Project Bookshelf: Hedaya Hasan

These days, I try to visit libraries more than bookstores, but the damage to my wallet has already been done. The books I own are easily the most valuable thing in my home, both monetarily and emotionally. Though, remembering my brother’s complaints about the heaviness of my boxes while helping me move, I doubt I will come home one day to find a thief has stolen my books. Some of my books are below my tea collection on the shelf pictured above. Others are in odd places in my apartment. A few have taken a permanent place in my tote bags or near my bed. Most of my books were bought used and hold small reminders of their previous owners; old plane tickets, receipts, stickers, photos. When I finally sat down to read Edward Said’s memoir, twenty dollars silently slipped out of its pages and into my lap. Some books are well-loved, others not so much. Most of the books bought after a recommendation from a teacher or friend fall into the latter category, but maybe I’m just a picky reader. Other books I bought before being recommended them, namely Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks. One professor excitedly told me about a Palestinian play being shown at a local theater, which turned out to be a playbook I already owned: The Shroud Maker by Ahmad Masoud.

Despite not writing much fiction myself, fiction is what I consume the most of. I cannot rave enough about The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafa, but my favorite book is The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa. It isn’t Abulhawa’s most popular book by any means, but I’ve yet to find another work of art that has moved me the same way, though her other books have also brought tears to my eyes. My poetry collection collects the most dust. I do love (most) of my poetry books very dearly, but I just don’t consume poetry as easily as I do fiction and nonfiction. I like to read poems unrushed so I can take the time to contemplate and annotate. I like to read poems freshly showered. I like to be warm and comfortable when I read poems, with a candle blazing quietly and a little drink near by. This sort of free time has become rare to me as a student, so most of what I read is assigned to me for class. Though I was required to buy and read these, I’ve grown to love and learn from Marwa Helal’s Ante Body and Customs by Solmaz Sharif. My love of fiction and poetry collide with a flower from my family’s pomegranate tree on Tar Baby by Toni Morrison in the form of a signature that does not belong to Toni Morrison. A poet signed Tar Baby for me after I met him with Morrison’s book in my bag instead of his own. I sometimes wonder if authors could recognize their signature among other vague squiggles. If you can guess who signed my book, give yourself a pat on the back.

I cannot write about my books without including the nonfiction that helped shape my view on the world, like the classic by Edward Said, Orientalism, or others, including Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. I would be doing a greater disservice to myself if I didn’t mention the most influential author in my life: my grandfather. In 1948, my grandfather was expelled from his home and land in the Palestinian village of Ishwa’ outside Jerusalem. His attempts to return were cut short after his imprisonment by Zionist militias, but he never stopped trying to return to Ishwa’. His priceless memories of his village and people were published in Ishwa’: a Palestinian Village in 1998. The book is a preservation of Ishwa’s history with testimonies from my grandfather and other Nakba survivors. David Ben-Gurion famously once said about Palestinian refugees, “The old will die and the young will forget.” My grandfather and family stand as just one refutation to this statement. Our old live after death and our young are born with the memories of the Nakba.

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Hedaya Hasan is a Palestinian writer and designer based in Chicago.