Sulha

Lyn Clark is a Ph.D. candidate in adult education and counselling at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

After living with a family of Bedouins in the Sinai Desert for five
months, Malka Marom returned to Toronto where she endured severe culture
shock. In her own home, she was as much a stranger as she had been when
living in an isolated culture that had not changed in 1500 years. Around
this time, the novel Sulha began to take shape, as autobiography layered
with interdisciplinary foci: the environment (the desert, the tents, the
land), antithetical cultures (Arab and Jewish), interpersonal and gender
relations, and a concept of peace distinct from cessation of combat (the
word “Sulha” means forgiveness, reconciliation, making whole that
which has been torn asunder).

Marom’s novel is told from the perspective of Leora, an Israeli who
is widowed during the Sinai War and exiled to Toronto with her baby son,
Levi. Twenty years later, she is required by Israeli law to decide
whether or not to allow her only son to serve high-risk duty in the
Israeli Air Force, the service that claimed the life of his father,
Arik. As Leora searches for an answer to her son’s future, and a
reconciliation with her own past, the reader is introduced to the
ancient lifestyle and customs of the Arabs on Badu Mountain—Arabs who
had been the enemy during Leora’s youth and over whose territory
Arik’s plane had been lost.

Leora, who is accompanied on her journey by Russell, a professor of
Arab history and culture, and Tal, a kibbutznik and former commander in
an Israeli army elite unit, is appalled to see the riverbed roads of the
Sinai Desert lined with rusting helmets and tanks from previous wars.

Sulha is a novel that may well become a classic.