The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant

Documenting a historic struggle with fresh vision, Sahar Khalifeh has penned what is at once a re-casting of the story of the Holy Family, a lyrical ode to Arab Jerusalem, and a call for liberation, not just of a nation but of its individual women and men. After abandoning his beloved Mariam when she falls pregnant, and escaping her brothers’ bullets, Ibrahim abandons his own ideals and dreams of becoming a fiction writer, opting instead to follow the path of wealth and commercial success abroad approved by his father. Thirty years later, lonely and disillusioned, an older Ibrahim returns to Ramallah to retrace the past he tried to leave behind. He sets out on a long and frustrating quest to track down Mariam, which takes him from the West...