A Memoir in Five Generations
Daughters of Palestine is now available for pre-order! Release date is July 8.
From Palestine to Texas in 100 years, this epic family tale follows five generations of Christian women as their family’s intimate dramas—full of hope, fear, grief, and joy—play out against a backdrop of violence that would rip them from their homeland.
Leyla King has been a keeper of family stories since long before she sat down across from her grandmother with a tiny cassette tape recorder. And in this remarkable memoir she braids matriarchal memory into a vivid saga of love and survival as her ancestors flee war and poverty.
From Haifa to Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut, and finally Austin, King makes global politics deeply personal as family squabbles, ambition, mental illness, romance, and religion shape her family’s immigrant journey. Told in immersive vignettes with a lyrical structure that evokes Scheherazade, Daughters of Palestine is both an urgent testimony from Palestinian Christians and a timeless story of resilience.
We start with laughing now. Now, in the comfort of my own home, with steaming cups of tea before us and the promise of the cookies I made yesterday awaiting us in the kitchen, we share these stories, to be recorded and retained and remembered, with joy and thankfulness. But it wasn’t always that way. There was much suffering, too. To get to this place, this moment, with Leylati, there was first pain and heartache and so much loss. … We start with laughing now, but before that, first, there was Za’leh.
“Absolutely riveting. This fast-paced, immersive book reads like a novel and tells the truth of one family’s legacy of faith and love through displacements and wars, across decades and continents. A must-read for anyone interested in learning about the complexities of a region often misrepresented in the West, but who loves a great story most of all.”
— Jessica Goudeau, author of After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America and We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration
“King pulls no punches in detailing how seemingly safe harbors for refugees can suddenly become threatening, and vividly captures how her family celebrated life’s blessings and endured tumult with the aid of their faith. The result is a powerful narrative of loss, survival, and belief.” — Publishers Weekly
“WE START WITH LAUGHING NOW”
Watch a slideshow and hear the first minute of
the original interview recording between Leyla and Bahi
PHOTO ALBUM
From top left to bottom right: Bahi and Fariid wedding photo; May and Elham as children; the Habiibi family in Egypt after the Nakba; Sami and his niece May in Damascus; May receives a “wedding gift” during the reception; Fariid and brother George with their father Sleiman
From top left to bottom right: Baby May; Baby May with her paternal grandmother Labibeh; Fariid (back left) with his five brothers; May & Joe on their wedding day, Beirut; the Owayda family; Bahi & Leyla; Bahi at the Ramallah Friends School (seated, second from left); Aniiseh & Wadii’ on their wedding day and then later.
From top left to bottom right: Bahi as a young woman, wearing the cross her mother lent her; Bahi and Fariid with baby May and Fariid’s brothers outside their first apartment in Beirut immediately after the Nakba; May and her baby brother, the first Sleiman, Damascus; Habiibi family and friends on the occasion of Rose’s wedding, Haifa, 1947; the Owayda siblings as children; Rose and Bahi (right) as young girls; the Kamalick family, Houston; the Owayda family in Damascus, including the first Sleiman (on horse)
Bahi & Fariid with Fariid’s five brothers and their wives (Labiib is standing, fourth from left) on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary; Aniiseh & Wadii’ and their daughters (at the time); Bahi and baby May; Bahi photographed in her engagement dress; Bahi (seated third from left) and her graduating class at the Ramallah Friends School
from left: May, Lena, Bahi, Sleiman (“Moni”) and Salaam
Daughters of Palestine
Top photo:
Beatrice and her namesake, Bahi, Boston, 2015
Middle photo:
May, Leyla, Bahi, Buffalo, 2009
Bottom photo:
from top left: Zeyna, May, Aniiseh, Bahi, Leyla, Houston, mid-1990s
The Thankful Priest - Leyla King 