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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2024, pp. 67-68

Middle East Books Review

Behind You Is the Sea: A Novel

By Susan Muaddi Darraj, HarperVia, 2024, hardcover, 246 pp. MEB $26

Reviewed by Steve France 

You might as well know right away that Behind You Is the Sea is a fun read. Palestinian American Susan Muaddi Darraj is a warm and deft storyteller with a wicked wit. Her new novel about the lives of Palestinian immigrants in Baltimore has universal appeal. Readers can tell their friends they are reading about these immigrants adapting to being Americans—a classic genre. 

Those whose hearts bleed for Palestine, however, may find themselves uncomfortable with stories of Palestinians escaping endless U.S.-funded horrors in their homeland for a piece of the American pie. Such a move seems to go against the Palestinian virtue of sumud—Arabic for “fortitude” and “steadfastness”—which is about never giving up.

Palestinians invest in this national stubbornness with humor, wisdom, pride and grit to carry their griefs and frustrations with style. Their sumud is a wonder to behold. But does it mean they can’t settle for ordinary happiness in America? Sumud can seem like a poor fit for the task of becoming American, which generally requires treating old-world cares and habits as distant memories. 

Darraj keeps the focus on her characters’ American lives but signals her awareness of this issue with two introductory quotes: Ibrahim Nasrallah, “You have to be loyal to your exile as much as you are loyal to your homeland”; and the poem “Ruin” by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, with the lines, “if all we love/is a lost world/then let the dust/swallow our names.”

In the novel, sumud shows up mainly in the form of parents being hard on their American kids for acting like Americans. Marcus Salameh, a Baltimore police detective, is one of the most assimilated and independent-minded characters. This independence costs him the rage of his father, who cuts him off when Marcus defends his sister, Amal, who is pregnant by her Black boyfriend, Jahron. Marcus slams his father’s attitude as “the old Arab way of sizing up a girl based on nothing and judging her future [negatively].”

High schooler Reema Baladi is also pregnant, in her case by her Puerto Rican boyfriend, Torrey. A gifted student of literature, she chafes at her teacher lauding the families of “Romeo and Juliet” for ultimately “realizing the error of their ways,” thinking, “F*** their families.”

Walid Ammar’s sumud flares up at his son Raed’s wedding to Ellen, the sort of American woman whose “pink nails, slim wrists and tiny waist drew Arab boys like planets to a fiery star” and turned them into “blushing, stammering fools.” Nothing at the wedding is familiar—not the food, not the drinks, not the music—yet Walid is paying a fortune for it all. When his new in-laws hope it’s okay that alcohol is being served, he snaps. “Yes, of course, I tell you before, we are Christians, not Muslims” and proceeds to get smashed. His irritability is attributed to the booze.

For all the acrimony associated with life in America, the worst pain may be how the old ways of Palestine reach back into Rania Mahfouz’s marriage, when it emerges that her husband is caught in the coverup of a family honor killing of a pregnant cousin back in Palestine. But Rania has the luck to find a tough lawyer, Samira Awadah, whose own Palestinian-American family taps her for money while treating her as a loser because she hasn’t been able to have children. Later, Samira’s mother practically disowns her when she falls for a very loving American—and gets pregnant.

Intensely close families are a big part of what makes Palestinian sumud so strong. In America, Darraj shows, such families are what keep immigrants connected to Palestine, which can be awkward and painful. She depicts the slights and suspicions that Palestinians face as the victims and enemies of America’s “greatest ally.” Shy high schooler Layla Marwan is humiliated when she tries but fails to get her drama teacher to see that Disney’s movie “Aladdin” showcases Arab stereotypes.

The novel’s younger characters show their own sumud as they stick with their families and homeland as hard as they can. When his estranged father dies, Marcus takes on the job of bringing his body back to Palestine for burial, despite never having been to Palestine. He uses some of his cop skills with Israeli border cops, closely observes Palestinian social interactions—and falls for a prickly, semi-outcast Palestinian woman.

Reema, despite cursing family life, defiantly keeps her baby, sacrifices her own higher education to take care of her much younger sister and ill mother, and shepherds her child to scholarships at top universities.

One complaint: the book is too short. Darraj’s “mosaic novel” serves up a great many vivid, interrelated characters and tricky situations in chapters that each read like a short story. She surely kept back some of the fun.

Steve France is an activist and writer affiliated with Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Palestine-Israel Network.