A Spring That Did Not Blossom (Interlink Books, 2024) is Nejmeh Khalil Habib’s first collection of short stories to be translated into English.
The six short stories reflect Palestinian refugees’ oral history in Lebanon spanning from 1975 to 1982. Each story focuses on loosely connected characters, their narratives and observations within the historical context of Phalangist and Israeli violence against the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
While politics create the background against which the lives of the characters are woven, it is the characters themselves that form the narratives that are often lost in the practicalities of reporting.
The stories take place within the context of the massacres of Ain al-Rumaneh, Sabra and Shatila, and Tal Al-Zaatar, showing how relationships, kinship and struggles play out in the confines of the camp, as well as the camp within the wider framework of colonial violence and state repression.
Birth, for example, is juxtaposed against the bus massacre of Ain al-Rumanah, when members of the Lebanese Phalangist militia ambushed a bus, killing most of the Palestinian passengers on board.
“The surviving few became whatever their captors needed them to be,” Habib writes, starkly contrasting the birth of a child with the role Palestinians were forced to play as a result of Israeli colonial violence and the ensuing repression of the Palestinian diaspora in Lebanon.
The book shows how Palestinian families are scarred by the massacres – relatives crushed to death, detained and disappeared, women raped and burned, and children younger than 16 executed.
In Lebanon, Palestinians died “at the hands of people who have nothing to do with Palestine and with whom we have no quarrel,” one character ruminates.
Habib also delves into what revolution signified for the Palestinians in the camp, with some debating whether people betrayed the revolution or the revolution betrayed the people – a discourse that also ties into the perception of people and families, as well as their connections – within the camp.
Who can be defined as a foreigner also enters the narrative, with the Palestinian protagonists creating a distinction between the Lebanese definition of a Palestinian foreigner, and the Palestinians’ own definition of foreigners, described as “those who strike it rich at our expense and go off to spend their money on trivialities in foreign lands.”
From refugee camps and forced displacement in Lebanon, Palestinians ponder the repeated raids. The entire spectrum of violence is made all the more prominent in relation to Mariam’s protection of her son, Rabih.
Creating a safe space for her son contrasts with the reality of kidnapped Palestinians and informers sent to the camp to root out those involved in the resistance.
The aftermath of raids also reveals secrets for those who remain alive. Finding diary excerpts in the ruins of a house reveals not only the history of specific massacres but also how the writer interpreted and experienced the emotions associated with exposure to brutality: “Grudges are the natural response of someone whose dignity has been insulted … They say revenge is the weapon of the weak. Revenge is the law between equals. It’s a scream in the face of bullies.”
Themes such as forgiveness also ring hollow in the face of such violence. “Forgiveness is nothing but a rotten biscuit that’s coated in white sugar,” an excerpt reads. Kawkab, who finds the diary excerpts, realises how much pain one can carry without divulging to those close to them.
One of the most complex narratives concerns the character of Nu’man, whose forthcoming planned martyrdom is clouded with thoughts of what would people think of him if they knew what he concealed.
Away from the outward celebrations that glorify the martyr, who is the martyr? What are his thoughts and what exists that has nothing to do with the anti-colonial struggle and all to do with what anyone can conceal? “Nu’man is pleased by the fact that thoughts are not like clothes – dirty thoughts don’t leave a visible stain,” the author writes.
Sometimes the narrated memories read like tangent thoughts that spread from other related recollections. As the characters’ stories unfold, so does the context around them. The contrasts between male and female, the Palestinians in the camps and those leaving to work in the Gulf states, those who went abroad.
All in all, the short stories in this collection impart the diversity of the Palestinian diaspora and the multitude of experiences which at times clash even within the confines of the same geographical location.
However, as the story Amer shows, the clash of narratives within the immediate family is usually the most prominent on the surface, with much remaining hidden.
Memories of Palestinians are paired with politics and the unfolding landscape of violence they are surrounded with. Habib’s writing, however, poses a different question. What do we read when we read Palestinian oral history? The politics or the experiences? And what takes precedence in our reading of Palestinian oral history?
Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger specialising in the struggle for memory in Chile and Palestine, colonial violence and the manipulation of international law
Follow her on X: @walzerscent
