Gaza
The novel takes the reader on a tour of life on the Gaza strip. What could have been a splendid Mediterranean paradise is actually a hellish place, because constant conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces keep the town war-ravaged and paranoid. Gaza is seen through the lends of a medical practitioner, Izzeldin Abuelaish, who tries to help the wounded from the war from a refugee camp. Life in the Jabalia camp in Gaza is proof of the damage of war.
Warfare imagery
The doctor watched in horror as a bomb ripped through his home in Palestine and killed his three daughters, so he becomes a medical missionary for other people harmed by war. War is seen for its tangible aspects, like bomb blasts which continue through much of the book, and it is seen for its indirect effects, like the wounded and dying patients, and their stories of horror and agony, describing to the doctor (and therefore the reader as well) what war has done to them.
Medical imagery
The imagery of Dr. Abuelaish's medical practice is an inescapable part of the imagery of the novel, which adds some pretty gruesome detail to the story. This is proof of Dr. Abuelaish's martyrdom of war, which starts with the untimely deaths of his daughters and then continues with his attempt to help as many injured and dying patients as he can. Perhaps the most obvious feature of this medical imagery is death, because death is what motivates him to help as many as he can.
Hatred through imagery
The novel includes a lot of imagery designed to evoke hatred in the reader, because the thematic center of the novel (as suggested by the title) is that the doctor refuses to be "infected" by the viral problem of hatred, which infects those whom it affects. For instance, he is tempted to hate the Israeli insurrectionists when they murder his daughters, and then again and again as that emotional wound is revisited as he listens to the horror stories of those who pass through his makeshift hospital.
