestine exist; this mere
existence is, many a times, Palestinians’ weapon to irk Israel and remind them that Palestine can never be
conquered and pushed into oblivion as a mere episode in history. This paper analyses Susan Abulhawa’s novel
The Blue Between Sky and Water to look at the life of Palestinian refugees who resist Israeli oppression with
their lives. Life in Palestinian refugee camps is composed of hunger, pain, wounds, tears, deaths, separation,
longing, memories, and so on, and yet it is a life of recovery and rebuilding; it is a life of endurance and hope.
The main characters of the novel are a bunch of women who are left alone to make ends meet when the men
in their families are taken away either by death or by Israel. Their life is their resistance. They keep their
devastated nation alive with their breaths.
Keywords: Palestine, Israel, Resistance, Existence, Survival, Susan Abulhawa
Introduction
Palestine has been subjected to unparalleled iniquity for years-thousands of Palestinians became
homeless forever when their ancestral land was robbed by Zionists for the establishment of a Jewish nation;
Israel, in 1948. Their lives and culture, which were homogenously mixed with the very soil in Palestine, were
thwarted forever with the onlooking world’s silent consent.
‘The occupiers drove nearly one million Palestinians out of my country in 1948,’he said. ‘Not only
did they take over all the land and property of those who were driven out, but they changed the name
of my country to Israel. Those of my people who refused to leave were badly persecuted, and still are,
even today.’ (Chai 11)

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Dr Ang See Chai-Orthopaedic surgeon, author and co-founder of the charity ‘Medical Aid for Palestinians’
quotes a Palestinian man thus, in her book From Beirut to Jerusalem. The crimes committed by Israel cannot
be justified by any rational means. However, despite all the favourable conditions they had over the unarmed
Palestinians- support of powerful world nations, advanced weapons, control over world media, Israel could
not wholly defeat Palestine and her brave children. Equally unparalleled to Israeli savagery is the Palestinian
spirit. Generations after generations of Palestinian children pledge to free their country from Israel, and they
work towards it with die-hard resolve. They seize every single opportunity to resist the continued occupation
which expands every year. From direct armed resistance to merely staying alive, their resistance varies in
degrees.

Israel, with the help of western discourses has been successful in tarnishing the image of Palestinians
and their struggle for freedom- the world looks upon Palestinians as terrorists. Palestinian writers, with their
works, addresses the urgency to justify the cause of their people and their history to counterbalance the
colonial narrative. Their role in Palestinian resistance is pivotal as they bring out the true colours of the Israeli
occupation, which is otherwise well polished in the devious coverages of mainstream media of the world.
“Palestinian writers reclaim their loss and dispossession in miraculous words… Palestinian literature is at the
heart of the Palestinian struggle.” (Mir 1) The term ‘Resistance Literature’ was introduced by Palestinian
writer Ghassan Kanafani who urged his readers to resist Israeli oppression through his works. This paper
explores the varied forms of Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression in Susan Abulhawa’s novel The Blue
Between Sky and Water (2016), emphasising the non-violent everyday resistance and women’s resistance.
Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian American writer born to Palestinian refugees of the Six days war in 1967;
she later ended up in the U.S under foster care. Abulhawa’s works sketch the miserable lives of Palestinians
under Israeli occupation with photographic clarity. She brings forth the tales of tattered lives crushed under
Jewish greed. Her fictionalised accounts of the Palestinian reality bring to light the myriads of poignant
emotions veiled by the cold news reports about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Resistance in The Blue Between Sky and Water

The Blue Between Sky and Water talks of terrible tales of separation, loss, death, dispossession, and
longing, yet it is not a tragic tale. It is a tale of endurance, courage, hope and resistance-narrating the saga of
a family’s survival. It follows the Baraka family in the village of Beit-Daras through the Nakba of 1948 to the
ensuing years in a refugee camp in Gaza. The characters in focus are a bunch of women who lost the men in
their lives in one way or the other. The villagers of Beit- Daras did not surrender to the Jews without resisting.
They heeded the words of the older woman of their village, Um Mamdouh-one who talked to a djinni called
Sulayman, and fought with all their strength. She had said that “if Beit-Daras does not surrender, this land
will rise again, even if the war is lost.” (Abulhawa 31). When they eventually lost, they were forcefully
evacuated from their ancestral land in 1948, like many other Palestinian villages. Only Um Mamdouh’s eldest
daughter Nazmiyeh, her husband Atiyeh, and her brother Mamdouh who was handicapped by an Israeli bullet,
made it to the refugee camp. Um Mamdouh and her youngest daughter Mariam were killed by Israeli forces.
Nazmiyeh, a new bride, was brutally gang-raped by Israeli soldiers while trying to save her young sister
Mariyam. Even when she was being savagely ripped open, she thought she could endure it. The incident
illustrates the fierce will of the steadfast, sassy Nazmiyeh, who would lead her family through unimagined
trials and tribulations in the days to come.
The Palestinians thrown out of their villages ended up in refugee camps set up with foreign aid. Their
life was utterly shattered and changed forever. Most of them were maimed or orphaned. The distraught
refugees spent their initial days in bereavement and confusion. Nevertheless, it is near to impossible to beat
the Palestinian resolve. Initially, they had hoped that it was just a matter of days before they returned home
to their real land. Even today, many of them keep the keys to their house, which they locked for the last time
in 1948, as a symbol of their right to return. Nonetheless, the refugees did not wait idly for their return. They
picked up the pieces of their shattered lives gradually. However temporary it was, they started putting life into
their days in the makeshift tents.
In time, mud bricks and corrugated metal replaced the cloth tents and the
refugee camps gave rise to a subculture marked by adamant pride, defiance,
and an unwavering insistence on the dignity of home, no matter how long it

took or how high the price. (52)

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Abulhawa paints the picture poignantly through the characters in the novel. With her ever-cheerful attitude,
the beekeeper's widow awoke her fellow refugees who initially succumbed to shock and grief. She started
planting a small garden within weeks of moving into the camp. With the aroma of her unbeatable cooking,
she stirred the camp to life.

The beekeeper’s widow began to suffuse the air with the smell of normality. She

inspired other women to invest themselves in their makeshift dwellings and

it was not long before women began to gather as they always had, to wash

their laundry, gossip, roll grape leaves, sift through rice to remove rocks and

rice bugs…In the congestion of national upheaval and a collective sorrow that would deepen to the
roots of history and expand through multiple generations, the refugees of Beit Daras went back to their
jokes and scandals. (53)

The Palestinian society was basically agrarian before the Nakba; most of them made a living from
Olives and other crops. Once the Jews snatched their years of toil from them, they were left with absolutely
nothing. The refugees had to find alternate means of earning a living. They never relied entirely on the
UNRWA rations; they found it humiliating to be living just on those. Mamdouh, who was now the official
head of the family, found work with a local blacksmith. Atiyeh took to the sea to fish out a living from its
abundance; later, his sons joined him. Over time, Israel imposed land, sea, and air blockades and transformed
Gaza into an open-air prison in order to make Palestinians hungry, but not starving. However, Palestinians
were not the lot to let go; they found new ways of making a livelihood. Their attempts to keep on living were
their means of fighting the Israeli occupation. Nazmiyeh’s son in law Abdel Kader’s chicken coop is an
example. Abdel Kader, who used to be a fisherman, could not return to the sea after a humiliating attack by
the Jewish soldiers. Once stuck to the land, he found it embarrassing to provide for his family by the UNRWA
rations and fixed up a chicken coop in his house to eke out a living. Each and every small endeavour counts
in the Palestinian situation as anything that gives a Palestinian the opportunity to stand on his legs is a blow
to Israel’s face.

Women in the refugee camps play a vital role in the community’s survival. With Atiyeh’s death and
Abdel Kader being killed in an attack by Israeli forces, Nazmiyeh and daughter Alwan did not wait to be fed
by Nazmiyeh’s sons. Despite her physical ailments and emotional struggles, Alwan worked at a women’s co-
ep, which embroidered traditional Palestinian thobes and the like to be smuggled through the underground
tunnels to be sold in the world outside. The beekeeper’s widow had her unique means of earning a livelihood.
She was never idle and would barter the yield from her garden and other goods in exchange for what she
needed. Her secret garden right under the nose of Israel, from which she finds medicine for Alwan’s breast
cancer, is an excellent exemplar of the Palestinian resolve.

The garden was located near the western edge of Gaza that was somewhat dangerous to till due to
landmines and proximity to Israeli posts, but the beekeeper’s widow had done so for years. Nur opened
the gate and was stunned to find rows and rows of various plants, manicured and nurtured. (236)

Palestinians are used to defeats but not being destroyed. When Israel sealed off the tiny Mediterranean
strip, the people of Palestine found their way out through the tunnels they dug underground.

When the sky, land, and sea were barricaded, we burrowed our bodies into the earth, like rodents, so
we didn’t die. The tunnels spread under our feet, like story lines that history wrote, erased and rewrote.
(141)

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The tunnels became the lifeline, economic means, and connection to the outer world for the people of the
Gaza strip. They smuggled an extensive list of banned items through the tunnels ranging from diapers to
medical equipment. The undefeatable young minds of Palestine transformed bane into boons. Once when
Israel convinced the U.S. and Egypt to seal off the tunnels with impenetrable steel walls along the Rafah
border, Palestinian boys went to work right after its installation. They cut through the high-grade steel and
recycled it to make other useful materials. The tunnels, which gradually became the vascular system of the
tiny strip of land sealed off from the world, are not only the means of finding sustenance for Palestinians but
also their proclamation of defiance to the Zionists and their supporters and the hallmark of their unquenched
zeal.

Life in Palestinian refugee camps is not only about recovering once after the initial shock of
dispossession; it is a pain of collecting the torn pieces and starting anew every time after recurrent attacks by
the Israeli forces. Israel never receded from making life more and more difficult for Palestinians, and neither
did the world do anything practical to stop them altogether. But the repeated attacks and atrocities could never
kill the Palestinian spirit; they rebuilt their lives from rubbles with renewed vigour. The whole community
came together to put things back in order after each attack. “The women worked alongside the men, cleaning
rubble, repairing, and building anew. They cleaned and cooked and baked and organising the children’s
chores.” (154) They rose from the ashes and found reasons to be living again; they buried the dead ones and
however slowly started tending to the rest of the lives waiting for them.

Slowly, people returned to themselves, salvaging life. Hajje Nazmiyeh collected some of her pots,
random papers flying about that could be used for schoolwork, broken pencils that might still be of
use…For some children… the rummaging was turned in to games and contests. (153)

The refugees did not fret and mourn forever, and life shot up again from under the debris. They did
not succumb to grief over what the Zionists snatched from them. Israel’s arrogance could not erase the smile
on their faces and hope from their hearts. Their life in the refugee camps was not survival with the bare
minimum like what Israelis had expected it to be, but they managed to be content with whatever little they
had, never forgetting to fight for their rights at the same time. They had get-togethers, family picnics and
parties and found enjoyment in whatever they had. “We find our own ways to freedom. Zionist sons of Satan
cannot imprison our joy,” (226) Nazmiyeh held her family together through thick and thin. Her strong will
and audacity helped those around her recover from their sorrows. She acted according to the demand of the
situation, and reminded everyone around her that they cannot be defeated unless they decide so. She would
say “… life is magical and gives us second chances that should be celebrated.” (226)

Nazmiyeh and the other matriarchs in the camp had their own gatherings, and they guided, supported,
and chided the young when needed. They kept the memory of their bygone days in unoccupied Palestine alive
in the camps. They made the second-generation refugees who had never had a real sense of home proud of
their Palestinian identity. They used their memories as weapons to keep the essence of historic Palestine alive,
lest they forget their real roots. They kept the Palestinian tradition thriving and kept Friday ghadas and other
religious and cultural traditions going on. Even the Palestinians under exile kept their nation alive within
themselves and their families’ memory. Nazmiyeh’s brother Mamdouh who migrated to the U.S., narrated
the tales of his homeland to his granddaughter Nur in such a manner that she always had Palestine as her real
home in her mind. The sisterhood and comradeship of the Nazmiyeh and the beekeeper’s wife suffused the
air with normality in the abnormal situation they lived in. Their jokes, lewd comments and crazy chit chats
made life lighter for Alwan and Nur, who had been fighting demons of their own apart from Israel.

Although armed resistance is not given a primary role in the novel’s plotline, Abulhawa has not
overlooked its role in Palestinian resistance. Nazmiyeh’s first born, Mazen, is part of a group organising armed
resistance against Israeli forces. After getting to know about his mother being brutally raped by Jewish
soldiers, he sought revenge for his country’s as well as his mother’s anguish from Israel. The author amends
the usual representation of Palestinians as terrorists through her novel. Intricately following the life of
Palestinians and recording their emotions immaculately, she justifies their means of resistance.

Hope and faith are the driving forces for Palestinians. Their faith in God imparts them the strength to
get up every time. They invoke Allah and navigate through the thick and thin. “Say alhamdulillah and
welcome whatever Allah brings into our lives”. (170) The violation of Israeli occupation and atrocities which
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followed did not tire their minds. They did not succumb to grief and hopelessness. Many developed nations
are indirectly funding the racist project of Israel even after it is labelled as an ‘apartheid state’ and is
committing heinous crimes according to international law. But all the support Israel receives from the rest of
the world does not kill the Palestinian spirit; they fight for their rights and hope to free Palestine one day.
“Hope is not a topic, It’s not a theory. It’s a talent.” (167). Wherever in the world they are, they strive to free
their motherland from the racist clutches of Zionists.

Conclusion

Injustice in Palestine is not just history; it has continued unhindered over the decades following 1948
and is still going on. Palestinians worldwide resist the unjustified, inhuman occupation of Israel by all means
possible. They find defiance in every single move against Israel and those supporting them. Susan Abulhawa’s
The Blue Between Sky and Water sketches the lives of distraught Palestinian refugees in the Gaza strip. Amidst
the horrors of frequent wars and the siege enforced by Israel, the inhabitants of refugee camp in Gaza strip
navigate their daily lives with much difficulty. Nevertheless, they do not let Israel wipe them out-keeping
alive the spirit of freedom and homeland in their hearts and never letting the world forget. Enduring the hardest
to exist, their lives are the Palestinians’ defence against the Zionist dream of an Arab free nation. When unable
to defeat Israel by other means, their existence is their loudest resistance to one of world’s gravest injustice.

References

Abulhawa, Susan. The Blue between Sky and Water. Bloomsbury, 2016.

Alkodimi, Khaled Abkar. New Perspectives in the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Righting the Wrong through
Metaphor in Mornings in Jenin. no. 6, www.journals.aiac.org.au, 30 Nov. 2019, pp. 132–38,
https://doi.org/ 10.7575/aiac.ijalel.
Chai, Ang Swee. From Beirut to Jerusalem. 2 ed., Other Press, 2002.
nd

Harlow, Barbara. Resistance Literature. Methuen, 1987.

Mir, Salam. Palestinian Literature: Occupation and Exile. Arab Studies Quarterly. Vol. 35(2):110-129. DOI:
10.13169/arabstudquar.35.2.0110

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