47 pages • 1 hour read
Against the Loveless World
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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Cube East”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of the source text’s depictions of sexual assault, rape, sexual exploitation, abuse, anti-gay bias, and political violence.
Nahr, a Palestinian woman, is in The Cube, a specialized cell in an Israeli prison. She has been incarcerated for many years and her hair has begun to go grey. She recalls various visitors she has had over the years, and reflects that they come less frequently than they used to.
She remembers one Western woman in particular, either a journalist or a human rights worker, who had begun the interview by asking her a series of questions that revealed her own bias and sensationalist view of Nahr’s case. Nahr had disliked her, but she’d brought a Palestinian interpreter who communicated with Nahr using a covert Palestinian code often employed in the presence of Israelis. Nahr had liked the Palestinian.
The Western woman continued her line of questions, with Nahr feeling increasingly uncomfortable. The woman asked Nahr if it was true that multiple men raped her on the night that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. Nahr, upset, told her that she hadn’t been, but also that it was none of her business. The Western woman had then lost her temper, and Nahr asked if she was Jewish. Although she tried to evade the question, the woman ultimately shared that her grandparents had survived the Holocaust and that she felt that Nahr was little more than a terrorist. In the same breath, she explained to Nahr that she felt she was being “fair.”
After she left, Nahr found a note stuffed into her pita bread urging her to stop speaking to the press. Israel was pushing a narrative that Nahr had been abused, both physically and sexually, and forced to join a terrorist cell. In arresting Nahr, the Israeli government had “saved” her, and they were keeping her in a very comfortable room for her own safety. Another guard, later on, brought Nahr pencils and paper, and she decided to write down her story.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Dance Ruby River”
Nahr remembers her childhood and youth. Like most women in her generation, she grew up dancing with the other women in her community. Eastern dance, often mischaracterized in the West as “belly dancing,” is an important part of Nahr’s cultural identity. She has an appreciation for other kinds of music, but she feels particularly connected to the music of her home region.
Nahr’s life began in an area of Kuwait settled by Palestinian refugees after the Nakba. Her mother’s family emigrated from Haifa after losing everything when the Israelis invaded in 1948. Even their possessions were stolen. Nahr grew up with her mother and her grandmother, her father having died when she was still a girl. Her memories of him are now scant. Her mother still missed Haifa and her grandmother “had never really left her village in Palestine” (14) and was usually lost in memories of her youth. Nahr was a difficult girl and struggled in school. She got into trouble and even let a boy kiss her. She talked back to her mother and grandmother, never conforming to expectations for “good” Palestinian girls.
Her family lost much when they were forced to flee Palestine, and her father initially tried to remain in their old home to maintain ownership. By the time he too fled to Kuwait, a distance had sprung up between him and her mother, and he began habitually cheating on her. Eventually, he died of a heart attack in the arms of another woman. Her mother nearly died from the shame and argued with her mother-in-law, who thought that it was Nahr’s mother’s fault for having been a bad wife, driving her husband toward a series of “whores.”
Nahr remembers meeting Mhammad in 1985. Mhammad was a Palestinian dissident who, although young, had already gained a reputation as a prominent member of Palestine’s resistance movement. Since his older brother was imprisoned at the time of their marriage, it would have been improper for the two to have a lavish wedding party, so they married without festivities. On their wedding night, Mhammad was embarrassed and the two struggled to find a connection in bed. Neither enjoyed their first time together and when it was over, he cried out the name “Tamara” and began crying. Their marriage was brief. When she was 19, Mhammad left Nahr. His friend Jamil came by their house, explaining that he had returned to Palestine, presumably to find Tamara.
After her marriage ended, Nahr met an Iraqi woman named Um Buraq at a wedding. Um Buraq was almost 40 and the target of scandalous rumors. Um Buraq encouraged Nahr to go out late at night, laughing that Kuwait “comes alive” only after midnight. Nahr initially resisted Um Buraq’s offer of friendship, but after being forced out of the apartment she’d shared with her husband and left with nothing, she wanted to feel a greater sense of freedom. She didn’t care what people said about Um Buraq.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Um Buraq”
Looking back, Nahr realizes that her decision to allow Um Buraq to befriend her was a turning point. She was a naïve young woman at the time, not realizing what kind of business Um Buraq was in until it was too late. Nahr’s grandmother objected to the new friendship, but her mother pointed out that Nahr did little other than go to work and come home, and that she needed a life. Nahr then recounts what happened next in full.
The first night Nahr meets up with Um Buraq, there are two other beautiful young women in the car with her. Um Buraq introduces them as Susu and Fifi, and asks Nahr to pick a pseudonym. Nahr chooses the name “Almas,” which means “diamond.” They end up back at Um Buraq’s house, where Nahr is given scotch, a more revealing dress, and a makeover. She finds the alcohol unpleasant, and by the time they are ready to proceed to their next destination, Nahr is nauseated. They arrive at a man’s house, where the three women dance with men and then, one by one, leave the room alone with a man. Nahr vomits, and then one of the men at the party takes her to the beach. The two have sex, but a piece of glass lodges itself in her back, and she requires medical attention. The next morning, she wakes up at Um Buraq’s house. Nahr receives money for her “work” the night before. Disgusted, she vows not to speak to Um Buraq again.
Nahr gets another job as a clerk in a retail store. One day, Um Buraq shows up at her work and offers to help her send her brother Jehad to medical school. Um Buraq knows that the family cannot afford his tuition, and she hopes that Nahr will continue her sex work to finance her brother’s education. Nahr agrees. A few times a month, she goes to an apartment Um Buraq rents for “her girls.” Um Buraq instructs Nahr on how to encourage men to overconsume alcohol and then rifle through their wallets for their banking information. Nahr pities some of the men, dislikes some, and toward others feels indifferent. One man promises to marry her, and so she allows him to approach Um Buraq to explain that Nahr will no longer work for her. Um Buraq tells Nahr that she is making a bad decision, but Nahr does not listen.
Eventually, Nahr becomes pregnant. After taking her to Egypt for a clandestine abortion, the man abandons her. She becomes gravely ill, and Um Buraq finds her a doctor who will treat her. Um Buraq explains that all men are “shit,” insisting that Nahr can either extract what she can from men, or be subservient to them. When she recovers, Nahr resumes her legal work, and for a time does not work for Um Buraq. She relents when she realizes that without more sex work, she will be unable to pay her brother’s tuition. She tells Um Buraq that from now on she will only dance at parties, and for a time she is able to generate extra income that way.
Eventually, Nahr’s brother is accepted at Moscow University, and she feels that her work has not been in vain. Then, on August 2, 1990, she attends a party with a group of Saudi officials. The men rape Nahr. During the assault, she is sure that she will not survive, but the men are interrupted: Iraq has invaded Kuwait. They release her. Nahr returns home that night feeling broken and alone.
Part 1 Analysis
The novel’s first chapter introduces Nahr, the novel’s protagonist. At this point in the narrative, she is an incarcerated adult and has lived for many years in solitary confinement inside of an Israeli prison, in a cell known as “the Cube.” The setting is significant, as it enables Abulhawa to contextualize Nahr within the framework of her resistance work and imprisonment. However, the Cube is also an important symbol: Israeli government policy regarding land, displacement, and Palestinian space is a focal point of the novel, with the Cube serving as a symbolic representation of the way that the Israeli government has confined Palestinians to ever-shrinking pieces of their own lands (See: Symbols & Motifs).
Despite her restrictive conditions, Nahr resists the dehumanization of the Cube, remaining resilient in the face of years of solitary confinement. Her situation introduces the theme of Resistance in the Face of Occupation and Oppression. During one interview with a foreigner, Nahr communicates in code with the woman’s Palestinian interpreter, and does not allow herself to be characterized as a terrorist by someone whom Nahr speculates feels entitled to Palestinian lands. As the novel flashes back to Nahr’s youth, her spirit of resilience and rebellion is apparent even in her childhood behavior: Born in exile in Kuwait, she struggles with being a foreigner, but is nevertheless willing to speak up and defy the social expectations placed upon her. The portrait of Nahr that emerges is thus one of fortitude and endurance.
Nahr is also in search of a cultural identity, reflecting the theme of The Impact of Displacement and Diaspora. She initially does not feel the same connection to Palestine that her Palestinian-born family does, but one of the ways that she first tries to access that identity is through Palestinian cultural traditions, such as Eastern dance. She notes misconceptions about this art form by Westerners, explaining that: “This is why foreign belly dancers have always bothered me. That they use our music as a prop to wiggle and shimmy and jump around offends me” (12). For Westerners, Eastern dance is exoticized; for Nahr, it is a connection to her lost cultural identity.
Abulhawa also establishes the importance of the Nakba to diasporic Palestinians and their communities (See: Background). Nahr’s family lost their homes in Israel’s 1948 invasion and occupation, and she and her family live in the ongoing shadow of this collective trauma. Nahr recalls, “My life began in a two-bedroom apartment in Hawalli, a Kuwait ghetto where Palestinian refugees settled after the Nakba” (12). This is why she struggles so much with her sense of Palestinian identity: She was born outside of Palestine and does not feel as rooted to the place as her other family members do. Abulhawa’s linking of Nahr’s experience to the Nakba both contextualizes her story and connects it to similar experiences within the diaspora.
Nahr also meets Um Buraq in this section, and the complexity of their relationship begins to take shape. Nahr initially feels that Um Buraq is exploitive in her treatment of Arab women; however, Nahr gradually begins to realize that Um Buraq cares for her and that she views The Complexities of Sexuality and Women’s Autonomy through a different lens than Nahr does. Um Buraq teaches Nahr how to steal from her customers because she believes that all men are “shit” and that the gendered rules of their society disempower women. In Um Buraq’s view, sex work is a way to even the playing field, and Nahr begins to understand that Um Buraq does not see herself as a user and exploiter of women, but of men. Still, sex work troubles Nahr and she recalls how each man “bought a little piece of [her] and took it away forever” (59). It will take her time to fully process and analyze these years of her life, and she will realize that she agrees with Um Buraq only later on.
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