An Agony at the Edge of Memory

Dying at the Edge of Memory—What happened there, on that land that was home to these people and became a promise to others? That land, before it became an issue and a conflict, was like all lands, embracing all backgrounds and religions. Then came the promises, the conspiracies, the alliances forged between foreign powers, a tottering empire, and desperate minorities, and the rift occurred, and apprehensions exploded in the form of racism, sectarianism, prejudice, and conflict. On that Palestinian land, and specifically in the city of Hebron, there was a Jew fighting Turkification as he fought the promises of the elders to his own people to usurp a homeland to which he belonged by blood before religion; a woman who defied the newly emerging hostility toward Jews in her surroundings and breastfed a child who had lost a Jewish mother who was a neighbor like all neighbors; and a teacher in a Russian mission who rescued two Palestinians, one of whom cradled the other with hands worn out by working for the pashas. This novel monitors the political transformations and social dynamics in Hebron at the end of Ottoman rule over the Levant, the movements that rejected Turkification, and the beginning of the Arab schism towards liberation movements, through an exciting plot that encapsulates the ancient story with its density and the repercussions of reality with its complexity. The novel showcases a period that has not been adequately recorded in the history of the Palestinian city of Hebron. This narrative declaims the political and social transformations that occurred in the city at the end of the Ottoman rule over the Levant, and the uprising of revolutionary movements that sought self-determination, cognized as The Committee of Union and Progress. The narrative also portrays the birth of the Arab schism towards liberation movements, mostly in support of the Arab Girl Association, and it deals with the social life in Hebron during that period, elucidating on how those structures extended up to the present, and for that comes the history writing in this novel.