The Inheritance

The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifa

Finished The Inheritance by Sahar Khalifa, a Palestinian author who shares the moving story of a young woman, Zayna, born in America from the union of a Palestinian father and American mother.  Her mother leaves the family after her birth and she lives with her father in Brooklyn.  At age 15, she violates his honor by getting pregnant.  His rage includes an attempt to kill Zayna, but he is stopped by her maternal grandmother.  Her father leaves her to go back to his homeland in the West Bank, and she remains with her grandmother.  After a successful academic trajectory, which included receiving her doctorate and being hired as a professor, Zayna longs to be reconnected to her father, which leads to a search of his homeland.  The second part of the book focuses on Zayna’s unhappiness in life, and a letter from an uncle informing her of father’s impending death.  Zayna decides to face whatever she will find in the West Bank and a family she didn't know existed.  What she finds is a new “stepmother”, who recently wed her father, who has done well financially.  Her uncle and his family believe that Zayna should inherit all of his land and money, but his new wife informs all that she is pregnant, even as a woman in her 40s, 30 years his junior (she was inseminated just a few months prior to her husband’s illness.)  The rest of the story goes into great detail of the issues related to family, the role of women in the Middle East during the 1990s, and who should get the inheritance of a large financial windfall.  The story reveals the restricted role women have in Palestine through the lens of a woman.  Father against children, daughters against brother, and raw horror of sexual abuse are all detailed in a very moving story.  (Note: it is translated into English so the glossary in the back is helpful for Arabic idioms and language nuances.)  Another book hard to put down.