Susan Muaddi Darraj is the daughter of successful immigrants. They left their home village of Taybeh, near Ramallah in Palestine in 1967 to make a new life in America. There, they worked hard, saved well and put four children through university. But they were in the minority.
“The immigrant success story is more rare than people imagine,” Muaddi Darraj tells The National. “I am interested, in my novel, in the majority of immigrants – those who arrive and continue to struggle.”
That novel is Behind You Is the Sea, a powerful and poignant portrait of three Palestinian immigrant families in Baltimore. It unfolds through linked tales that highlight the trials, upheavals, aspirations and expectations of a wide range of characters.
“I love experimenting with voice,” Muaddi Darraj explains. “The characters in my novel take control of their own chapters, and you get to experience the world through their perspective. This form also allows me to illustrate for the reader just how diverse the Palestinian community really is.”
Characters readers meet include Layla, who takes issue with the representation of Arabs in her high school’s production of Aladdin. Walid tries to mask his disapproval as his son marries a non-Arab woman (who insists on calling him “Ray” instead of Raed), while enduring ignorant remarks from the bride’s father. And Rania learns the hard way that her husband lied about his involvement in a heinous crime.
Older characters regard emigration as a wrong move. “Mama wishes she’d never left Palestine,” says one woman. “She thinks America is one big trick that God played on her.”
At the centre of the book is Marcus Salameh, a police detective investigating a domestic violence case who then picks sides in a family rift. Marcus reappears in the book’s bravura closing chapter. After obtaining permission from the Israeli embassy to bring his father’s body back to Palestine to be buried (“letting a dead Palestinian come home was better than a live one”) he travels there for the first time and discovers a family secret.
Muaddi Darraj had a clear objective for this, her first novel. “For many people in my social circle, I am the only Palestinian they know,” she says. “When I see the ways in which the media regularly dehumanises Palestinians, it’s because most people simply don’t interact with any who might challenge those deeply entrenched stereotypes about them.
“In this novel, I set out to introduce the reader to one particular Palestinian community, and I do so by introducing you to its members one by one. Each person you meet is a bridge to the next person, and so on. And I hope you eventually see that these people actually feel very familiar and that you have a connection.”
Like her characters, Muaddi Darraj lives in Baltimore. But life didn’t start out there. She was born in 1975 in Philadelphia in a working-class area with a melting-pot community.
“I heard a lot of beautiful stories about Palestine and was lucky enough to travel there with my family every few summers to spend time with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins," she adds. "Later I studied at Birzeit University as a college student for one semester. It’s a beautiful place and its people are hospitable, resilient and generous. It feels like home in the best ways.”
Muaddi Darraj decided to become an English professor but, at the same time, “always tinkered with writing my own stories". Her literary output has been both varied and acclaimed, from the Arab American Book Award-winning short story collection A Curious Land (2016) to a groundbreaking series of children’s books.
“Farah Rocks is the first children’s series in North America to feature a Palestinian character,” she says. “I’m very proud of that, especially because I wrote it for my own daughter to help diversify her own bookshelf, to allow her a mirror in which to see her own life reflected.”
Muaddi Darraj is acutely aware that not enough Palestinian authors’ voices are being heard.
“We are terribly underrepresented,” she acknowledges. “Right now, during the assault on Gaza, Palestine is in the news every day, and yet it would be easier to get an assignment to write an op-ed or think piece if you are not Palestinian than if you are.
“This is very frustrating for me, but I try to mentor young Palestinian writers and help them understand the industry.”
At one point in Behind You Is the Sea, a character who is employed to clean up after wealthy, pampered teenagers, declares: “Arabs are ridiculous; even if they live a dream life, they want to star in some tragedy. If there is no tragedy, they imagine one.” Unfortunately, the tragedy in Muaddi Darraj’s ancestral homeland is all too real. She is appalled at the worsening crisis.
“What we are seeing now is a genocide, an attempted erasure of the Palestinian people,” she says. “It started decades ago and it has now reached a horrifying point. The murders of almost 40,000 people are only possible because of the dehumanising and racist ways in which Palestinians are depicted in the media. This is most obvious when you compare media coverage of Palestine to Ukraine.
“I hope that social media, literature, public demonstrations will do what the news media, at least in the USA, cannot do – present a fuller picture of who the Palestinians truly are.”
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj is available now, published by Swift Press
