Book review | Growing up in a Finnish-Palestinian family: war hurts between two cultures

Novel

Irene Zidan: My father from the land of orange blossoms. WSOY. 281 pp.

Another one already the novel I reviewed this fall, which deals with the crisis in the Middle East – and now even more frankly.

Irene Zidane (b. 1986) is about a Finnish female journalist whose father is Palestinian. When the violence between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization begins and expands into a war and mass destruction of civilians, his work is also in crisis.

Follows the crude, racist painting, then the internal compulsion to reflect and understand one’s own background. What is the identity of a Finnish-Palestinian person? What does he belong to, who is loyal to?

It becomes clear how many attachments a person has, from his family to his own generation, to the work community and to his own children.

Media is dealt with in the novel to such an extent that one cannot help but find it somewhat personal. We know the author Aisha Zidane – also known as a journalist with a solid and award-winning career.

The journalistic experience is reflected in the prose, which is factual and catchy.

In the novel The life of journalist Amira Mansur intersects with many stories. By leaving some aside, the final result would have been more polished and written.

Now it tells about a father who fled the conditions of Palestine and the family life of two cultures in Finland in the 1980s. Amira’s teenage trip to visit her family on the occupied Länsiranta takes up a large part of the text.

In turn, it creates a story about the Palestinians, their and Israel’s broken relations from the beginning, which have not been repaired over the decades. Amira’s relatives give character and words to the experiences of oppression.

In addition, there is another story about how you can remain alone as a journalist if you have personal ties to the parties to an international conflict. Professionalism is questioned, and soon accusations of bias, in this case also of promoting terrorism, start to be made on the internet.

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However, the most important thing in the novel is the father.

Same as earlier in the fall Terhi Törmälehton They are salt and light – novel, Christian Zionism emerges, which also has a strong influence on hate speech.

It destroys Amira’s mind and health, and she has to take sick leave.

All of these the stories are important and not exactly told. They are also related to each other.

The war takes Amira from her leisurely job with personal news to foreign delivery. While you used to be able to edit obituaries, now you have to deal with a constant, violent stream of images and worry about your own relatives.

In turn, it leads to reflection on one’s own childhood and family dynamics.

However, the most weighty part of the novel is the father: a gradually building story about the stages of a man who experienced rebellion and prison as a young man, who moved to Finland through Leningrad and Sweden and who lived here very hard in between.

Of course, this is precisely the Palestinian fate, marked by prolonged and brutal violence. However, it also has a lot in common.

They are people have always moved around the world, sometimes as refugees, sometimes as migrants, and it’s never easy.

Longing, sadness, prejudices and racism cause trauma, and once you are rooted in a new place, you can’t get rid of the feeling of being outside, which is often twofold: you don’t quite feel at home anywhere.

Amirakin knows how the presence of another culture constantly emerges, from news delivery to kindergarten. The father no longer has a home area at all. “I’m already a stranger there,” he smiles.

Still, this doesn’t have to be a tragedy. It is life, and it is possible to adapt to it – if the new culture gives the opportunity.

Then the past is not lost. Then it can be like Amira’s father: in the elevator, the smell of childhood orange blossoms comes flooding out of the guest’s perfume, like “From the shores of the Mediterranean, all the way from Jaffa”.