“Safiyyah’s War” is such a refreshing and enlightening book.
As I browsed through the awesome book parcel I received recently, this was the first book I wanted to dive into.
“The dense crowd trailed slowly, exhaustion visible on their faces. It was more than just exhaustion, it looked like despair. The people were silent, only the thunder of a thousand weary footsteps sounded. Safiyyah couldn’t see where the beginning or end of the moving line was. Like a river whose water was heavy with loss.”
Intensely lyrical, Hiba Noor Khan’s book was emotive and heart-wrenching on so many counts. Heroine Safiyyah is also intensely likeable, probably not least because every child can identify with her self-equivocating rebelliousness and disregard for danger, under the justification of doing right.
*spoiler alert*
A story of an Algerian child living in Paris coming to terms with the Nazis invading France and surviving bombs as the air raid siren wails. A story of Muslims hiding Jews in the Parisian mosque and risking their lives to falsify identity documents, smuggle them to the Jews and later smuggling the Jews themselves out. A story of Maryam and Miriam, a name that means “this woman is worth two men”. 💃>🕺🕺
I loved the depictions of faith of this book, and the quiet strength exuded by Setti, the Muslim grandmother who had lived through war in Algeria and had become a refugee herself, now having to live through another war. She comforts a Jewish child – “Don’t lose hope of reunion, if God split the vast sea in two for Moses, what isn’t possible for you?”
I also enjoyed the breadth of lived experiences the book managed to cover in such a concise number of pages. Setti’s decline and eventual passing was portrayed with such realism and dignity, and Safiyyah’s final offering to her completed the arc with grace.
This is a story based on true historical fact, and is one that is long overdue in its telling. Indeed, whatever injustice goes on in Palestine and Israel today, there was certainly a time when Muslims and Jews helped one another – and as people who share the same first five chapters of Holy Scripture, they do have much more in common than is professed today.
9/10 stars
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