‘Praise for the Women of the Family’ deserves praise itself

The Al-’Abd Al-Lat clan moves from the desert to resettle in the hills surrounding Jerusalem in award-winning author Mahmoud Shukair’s novel, “Praise for the Women of the Family,” translated into English by Paul Starkey.

Of the 18 sons, patriarch Mannan Al-’Abd Al-Lat hopes that his youngest will keep his family together, but with the family growing and evolving, and the country changing around them, the clan will face a future that even they themselves cannot guarantee. From 1930, when they left the desert, to the defeat of 1967, this is a story of a family making their way through Palestine’s political history as it happens around them. Muhammad Al-Asghar, the youngest of Mannan’s sons and the one entrusted to take over his father’s position as patriarch, is a religious registrar in the Shariah courts in Jerusalem. He records marriage, inheritances and divorces as a junior clerk and attempts to fulfill his father’s wishes of keeping his family together. But Muhammad Al-Asghar’s life is pulled in every direction with his father’s wives, of which four are living, his brothers and their families, and his own wife, Sanaa, a divorcee. Told from the perspective of three family members — Muhammad Al-Asghar, his brother Falihan who wants to become the patriarch of the family, and Wadha, the youngest and most beloved wife of Mannan and mother of Muhammad Al-Asghar — Shukair reveals a family’s journey through time. They deal with familial drama and trauma, political upheaval and occupation. Through Muhammad Al-Asghar, who was only eightyears-old in 1948 but knew that his countrymen and women were being killed and turned into refugees, Shukair paints a vivid picture of a family losing old traditions and customs as they move into a modern future and at the same time deal with loss of land and identity.

Shukair writes of the “unwritten history” of the Al-’Abd Al-Lat clan through his character’s feats and defeats, through their struggles and victories as the history of the clan and the country are intertwined. This is a story about a family of Bedouins who moved to the city and soon after they arrived lost the city and more, and eventually the desert too. In pursuit of survival, they push to move forward into a future where freedom will accept their multi-generational family, their customs and evolution.