A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (2023) -Nathan Thrall

This is such an emotionally challenging read but well worth it

Content Warnings: Death, racism, colonialism, car accident, fire, rape, police brutality

Representation: Palestinian, Arab

Favorite Quote: “No one said that the Palestinians in the area were neglected because the Jewish state aimed to reduce their presence in greater Jerusalem, the place most coveted by Israel. For these acts, no one was held to account.”

        A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a piece of long-form journalistic writing that utilizes a narrative prose akin to a fiction novel to tell the story of a tragic bus accident that took place just outside of Jerusalem in a way that is captivating and heartbreaking beyond what a normal expository piece could normally capture. Through extensive research and personal interviews, the author Nathan Thrall, paints a fully fleshed-out narrative that rejects the minimizing attitude of the local media at the time of the accident.

        The bus accident happened in 2012 between a school bus full of Palestinian school children and a truck poorly operated by local man traveling too from their hometown Anata. In the aftermath of this accident, many victims of the crash were ferried to nearby hospitals by unequipped onlookers while rescue services had yet to arrive. This informality, alongside the widespread and systematic restrictions on the movement of West Bank Palestinians, made it difficult for many of the parents of these school children to track down their children. For some, this meant an entire day of chasing rumors only to discover their child was among the five children dead from the accident.

        The largest portion of the book follows the life of Abed Salama, the father of one of the children involved in the accident. Beyond the sequence of events that took place immediately before and after the accident, the book gives a detailed background of Abed, giving invaluable insight and context of the systems faced by Palestinians that enabled this accident to happen at the scale it did.

        The book also shifts points of view to fill in the gaps of perspective. Though at times this makes it difficult to follow along, it is an effective technique to overcome the limitations of non-fiction writing lacking an omnificent narrator. The author includes an extraordinary amount of detail despite not having access to every facet of the story at once.

        Thrall himself is an Israeli Jew who migrated from the United States. Through his experiences bearing witness to the oppression of Palestinians and the implication he felt as an American whose tax dollars fund this very oppression, Thrall has used his conviction to dedicate his career to pushing back against the dominant narrative of the United States and Israel that downplays the plight of the Palestinian people. Through this book, Thrall demonstrates unwavering allyship and extensive scholarship.

4.75⭐️