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.

Nahr, a Palestinian woman, is in The Cube, a specialized cell in an Israeli prison. She has been incarcerated for many years and her hair has begun to go grey. She recalls various visitors she has had over the years, and reflects that they come less frequently than they used to.

She remembers one Western woman in particular, either a journalist or a human rights worker, who had begun the interview by asking her a series of questions that revealed her own bias and sensationalist view of Nahr’s case. Nahr had disliked her, but she’d brought a Palestinian interpreter who communicated with Nahr using a covert Palestinian code often employed in the presence of Israelis. Nahr had liked the Palestinian.

The Western woman continued her line of questions, with Nahr feeling increasingly uncomfortable. The woman asked Nahr if it was true that multiple men raped her on the night that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. Nahr, upset, told her that she hadn’t been, but also that it was none of her business.