ABSTRACT
In “Invention, Memory, and Place,” the late Edward Said reflects on the question of collective memory: what is remembered, how, and in what form? Using the works of Said and Ramzy Baroud, among others, this chapter explores Susan Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World (2020). By illustrating the ways that memories—individual and collective—are conceptualized to deal with trauma and assert resistance, this study contributes to a broader understanding of Palestinians who have been forced to flee to other Arabic-speaking countries. This chapter also examines the ways in which gender, class, ethnicity and colonialism all contribute to the conditions that a specific family experiences as refugees in Kuwait. While her problems are shared by other Palestinians, Nahr’s narrative is unique because it is seen through the prism of three generations of women in her family. Moreover, since Palestinians had no right of return and their sons had no guarantee of admission to another country, Palestinians were under much more pressure than their Egyptian and Pakistani neighbors. Nevertheless, by keeping the institutions of family and memory alive no matter where they might land next, Palestinians refuse to be erased by official history.
