What is the importance of Palestine in the novel, A Woman Is No Man?

While the characters spend relatively little time in Palestine within the novel, it still important to understand this setting in order to understand the struggle between Arabic and western civilization, as well as Fareeda’s desire to hold on to their culture. However, it also shows their fears after living as refugees in their home country.

Isra’s first chapter begins at her home in Birzeit, Palestine. Rum describes it as “hillsides covered with red-tiled rooftops and olive trees” but later explains, her father’s family “had been evacuated from their seaside home in the Lydd when he was only ten years old, during Israel’s invasion of Palestine” (3-4). The real reason they live there is because “it was a piece of land no one else wanted, and all they could afford” (4). Nearby is the mosque and the all-girls school. Isra leaves Palestine when she marries Adam though, and moves to Brooklyn in Part I.

Later, Fareeda will reference Palestine in her memories and flashbacks. On page 237, Rum reveals the only chapter from Fareeda’s perspective told entirely in Palestine, in a refugee camp. This is the memory of how her daughters died, after Fareeda fed them goat’s milk, not knowing it would kill them. Her perspective ends as she remembers Khaled crying and buying their daughters and thinks this is the origin of the jinn that haunts her and her family the rest of their lives.