by Mowafa Said Househ
ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY PRESS
2022/$24.99/213 pp.
Under the Nakba Tree, by Edmonton author Mowafa Said Househ, is not the usual distanced “objective” narrative on Palestine, Israel and Canada that western audiences might often hear and read in the news. Told from the first-person perspective of someone whose entire life has been impacted by an unfolding tragedy, Househ’s story centres indigenous Palestinian voices and experiences when relating the impact of the 1948 Nakba—the destruction of Palestinian society by Zionist militias—on himself, his family and an entire Palestinian-Canadian generation born in exile. In doing so, Househ exposes the fragility of settler-colonial states built on stolen Indigenous land.
Househ’s vividly told story begins one hot summer night in Palestine in 1948 when his grandmother Nima, together with her nine children, fled the horror inflicted on her hometown. The Israeli order said that “the inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.” Along the way to exile, facing “exhaustion, thirst, hunger and uncertainty,” Nima abandoned her six-month-old baby, Said, Househ’s father, hoping someone would find him and care for the baby. A few minutes later Nima reconsidered her decision and sent two of her sons to retrieve the infant, and their journey into the unknown continued. In that journey at least 335 civilians died on the road. Nima and her children were lucky to arrive at the El Hussein refugee camp in Jordan, and then eventually in Alberta, over 10,000 kilometres away from Lydda.
This story of growing up as an Arab Muslim in Alberta is both inspiring and unexpectedly gloomy. Bullied as a child, Househ heard his father called racist names and saw Al-Rashid mosque vandalized in the 1990s. At university, where Househ got a Ph.D. in health information science, his political awareness grew. In often searing prose, he recounts a journey back to his homeland, where, he writes, “Witnessing life under occupation in Palestine burned [a] need to heal into my mind, just as the grief and fear I felt standing outside our vandalized mosque as a teen in Edmonton remains in my heart.”
Told with empathy and moral courage, Under the Nakba Tree offers a refusal of the Palestinian generation born in exile to let their history and rights disappear from political and domestic conversations. Published on the eve of the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, this story offers a narrative of survival and resistance—a refutation of past and current inequality, discrimination and injustice. By opting to stand up and tell his story, Househ does not hide or swallow the humiliation but instead spits it out.
Ghada Ageel teaches political science at the U of A.
