The Slightest Green: A Novel

• Book Author(s):Sahar Mustafah
• Published Date:2025
• Publisher:Interlink Publishing
• Paperback:248 pages
• ISBN-13:9781623715830

A novel that opens immediately with the rupture that is so prevalent in the Palestinian experience, The Slightest Green (Interlink Publishing, 2025) immediately presents land as the central theme. Sundus, a widow whose son Hafez is dying of cancer, is living under threat of eviction by Abdul Waheed, who had stolen the deeds to her land and forged her husband’s signature. The villagers suspect him of stealing Palestinian land and reselling to the settler-colonists; it is the threat of settlement expansion that Abdul Waheed brings up when trying to coax Palestinians into his schemes.

Crucially, the identity of Abdul Waheed is a mystery to the villagers – no one knows his identity or family. “Others say he is more than a land-thief. That he is something much worse.”

Shifting from present to past, the book narrates Sundus’s childhood in detailed slivers. The 1948 Nakba, which marks Sundus’s first displacement, is narrated in detail and it gives the backdrop as to why she is firmly attached to the land she is now in danger of losing. As a child, she recalls, “All the adults seem to be planning to leave their homes without a clear destination – or at least not one her own parents will share with her. How long will they be gone? And how does her mother know she won’t need a dress at this place once they arrive?”

Leaving home without a clear destination is a recurring theme in Palestinian literature – the expectation of a temporary departure that became a permanent, ongoing displacement. In this novel, author Sahar Mustafah tackles displacement and return from the various narratives of the Palestinian experience. Hafez, Sundus’s son, goes to the US where he marries and has a daughter. However, he decides to return to Palestine and becomes involved in resistance activities in the occupied West Bank. He is detained and sentenced to life imprisonment, released only when deemed no longer a threat to Israel as a result of his terminal illness.

For Hafez, returning voluntarily was a call to the land he could never forget. Intisar, however has a completely different experience of a Palestine her father talked about and which she visited as a child, but only briefly. The call informing her that her father was dying ushered her return to Palestine, with little connection in terms of memory of what Palestine means. “What can she claim of Palestine beyond a biological father? The answer is as obscure as the tidy, quilted patches of land disappearing beneath the stratosphere of the plane when it first takes off.”

With Intisar’s return to Palestine, by which time her father has already passed away, the book expounds upon Hafez’s time in prison. Narratives of torture, abuse, the rare family visits under strict surveillance are juxtaposed against the bonds which the Palestinian political prisoners form with each other. Hafez reminisces about the abandonment of his daughter out of love for Palestine. One stipulation of the marriage contract was that if he ever decided to return to Palestine, he would have to go alone. With his departure, Intisar knew less of her father, not even the reason why he was detained and imprisoned. Returning to Palestine as a stranger due to growing up in the US, as well as the lack of information about her father, contributed to her own internal conflict and decision-making.

Time in Palestine acquaints Intisar with how much her mother shielded her, to the point of almost rupturing contact between her and her father’s family in Palestine. However, as Intisar’s connection to Palestine builds gradually, she also realises her mother’s struggle of losing the man she loved and settles for “the one who shows up and stays”.

As Intisar familiarises herself with Palestine and learns the real reason why she was called back – a bid to keep the land as Hafez’s legitimate heir, the concept of home changes as she experiences life in Bayt al-Hawa. At first treated as a guest, the brief visit is soon interspersed with her grandmother Sundus’s narrations of her own displacement, and the importance of land for Palestinians. Clashes erupt between Intisar and Sundus over the concept of home, as Intisar is at first reluctant to remain in Palestine and contest her claim to the land as the legitimate heir. Sundus’s narrations of her past allow Intisar to form a clearer picture of her father’s trauma as a result of Zionist colonisation. Gradually, her experiences and observations draw her to view her stay as an extended visit, after witnessing firsthand state and settler violence against Palestinians, and volunteering at a Palestinian clinic, during which an attack on a Palestinian girl leaves a clue as to the identity of the perpetrator, later uncovered by Intisar.

The novel is a reminder of how many Palestinian lives have been uprooted by the Nakba, and how much return plays a part, whether it materialises or not. Fragmented families, and loss of land remain an integral component of the Palestinian experience, and how resistance is also shaped by personal loss of both family and land. Sahar Mustafah does not end her novel on a triumphant note, but on a decision that builds upon the Palestinian struggle for Intisar and her family, and one that mirrors the Palestinian fight against displacement.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260111-the-slightest-green-a-novel/