54 pages • 1-hour read
Evil Eye: A Novel
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Background
Authorial Context: Etaf Rum
Etaf Rum is an author, professor, activist, and book club host raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her grandparents were displaced from their homes in Palestine in 1948 and raised their own children in a refugee camp. The family then immigrated to the US. Rum is the oldest of nine children and was raised in a conservative Palestinian household before entering an arranged marriage at 19. She and her husband moved to North Carolina, where she had two children and earned a BA in English language and literature, a BS in philosophy, and an MA in American and British literature and philosophy from North Carolina State University. She then obtained a position teaching literature at a local community college. Rum currently lives with her two children in North Carolina. She is a Book of the Month Club Ambassador and hosts a monthly book club. She is a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights and is involved in activism focused on increased awareness and opportunities for Palestinians and Palestinian Americans.
Both Evil Eye and Rum’s first novel, A Woman Is No Man, contain autobiographical elements. Like her female protagonists, Rum is an advocate for the rights of women in Arab American communities. Her novels explore the specific ways that she and other women in her community have experienced gender-based oppression and are interested in the question of how to balance respect for culture with the pursuit of educational and career goals. Rum is also interested in the complexities of generational trauma within the Palestinian diaspora, and her novels engage with the way that dispossession and displacement continue to affect each generation of Palestinians, even those born outside of Palestine. Although they are not works of historical fiction, Rum’s novels engage with key moments in Palestinian history such as the Nakba, and she sees writing as a way to both increase the representation of Arab women in the American literary landscape and to bring awareness to the struggles of Palestinians throughout the world. Rum has an additional interest in showcasing the work of other authors of color. Her book club has featured the work of Susan Muaddi Daraj, Shubnum Khan, Melissa Rivero, and others.
Historical Context: The Nakba
The events depicted in Evil Eye are deeply informed by the history of the Palestinian diaspora. Yara ultimately comes to realize that many of her own mental struggles and the difficulties that her mother faced are rooted in generational trauma, complex trauma that passes from one family member or generation to the next. In the case of Evil Eye, this generational trauma began with the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe.” The term refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians from their land by Israeli military forces in 1948. As Yara reflects more fully on this history, she realizes that many of her mother’s behaviors, her rage and emotional volatility, come from the unresolved trauma of losing the family home during the Nakba. Believing that she is the carrier of a family curse, Yara’s mother passes on this unresolved trauma to her children, without being able to fully articulate its source.
In 1948, the Israeli army expelled 98% of the Palestinian population of the city of Jaffa and a majority of the Palestinians throughout Palestine. This was an organized campaign to replace the majority Arab population of the lands of Palestine with Israeli settlers. At least 750,000 people, or around 75% of Palestine’s Arab population, were forced to flee. Palestinians living abroad were denied the right to return. Physical displacement was only part of the project of the Nakba. Massacres targeting Arabs were common, and the Israeli army created an atmosphere of violence and terror. Many of the families who were forced out of their homes ended up, like Yara’s relatives, in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Some of these camps, which began as temporary tent cities, grew into settlements with concrete houses and distinct neighborhoods. Rum’s parents were born and raised in one such settlement after being denied the right to move back to their property after the Nakba. Because it was one of the original acts of mass displacement by the Israeli army leading to successive waves of Israeli settlement, it remains a source of collective trauma, even for contemporary Palestinians. Indeed, millions of Palestinians remain legally stateless, three or four generations after the Nakba.
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