We are taken by the hand to navigate the many lifetimes of a family in Gaza, as recounted between a father and daughter, storyteller and writer, observed and observer.
Reviewer’s note: This review is less like a traditional review of a novel, as it is a semi-memoir and one cannot similarly critique the depiction of real lives as if they are made-up characters.
“You want to reconstruct my life with your words?”
This is what author Samah Sabawi is asked when she invites her father to be the subject of her PhD research project. This exchange frames the prologue of Cactus Pear For My Beloved (2024) as Sabawi’s father, Abdul Karim (or Karim), accepts, allowing Sabawi and us to take a trip to Gaza, and dive into a personal and national history from 1918 to 2018.
Sabawi takes a leap of faith in publishing her project to a larger audience beyond academia, and it pays off. We are taken by the hand to navigate the many lifetimes of a family in Gaza, as recounted between a father and daughter, storyteller and writer, observed and observer. d to Gaza becoming subject to the control of the Egyptian army before Israeli control.mashlool” or disabled for the first time, so Israeli soldiers would search their home and leave them alone. y stopped at the year of 1967, when she was born as anything after meant detailing another tale of immigration and exile, including the fact that her family’s are a “colony of survivors [and] victims of colonisation”, now living in Australia.
Read more https://honisoit.com/2024/09/reading-lifetimes-samah-sabawis-cactus-pear-for-my-beloved-2024/
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