Structure

The structure of the narrative is centered around a repeated formal device. Each chapter opens with a brief, harrowing description of violence in Gaza, usually just a sentence or two, before shifting abruptly into Akkad’s reflections. These reflections range from childhood memories in Qatar to professional anecdotes from his journalism career, to personal experiences of family life in North America. There are several possible interpretations of this framing technique. One could argue that the juxtaposition is deliberate, designed to highlight Akkad’s own relative safety and privilege as someone living in the West. The contrast between the catastrophic and the mundane draws attention to the asymmetry of global suffering and forces the reader to inhabit that discomfort. Alternatively, the form might be understood as an attempt to resist the reader’s tendency to compartmentalize suffering in Gaza, placing it side-by-side with “normal life” to signal that...