Abstract:
I Shall Not Hate is the ultimate thesis on hope, narrating the story of
a father who clings tenaciously to the hope of a better tomorrow for a flock
of people. It is a memoir by Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Gazan doctor who lost his
three young and lovely daughters to Israeli shells in January 2009. Because
this is the ultimate thesis on hope this offers much more than a dozen
motivational tomes for the war-victims in all the countries. This is the story
of a father who lived most of his life in refugee camps, negotiating his plight
with surprising determination only to be shaken and shocked further. Still
he clings tenaciously to the hope of a better tomorrow for a flock of people
who have suffered oppression for decades. The author of this paper finds this
book as a human cry for peace and therefore a relevant one for the people in
Sri Lanka especially for those who are from Jaffna and Vanni who still
witness the post-war currents in their places. The most of the Tamils in
northern Sri Lanka have undergone the similar experiences of the Gazan
doctor and they have undergone all kinds of sufferings and hardships such as
multiple displacements, deaths, injuries, deprivations of basic needs. Their
psychosocial and mental consequences are obviously exposure to massive,
existential trauma. This paper as a qualitative and descriptive analytical
method explores along with some theoretical studies the way in which this
book could be a remedy for the Tamils who still possess scarred minds. This
paper makes an attempt to shed light on the socio political discourses by
paying attention to the narrative, The Broken Palmyrah and the novel, The
Whirlwind.
