Ahlam Bisharat’s Code Name: Butterfly follows the familiar coming-of-age storyline of YA fiction- like common adolescent concerns such as periods, first crushes, friendships, identity and sexuality. The fourteen years-old protagonist is growing up after the second intifada which ended in 2005. Since the book is from occupied Palestine where deaths, arrests and demolitions are daily rituals, it doesn’t follow the ‘non-violence’ trope attached to the genre. Graphic descriptions of a “massacre”, the death of Uncle Saleh who was shot “over and over” and the mine that caused Bakr to lose both his legs are all but a commonplace one for teenagers in Palestine. The vivid first-hand experiences of the novelist are clearly woven in throughout.
Yet the Israel/Palestine conflict is not the main focus. It is Butterfly’s inquiring mind. At times it reveals a painful naïveté: She isn’t certain about the exact mechanics of procreation, which leads to ridicule from Haya, a friend of hers who knows more about sexuality. Yet, her inner monologues penetrate questions about herself, her family, and the state of the world she inhabits. Which side of the occupation does her father support? Will she follow her dream to leave Palestine? Why did the widow of her uncle get married to the brother of her late husband? Is her father wrong to enjoy his work in the settlers’ farms? Is she wrong to eat the chocolates given by his bosses? Why does her adored elder sister Zaynab desert her hero-lover for a new marriage to a Saudi? “Why is marriage such a miserable affair in my country?” Unable to connect with her parents, her siblings or friends, she devises an imaginary treasure chest to store the many questions cropping up within her, which she declares is almost full to bursting point. But sadly, the answers are not forthcoming from anywhere and by the end of the novel she realizes that grown-ups do not have all the answers. They themselves have many unanswered questions of their own. And so is the reader who looks, as M Lynx Qualey puts it, “through the eyes of a 14 or 15-year-old girl who doesn’t know what to think about her eyebrows, much less the two-state solution” (thenationalnews.com).
Part of Butterfly’s coming of age is gaining perspective on her life. And herein lies the exact differences between childhood in Palestine and childhood outside of there. After coming back from seeing her sister fly from Jordan to go live with her new husband, Butterfly describes how the kids in Jordan “can travel from city to city with their families … since there aren’t any check points. They don’t even have to carry their birth certificates everywhere”. This culminates in the poignant realization: “In Palestine, children have to prove they’re children”.
In the second half of the book, some events that push Butterfly out of her musings and towards adulthood occur. As seen earlier, her older sister leaves the country for marriage, leaving behind her love for the fidai in the prison on familial pressures. Her father loses his job at the vineyard after decades of work, and her crush is martyred one morning for his protesting of the occupation. The novel ends with a symbolic passage sparked by the realization that baffles Grandpa Mubarak and Grandma Amna equally as her. The community is fighting themselves instead of their actual enemies. Ultimately, this is the question: can she survive the cruelties of this occupied world? If she stays in Palestine, terrible things will happen to her. Will she, like her grandmother, learn to be resolute? She goes into the dream of her butterfly wings flying up out of her inner cocoon, throwing everything stored there aside as it soars away. All of the sadness and uncertainty are reconciled with a knowledge that “Sitting outside my grandparents’ tent, I placed my hand on my heart, the place where I’d felt the butterfly getting bigger and stronger, and I knew I had what it took to go life’s distance.” The questions remain open to the reader to look around, and the book doesn’t pretend to offer answers.