Isra

Isra is the most significant protagonist of the novel, and one of the three third person perspectives. Isra is the wife of Adam, daughter-in-law of Fareeda and Khaled, sister-in-law to Sarah, and the mother of Deya, Nora, Layla, and Amal. Rum describes Isra as plain, “her face as dull as wheat, her eyes as black as charcoal” with only her hair - covered by her hijab as particularly striking (8). Her mother even mocks her “sharp features, saying her nose was long and pointed, her forehead too large” (14). The novel opens first with the unknown voice, then begins on page three from Isra’s perspective in Birzeit, Palestine in the spring of 1990. The novel follows Isra’s story until her death in the fall of 1997, though Rum ends the novel with the train doors opening, rather than describing the tragedy about to unfold.

Rum uses A Thousand and One...