Salt Houses

Alia is the daughter of Salma, wife to Atef, mother to Karam, Riham, and Souad, and sister to Mustafa. As a young woman, she is described as “brazen, indelicate with her words,” and that fiery, spirited temperament characterizes her throughout her life (8). Although she and Atef love one another before their marriage, they struggle because not only of her independence but of the way that war and tragedy impact the family: After their displacement from Nablus, Atef will choose to settle in Kuwait City and Alia will spend the rest of her life missing Palestine.

Alia is a distracted mother, and her at times hands-off parenting is a sharp contrast to the deep love that Atef shows to their children. She struggles with Souad’s rebellious personality and does not appreciate when Atef points out that she and Souad have more in common than any of their other family members. She longs to live in Amman where society is more modern and more closely resembles her community in Nablus. Her children observe that during the summers they spend in Jordan, “Amman transforms her” (111), and it becomes evident that no matter how long she lives in Kuwait, she will never adjust. Like her mother Salma, she cannot resign herself to life in exile.

Her fiery temper and the difficulty she experiences with her children during their youth manifest, in her old age, as a continued intractability and resentment towards Riham, Souad, and Karam for their life choices. Although she struggles in her interpersonal relationships, the family remains important to Alia, and she is angry that her children further disperse: She is not able to spend enough time with her grandchildren, and both Souad’s and Karam’s children grow up in America and seem more American than Arab. Although her marriage is sometimes stormy because of Alia’s complex and demanding personality, she and Atef do love one another throughout, and in the final chapters that depict her life after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, it is obvious that the two still share a deep bond.

Mustafa is Salma’s son, Atef’s closest friend, and brother to Alia and Widad. Although he dies in the early chapters of the novel, his presence reverberates through each successive generation, and he is important for the way that he grounds the narrative within the lived experiences of many Palestinian men of his generation. He is a mathematics teacher and remains unmarried, although he has a relationship with a working-class woman named Aya. In a novel interested in representing Palestinians across the class spectrum and their inter-class relations, his character speaks to the different experiences of Palestinians in different classes. Aya would not be accepted by his family and lives in relative poverty. His acceptance of her speaks to his open-mindedness and willingness to interact with people of dissimilar backgrounds.

Mustafa is solitary and contemplative, but also politically active and invested in Palestinian freedom and self-determination. He is a member of a group of similarly minded men at his mosque and is particularly moved by the young Imam Bikra, a fierce advocate for Palestinian nationalism. Mustafa, although an eloquent speaker on behalf of his politics, does conclude that words will not be enough to free his people, and the last speech that he is shown to give begins with the sentiment “Brothers, we must fight” (47). His activism lands him in an Israeli prison along with Atef, but Atef survives while Mustafa does not. His death will impact each of his family members differently. Alia, although modern in her social orientation and not particularly religious, drifts even further from Islam as a result of her brother’s loss. Atef sinks into a state of melancholy that lasts for years. Future generations will remember him for his political activities, and several members of the Yacoub family observe a fanaticism in Abdullah that they trace, through the familial lineage, back to Mustafa.

Atef is the husband to Alia, father to Karam, Souad, and Riham, and Mustafa’s closest friend. Although political as a young man, he ultimately focuses more on his family than on the cause of Palestinian self-determination and statehood and is characterized in exile by his intense grief over Mustafa’s death. He wants to start over rather than move to a city like Amman where much of life in Nablus is recreated by the diasporic Palestinian community.

As a young man, Atef shares with Mustafa both an interest in Palestinian nationalism and a willingness to engage in physical battle as part of the cause for Palestinian freedom. Alyan reveals only late in the narrative that Mustafa had wanted to flee Palestine as soon as the Israeli invasion began, and it was Atef who shamed him into staying. For this reason, Atef feels responsible for his friend’s death, and he feels a deep sense of survivor’s guilt. His friendship with Mustafa had been in many ways easier than his relationship with Alia, and although he loves his wife despite her difficulty, it is clear that his bond with Mustafa was as central to his happiness as his relationship with his wife.

After his period of intense grief when the family is displaced from Nablus to Kuwait City, Atef begins to make an emotional recovery with the arrival of his children. Riham in particular “tugged back to his life” (90). He is the closest with Riham, his most contemplative, scholarly child, although losing Mustafa had caused him to mostly abandon Islam, and he is surprised when Riham herself becomes so devout. Although Riham is perhaps his favorite child, he is close with each of his children and remains a steadier presence in their lives than their mother, even after they reach adulthood. His calm, measured parenting becomes his most defining characteristic, and he is yet another representation of the way that strong familial bonds can ease the pain of exile. The other way that Atef heals his trauma is by writing letters addressed to Mustafa to process his grief, trauma, and life experiences. When his grandchildren discover the letters, they become a way for future generations to connect with their ancestors and understand how their family came to be what—and where—it is. Thus, Atef is the key to his family’s enduring bond across generations.

Riham, although she does narrate her own chapter, receives less characterization than many of her family members. Nonetheless, she is an important part of the narrative, and through the differences between Riham and her siblings, Alyan presents a more complex portrait of Palestinian diasporic identity. Riham, as a young woman, is described as “mousy and shy, her body pudgy in thighs and hips” (108). She feels out of place both within her nuclear family and amongst the chic, modern, skin-baring teenage girls in Amman. Although she does have a crush on one particular boy, she is not as open to discussing her feelings as her peers are and is shown to be less worldly than many of the other girls. During her teenage years, Riham becomes a devout Muslim. This religious turn happens in part because of her own interest in Islam, but also because she is closer to Salma than to her mother. She absorbs much of Salma’s traditional identifications and religiosity. In addition to her close relationship with Salma, Riham remains bonded with her father throughout her life, and the two share an interest in school, learning, and intellectual development. Here, too, Alyan showcases the strength of families: Souad and Alia share their intractability, and Riham shares with Salma her religiosity and with her father her intelligence. The different choices Riham makes about her life, religion, and identity from her mother and sister illustrate the diversity of ways women in the Palestinian diaspora express their cultural and gender identities.

Souad is Atef and Alia’s daughter, sister to Riham and Karam, and mother to Manar and Zain. Like many of the members of the Yacoub family, Souad is characterized by the way that exile affects her development and life experiences. She is additionally characterized by her difficult personality, and in this regard, she takes after her mother. Although more subtle than other aspects of characterization, many of the individual members of the family are tied to one another by these kinds of similarities. Neither Souad nor her mother appreciates the comparison.

As a young person, Souad is brazen and disobedient. As a child, she is prone to fits of ill temper and prefers to get her own way. Her father tolerates much of her behavior, but her mother does not, and a fierce antipathy grows between the two that will be lifelong. She refuses to follow rules and eats sugar sandwiches all over the house, causing her mother to worry that they will have an infestation of ants. This shows how willful she is, even as a girl, but it also foreshadows her fierce self-determination as she ages into adolescence and adulthood.

As a teenager, she is modern in her dress and attitude and often stays out long past curfew. Teenage Souad embodies the shifts and tensions among Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian identities, showcasing the way that each generation shifts away from tradition, especially as the Palestinian diaspora expands into more modern, Westernized spaces like Amman, Beirut, and the United States. Souad studies art in Paris, where she comes into her own as a modern Arab woman. This, too, grounds the narrative within the broader history of Palestinians in the diaspora and Arabs in general, as there have long been cultural ties between France and the Arab world, and it has become increasingly common for young, middle-class class and wealthy Arabs to spend a portion of their education in France.

Yet, Paris’s role in Souad’s life foreshadows the difficulty that she will experience as an adult, married woman. After she marries Elie in a bid to avoid migration to Jordan with her family during the Gulf War, she muses: “Paris had transformed for her after the wedding, its vivacity turning leaden” (211). She chafes against the unhappiness of her difficult marriage, and her union will end in divorce. Her childhood intractability manifests, in adulthood, as a struggle to compromise, and although Elie is by no means an ideal partner, she shares with her mother a kind of interpersonal disconnect that leaves her unhappy in romantic relationships. Also like her mother and grandmother, she feels out of place in many different places, and never quite adjusts to life as a member of the Palestinian diaspora. Yet, she does remain committed to family, spending summers with her siblings and their children to stay connected.