Here is a new book that has to be one of the finest of the year. It takes us to the heart of Gaza and to incontestable truths about the suffering and resistance of the Palestinian people.

Cactus Pear for my Beloved (Penguin Australia) is by playwright and poet Samah Sabawi. It reads like a novel but is in fact the story of her family. The idea for the book began in a conversation with her father Karim in a café in Brisbane, his place of exile. Sabawi then spent four years working with him and researching background to reconstruct the first 25 years of his life, from his birth in 1942 to his forced exile in 1967, the year she was born.

Karim grew up in Gaza in poverty, living through the successive traumas of the Nakba, the Suez crisis and the Third Arab-Israeli War (known in the West as the Six Day War). Sustained by a family that valued education and culture, and a community united in resisting the attacks by the state of Israel, he became a respected poet and editor of the local paper. He worked with writers of great stature, including the leading novelist and political leader Ghassan Kanafani who was later assassinated by Mossad.

The book is full of wonderful characters – Karim’s disabled father, respected as a man of wisdom; the indomitable women who kept the family together; the brother who met Yasser Arafat and joined the PLO; the love of Karim’s life, Souhaila, and all the neighbours and merchants of the souk. And it’s full of the music, poetry and food that are so central to the vibrancy, spirit and courage of Palestinian culture.

Through this very personal story, Sabawi shows us the history of a people – the dispossession of 1947/8, the massacres, the hope placed in Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser, the betrayal by the Arab states that left the Palestinians to fight alone, and the continual erosion of their land and rights. And then came the fight back.

It’s a book that answers all those who persist in believing that the present conflict began on 7 October 2023.

The communities so vividly brought to life in the book have now been reduced to rubble in Israel’s current genocidal attack. Will Gaza rise again? asks Sabawi at the end. She hopes so. The resilience of her own family says that it will. The connections among Palestinians are powerful. In exile in Cairo, the author met and married the son of her father’s childhood friend. Together, they keep their story alive.

Cactus Pear for my Beloved answers all those who are silent today about Israel’s war crimes. Silence is endorsement. “Why weren’t we told” doesn’t cut it. The history of Palestine is laid out here, in the most accessible form.

Voices from the Diaspora

Mustafa Barghouti

Mustafa Barghouti is general secretary of the Palestine National Initiative, which he founded in 2002 together with his great friend, the intellectual giant Edward Said, one of the founders of post-colonial studies. In a recent interview with the website Mondoweiss, Barghouti spoke of the ethnic cleansing Israel is carrying out in both Gaza and the West Bank.

But he too saw hope. “I believe in the younger generation in Palestine. I think they are showing fantastic models of resilience and resistance. I’m not talking only about military resistance or even civil resistance. I’m also talking about this fantastic movement among a younger Palestinian generation worldwide, especially in countries like the United States and Europe, where you have a whole new generation of Palestinians who are regenerated and re-energised.”

This diaspora, being Palestinian, includes many wonderful poets and writers. Among them, to name just three more who rank with Samah Sabawi, are:

Sara M Saleh, Palestinian Australian. Published works include the novel Songs for the Dead and the Living and the poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el Banat.

Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian American. Novels include Mornings in Jenin and Against the Loveless World.

Isabella Hammad, British Palestinian. Published works include the novels The Parisian and Enter Ghost. Delivered the 2023 Edward Said Memorial Lecture.

All three are powerful voices who continue to advocate for Palestine. Please read them.