(4.5 stars)
"Is it really home if you've never been?" Published just at the time when we need it most, in Songs for the Dead and the Living, Sara M. Saleh weaves the story of Palestinian dispossession through the lives of generations of women. This is a story of intergenerational trauma, from an ongoing conflict that has seen subsequent generations of the same family having to flee both the Palestinian homeland "weighed down by a thousand melancholies" as well as the places they made homes after it. This includes places like Beirut’s Beit Samra, where the book's main protagonist, Jamilah Husseini, was raised. This book really lays bare how difficult it is to heal when the places your grandmother, and now you, remember don't even exist anymore, razed and renamed, "disappeared, bulldozed or blown up so no map, no memory could conjure them."

"For Aishah, life was fractured, the point of breaking distilled into a single, exact moment – when she was dispossessed." Even more cleverly, what this book explains is what it is like to live a generation or two on from the direct trauma of dispossession, honoring your teta's (grandma's) memories. It shows how these memories infiltrate and frame Jamilah's own experience of dispossession during the Lebanese civil war. In poetic prose that doesn't get in the way of narrative storytelling, Saleh explores the situation of Palestinian women. In Lebanon, as second class citizens without the same rights to travel and healthcare, marriage is seen as "a path to being seen and being safe – to surviving a society that refused to make room for them as Palestinians and as women." However even being married to someone from the country you live in doesn't always create safety, as Jamilah's sister Amal discovers: "when a husbands work is frustrating and the world is harsh, and he brings those frustrations and that harshness home."

The other way out is immigration, though the stress of being an outsider in a new country like Australia comes part and parcel with its own challenges and stressors that make domestic and family violence a greater risk. With a nod to the historic dispossession of Indigenous peoples that is also particularly poignant now, Songs for the Dead and the Living was just the book I needed right now. Stories "have a way of bringing back the dead – stories are the dead and the living sharing bread and salt together." I hope you read Sara M Saleh's softly written story to better understand what is is like to have your homeland ripped from under you, and how that horror is transmitted to your daughters, their daughters, and their daughters' daughters, impacting their safety, opportunity and relationships, making them feel alone in the world.

𝚂𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚎 𝚍𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚒𝚗. 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚢'𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚋𝚎𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚍, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚎 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗 𝚝𝚘. 𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚜, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢'𝚛𝚎 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚑𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚗.

This debut novel is a compelling and evocative coming of age/intergenerational story about Jamilah and her family's experience as Palestinian refugees, forced to flee Lebanon during the war.

She writes beautifully about a family overcoming loss of home, plans and dreams. A story of people unable to be true to their identity outside of their home in order to survive; forced to make life decisions they never imagined they would have to make, not knowing what the consequences may be; and testing their resilience and faith in themselves and others.

Not only was I invested in Jamilah and her family's migration story, but it is rich with detail about the cultural history of Palestine. This book invites you to know more about Palestinian artists, intellectuals and activists, without detracting from Jamilah's story and her journey to Western Sydney. There is a careful balance needed for a story steeped in fact, helping the reader understand a complex historical context, while still keeping them interested.

I couldn't put this book down and I didn't want it to end. Saleh's writing shows the power of fiction and its importance in bearing witness for those people who have passed and keeping the memories alive for the future. Saleh is a masterful storyteller!

Thank you to @netgalley and @affirmpress for the ebook in return for an honest review. And to @instasaranade for a wonderful book. 5⭐️💫

‘Is it really home if you’ve never been?’

The story opens in 2007, with a young woman travelling overseas for the first time in twenty years. She is alone.
A shift in time takes us back to 1977 where four sisters are together on a balcony in Beit Samra, with a bird with a broken wing. Jamilah, the youngest, is nine years old. Jamilah knew home as a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut. But she learned that this was a temporary refuge for her family who are Palestinian refugees. Her family were unable to return to Palestine. In the case of Jamilah’s family, their temporary refuge is destroyed when conflict comes to Beirut. Again, they are forced to flee, this time to Cairo. This is the reality for so many refugees across the world: caught between needing to be safe and wanting to belong, torn between trying to fit in and trying to maintain their own identity.

Over the next few years, Jamilah’s sisters are married, and in 1985 Jamilah is also married, to Ziyad. She and her husband, in search of a better life, move to Australia where Ziyad has a student visa.

Initially life is difficult for Jamilah in Sydney. Her husband exerts strict control over Jamilah, and learning English becomes important as a step towards independence.

Reading this novel, as someone who have never had to seek refuge, I can appreciate that while physical safety is important to every individual, cultural ties are an important part of community and family. Jamilah’s mother (mistakenly) sees safety for her daughters in their marriages and while her father values education, opportunities are scarce. I finished reading with a greater appreciation of the plight of Palestinian refugees in particular, and hope that Jamilah would make her own place in the world.

‘It was strange, how humans filled their mouths with platitudes and pleasantries. It often worked, washing any bitterness away, but never for long.’

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith