Against the Loveless World

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussions of the source text’s depictions of sexual assault, rape, sexual exploitation, abuse, anti-gay bias, and political violence.

“You think prostitution has to do with sexuality?”

Nahr asks this question to a Western woman who comes to interview her, introducing the theme of The Complexities of Sexuality and Women’s Autonomy. The Israeli government has created a false narrative around Nahr, claiming she was an abused woman forced into terrorism whom they “saved.” The sensationalism of this story robs Nahr of agency, multifaceted identity, and the right to speak her own truth. The Western woman, who has equated sex work with unbridled sexuality, speaks to her own lack of understanding about the complexities of sex work. Nahr pushes back against such simplistic narratives.

“Eastern dance, what people who don’t know better call ‘belly dancing,’ might look like controlled, orchestrated movement, but it is actually the opposite. Our dance is about chaos and anarchy. It’s the antithesis of control.”

Nahr speaks of the disparity between Western conceptualizations of the Arab world and the reality of life in Palestinian culture. Nahr comes into contact with a series of people who view her through the lens of bias and stereotype, and this anecdote about Eastern dance encapsulates the problematic way that many Westerners view the Middle East.

“Palestine remained the old country in my young mind, a distant place of my grandmother’s generation.”

Nahr grew up in exile from her family’s Palestinian homeland, in Kuwait. Her family was forced off of their land during the 1948 Israeli occupation that would come to be known as the Nakba (See: Background).