The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant

In the mid-1960s, Ibrahim, a Palestinian-Muslim school teacher with literary ambitions, takes a job in a small Jordanian village and falls in love with Mariam, a Christian raised in Brazil who has returned to her home village. The problem with this love affair, as Ibrahim realizes in the retrospective voice that dominates the novel, is that he has loved his image of Mariam and has never understood her as a real person. Reality intrudes, however, when Mariam becomes pregnant: Ibrahim is paralyzed by the difficulties a Muslim-Christian marriage presents, and jealous of Mariam's prior adoration of a Brazilian priest. His growing commitment to Palestinian liberation after the 1967 war allows him to justify his return. When he returns to Jordan in 2000—a wealthy, twice-divorced and disillusioned secular Arab—he becomes obsessed with finding Mariam and his unknown son. The title's complexities mirror those of this fugue-like novel, which finds Ibrahim cycling among versions of himself and of Mariam. As Ibrahim's realizations pile up, their irreconcilability becomes a delicate and powerful allegory for Middle Eastern conflict. Palestinian novelist Khalifeh (Wild Thorns ), who won the 2006 Naguib Mahfouz medal for literature, offers a challenging take on vexing territory. (Jan.)