Can Home Be Found? A Palestinian Woman’s Search for Identity in Against the Loveless World Shaped by Colonialism

Abstract

Muslim women in Palestine are often portrayed through the lens of the brutalities of war and colonial violence, overshadowing their identity. The study explores the collapse of Palestinian territory and the futile identity of Palestinians through a distinctive characterization of Nahr and her journey to find home, in Against the Loveless World (2020) by Abulhawa (b.1970). Through Nahr’s tussles and survival, Abulhawa in her novel revealed the folded effects of Israeli colonization embedded in Palestine. Additionally, it examines how Palestinian women encounter rootlessness and forfeiture of identity in disputed lands with the exclusive theoretical underpinning of Frantz Fanon’s (2007) colonial violence. Furthermore, the author has kept the emphasis limited to the issues of love, ruptured identity, longing for home, exile, rootlessness, trauma, violence, colonization, and endurance. Moreover, this study elucidates the survival of women in a colonized terrestrial where a female subject is doubly colonized and treated as another by the men of her society and the colonizers. The study's implications are to examine the space granted to women in colonized societies and their struggles to confront violence to reclaim their land and lost identities.