A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Chapters 20-22

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Jerusalem, September 9, 2003”

Content Warning: The novel addresses themes of violence, conflict, trauma, and political tension. It includes references to suicide bombings, terrorism, death, and mental health conditions.

The novel opens with the line, “It’s a time of darkness, sadness, and horror. The fear’s back again” (1), which is part of Tal’s diary. She is preparing for bed when the sound of an explosion rattles the windows of her family’s house. They know it is a bomb, and the family is on alert. As a military nurse, Tal’s brother Eytan rushes out with his first aid kit, followed by their father; Tal’s mother cries and then connects to every media source to learn more. Tal goes to bed and tries to block out the sound of ambulances.

Tal thinks about how strange it is that she has suddenly chosen to write in a diary about the bombing, since it was never her habit. She remembers receiving The Diary of Anne Frank as a birthday gift; she connects with Frank’s dream of being a writer and hopes for freedom and reflects on the unfairness of Frank dying just before Bergen-Belsen was freed.

Tal provides more details about the attack and the six people who were killed—“an average attack” (5). It bothers Tal to know that one woman who died was about to be married that day. She thinks about the devastation of the groom, who wanted to put the wedding ring on his fiancée but was not allowed because “religious law forbade celebrating a union with a dead person” (5). Tal worries about dying and decides that is why she has decided to write, so the words in her head don’t frighten her family and friends.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Seeing Doves Fly”

Tal introduces herself formally and explains that she was born in Tel Aviv but lives in Jerusalem. Her father is a tour guide who brings to life the history of the city as a center for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. He speaks with deep sadness about the way conflict has overtaken the city. She thinks that, out of all the beautiful cities in the world, Jerusalem is where she wants to live, but “[t]o live, and not to die” (9). She thinks about how she could have been in the cafe during the explosion.

Tal’s narrative flashes back to September 13, 1993. She saw her parents cry with joy as they watched Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat on television. They believed the Oslo Accords would allow Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace. She and Eytan knew it was a special occasion because their parents allowed them to have junk food and sip champagne. She recounts the memory of seeing white doves fly above Jerusalem, a symbol of peace and hope.

Chapter 3 Summary: “A Letter, A Bottle, Some Hope”

During biology class, Tal decides to write a letter, hoping that someone in Palestine will read it. When her friend Efrat catches her writing, Tal claims she is writing to her boyfriend, Ori.

Tal’s letter lists all the things she is and hopes the Palestinian recipient of her letter will be, too: a girl her age with an annoying brother she adores, who wonders where she will be in 10 years’ time. She recounts the bombing and thinks about how meaningless it is to blame “the Palestinians” as though they are all one person. She acknowledges that maybe whoever finds the letter will hate her, but says “we should learn to know each other, for all sorts of reasons but mainly because we want to get on with living our lives in peace because we’re young” (17). She closes with her email address.

Tal puts the letter in the champagne bottle her parents had saved from September 13, 1993, and asks Eytan to throw it into the Gaza Sea. He tells her it’s too dangerous, but after some pleading by Tal, he agrees.

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Reply”

A reply arrives from the email handle “Gazaman.” The writer laughs at Tal’s naivete, pointing out that anyone could have found her letter and that most Palestinians don’t read Hebrew. He says she writes well but calls her patronizing for “holding out a hand to the nasty Palestinians who may not be as nasty as all that” (22) and suggests she enter a film or poetry contest for peace instead. He says his cousin Yacine won a box of chocolates in a contest like that, but because the prize was bought in Israel, Yacine’s father threw them away.

Tal excitedly replies to the email, telling Gazaman that he also writes well, and that she thinks he does care about things even though he pretends not to. She points out how they are both unlucky for having been born in the bloodiest century in history, according to her history teacher, a lesson she says depressed her classmates. Her biology teacher comforted them by arguing that it was also a century of antibiotics and vaccines. With the 20th century behind them, Tal asks Gazaman what he plans to do with the 21st century.

Chapter 5 Summary: “An Argument with Myself”

Writing in a journal, Naïm describes finding the bottle from Tal buried in the sand. He was thinking about the hopes his family had in 1993 as well, his father’s firm belief that peace would turn Gaza into a seaside resort, that the promises meant Palestinians would soon have a country. Naïm felt the bottle jab him as he lay in the sand. He is annoyed that her ideas touched his heart.

Naïm emphasizes the danger of going to the internet cafe and replying to Tal: “If you have nonaggressive contact with Israelis in this place they pretty quickly think you’re a collaborator” (31). He describes the senselessness of the war, jihad, and suicide bombings, and he points out of the irony of doing all this for a “liberated Palestine” in which the dictates of Islamic law will restrict his life. Naïm is angered by life circumstances, so he writes his feelings down, then tears the paper up, so no one will ever find it in a place where “EVERYTHING IS BANNED” (32).

Chapters 1-5 Analysis

This section introduces the text’s central and supporting characters, its interwoven first-person narrative structure, and several key themes and motifs. When Tal and Naïm introduce themselves in the text through their journal entries, and to one another through their letters, an intimate and candid tone is established: While they are defensive with one another at first, they are open and honest in their journal writing. This presents both characters as realistic: “Gazaman” is who he says he is because alongside his letters are his journal entries. Without this use of his perspective, it would be difficult to eliminate the idea of a potential twist; providing the characters’ journal entries gives authenticity in addition to revealing their internal struggles, which they slowly begin to share with each other.

This narrative structure further builds characterization and demonstrates that Tal and Naïm have more in common than they at first realize. Similar worldviews are juxtaposed through the characters’ written memories and reflections, which also develops the theme of Hope Versus Despair. Tal’s musings about the forbidding rabbi and the devastated groom demonstrate a willingness to question the power of authority, particularly religion: “I wonder whether religious law devotes a chapter to how to behave when you’re in the depths of despair” (5). This is echoed by Naïm’s frustration with his perceived hypocrisy of conducting violence in the name of God and the limitations placed on what he can enjoy by sharia law: ”Is that what life really is?” (32). By contrast, the two characters’ descriptions of their parents’ hope for the future after the 1993 Oslo Accords demonstrate a persistent hope that there can be peace between the two sides, the two families, and the two individuals. Further, Tal’s decision to send her message in the champagne bottle from that memorable day and Naïm’s decision to pick it up rather than throw it away makes the bottle a symbol of hope for the future and of connection between the two characters.

Through the juxtaposition of the two days 10 years apart—the peace accords and the cafe bombing—the text explores The Impact of Geopolitical Conflict on Individual Lives, using the motif of numbers and dates to show how quickly events and moods can shift from hope to despair. In particular, the fact that a young woman about to be married was killed in the attack sparks a kind of existential panic in Tal, who wonders what she would do if she only had three years left to live. The violence is both literally and figuratively close to home, and her response demonstrates a knowledge of her powerlessness to control her fate in many ways. Tal’s recollection of receiving The Diary of Anne Frank and her dismay that Anne died when freedom was so close, “just eight little weeks” (4) away, contributes to a sense of teetering on an edge of “if” that becomes a pattern of Tal’s thinking. To Tal’s mind, if only one small thing had been different, peace might have been attained, people might have lived instead of died, or vice versa. Her perspective on Frank also demonstrates her hopeful nature.

Tal’s reverence for the simple Power of Storytelling and Communication—whether in The Diary of Anne Frank, her father’s tours of Jerusalem, or through her own aspirations to become a filmmaker—shows her belief in its power to build empathy, broaden perspectives, and transport people beyond their immediate realities. Tal praises her father’s storytelling abilities and their ability to show the world beyond her limited perspective: “That’s what makes him a wonderful poet, a storyteller. I could walk with him for hours, traveling through time, looking at my city through eyes different from most people’s” (9). Tal’s perspective shows how a willingness to look at the world from someone else’s perspective can help people to overcome barriers and even generations of conflict. Tal believes that if people “tr[ied] to get to know each other, the future might have a chance of turning out some other color than the red of spilled blood and the black of hate” (25). Tal voices her faith in the ability of stories to change the world for the better, and she undergoes this task herself when she writes and bottles her letter. That she is motivated to write after the café bombing demonstrates a desperate desire to understand and to be understood in turn. Tal is a hopeful, even romantic character who, in times of crisis, reaches for wild hope instead of despair.

Finally, by creating several juxtapositions in this first section—Hope Versus Despair, peace versus violence, secular versus religious life, the motif of dreams and nightmares—the text emphasizes The Complexities of Identity and Belonging in a Divided Society. Neither Naïm nor Tal know quite where they belong; both feel that the violence of the present is a kind of nightmare, and they dream of something better. For Naïm, the only way to overcome his divided society is to escape it altogether by metaphorically finding refuge in his head, “the only place where no Tsahal soldier, no guy from Hamas, not even my father or my mother can get in” (32). However, as soon as he puts his thoughts on paper, he is again at risk of someone seeing who he really is—whether that is Tal or people at the internet café who will assume he is a conspirator for speaking with an Israeli person. This struggle between opposites who, despite all odds, find common ground becomes the driving force behind the pair’s communications and the novel’s plot.