Sahar Mustafah’s new book, “The Slightest Green,” tells the story of a separated family discovering their love for each other and the heritage they are destined to continue.
Flossmoor High School, displays her latest novel “The Slightest
Green” during a book reading at Beyond Books in Homewood on
Nov. 20. (Marilyn Thomas/H-F Chronicle)
This is the second novel by Mustafah, an award-winning author who teaches creative writing at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. Her first novel, “The Beauty of Your Face,” completed in 2018, won wide acclaim, including being listed as one of 27 finalist selections in the New York Times’ Editors’ Choice for First Novel Prize competition in 2020.
“The Slightest Green” looks at a Palestinian grandmother, Sundus, living in Palestine, and her 26-year-old granddaughter, Intisar, raised in Chicago. Their relationship is estranged. They are brought together by the death of their son and father, Hafez.
Intisar hadn’t seen him for nearly 20 years when he left Chicago to join the resistance. He was arrested and held in prison for all those years. Now that her father has died, Intisar inherits the family’s plot where her grandmother lives and harvests grapes. Will Intisar learn to accept her grandmother and agree to keep the land in the family?
Mustafah started writing this novel in 2018, but it took her time to develop a cohesive story. One editor told her to “find the connective tissue” and when she developed the character for Hafez the story came together, she said.
The author drew from her own experiences and knowledge of place. A second-generation Palestinian American, Mustafah said she was 10 years old when she went to live with her grandparents for five years in Palestine from 1983 to 1988.
That period “was probably the best time of my life. It was culture shock when I got there, but it was the first time that I felt like I belonged. And being 10 years old I couldn’t articulate that. You don’t know until you leave a place; and I had a great childhood on the south side of Chicago, but this felt different.
Mustafah has memories of sitting with her grandmother who would sell grapes from her vineyard “and she got the old-fashioned scale and she’d sell to the locals and those in the refugee camp,” Mustafah said. The grandmother character in the book is drawn from her remembrances of her grandmother.
“For me, Sundus, she’s come to represent the historical. The grandmother represents Palestine in 1948 and expelled from her land. She manages to hold on because her husband bought this land and was able to bring it back to a vineyard. The father, Hafez, represents the system and Intifada and the daughter Intisar, she’s bearing witness, but I think she represents the future,” Mustafah said.
The book’s title “The Slightest Green” represents that hope. Mustafah said her mother-in-law believes that plants that appear to be dying but still have a bit of green can be revived.
She was saddened by the suffering of the Palestinian people through the destruction of their land in the Gaza Strip and encroaching settlements in the West Bank. Mustafah says the people are living through a genocide.
She doesn’t believe in writing flowery endings “but I believe in change and the possibility of change.” Writing this story about a Palestinian family has been her way of bearing witness and taking her own action by supporting the Palestinian people through words.
“When the (2023) genocide began I was paralyzed and I couldn’t write and I thought ‘Why does this matter?’ and I hear writers talk about this is what we need to do. This is like our job and so … I try to be a voice,” Mustafah said.
“I just think writing fiction is good for my spirit because I can just imagine another future, imagine the possibilities,” and as she wrote the book she had students in her creative writing class offer their input.
“It’s been this honor to be a teacher who writes to be a writer’s teacher. I got to read to them. I think it also demonstrates that their voice matters. It’s not just about writing but publishing. I’m really big on that. I hope I can continue to emulate that to them.”
Mustafah said she has the idea for another novel in mind. She also is collecting short stories for a book.
“The Slightest Green” is available at Beyond the Book bookstore, 18063 Dixie Highway in Homewood.
