Palestinian camp women as tellers of history

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 42-58

  Sayigh, Rosemary ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 2342630631     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2538283     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. Ellen Fleischmann, "Crossing the Boundaries of History: Exploring Oral History in Researching Palestinian Women in the Mandate Period" in Women's History Review 5, no. 9 (1996), pp. 351-71;
2. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid eds., Recasting Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990);
3. Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988);
4. Judith Tucker, Women in Nineteenth Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
5. Eleni Varikas, "Gender and National History in Fin de Siecle Greece" in Gender and History 5, no. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 269-83;
6. Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias eds., Woman-Nation-State (Basingstoke: Macrnillan, 1989).
7. Hilma Granqvist, Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarium Fennica, 1931, 1935).
8. Palestinian Arabic differentiates between the hikaya (fable, folktale) and the qissa, an account of a real happening, either in history or in the speaker's experience. The telling of hikayat (defined by men as kizb, lies) is traditionally the specialty of women, the qissa of men. See Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana, Speak, Bird, Speak Again (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 2-3.
9. Rights to camp space are limited to "original" families or to newcomers who bought or rented from them as they moved out Others who built on vacant areas around the camp were not allowed to return after the "Battle of the Camps" (1985-87), nor were they indemnified, since UNRWA's housing indemnities are restricted to those inside camp boundaries. Differential relations to housing thus give rise to different socioeconomic statuses.
10. Only five speakers had not lost a close family member through war. Five of the thirteen mothers had lost one or more children, four speakers had lost parents, two had lost brothers, and two husbands.
11. This difference of categories appears to be associated with age and educational level, with most of the "life story" narrators being younger and better educated than those who gave "testimonials." However, there were exceptions that suggest that experience, social status, and consciousness make a difference to how speakers respond.
12. See Rosemary Sayigh, "Gender, Sexuality, and Class in National Narrations: Palestinian Camp Women Tell Their Lives," forthcoming in Frontiers, 1998.
13. All names used in this article are fictional.
14. The speaker uses "biladna," our country.
15. The Arab Salvation Army, a panArab militia led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji.
16. The word hijra (migration) is used by Palestinians in Lebanon for the exodus of 1948. Some commentators believe that this usage consciously evokes the departure of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers to Medina.
17. As Umm Muhammad told this anecdote, she vigorously reenacted her confrontation with the British soldier, demonstrating how she had wrestled his rifle from him. A tall, strong woman even in her nineties, she wore the black headband called amta that signals special piety.
18. See Ellen Fleischmann, "Crossing the Boundaries," p. 364, for an example of a politicized woman "editing" a testimony.
19. See Sayigh, "Gender, Sexuality, and Class."
20. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (London: Methuen, 1982), pp. 33-36.
21. See Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak, Bird, p. 36, on women as initiators and heroines in folktales.
22. A verse from the Qur'an invoking God's protection.
23. Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), "Introduction."
24. Umm Ghassan's son ultimately was kidnapped on his way to visit a friend and never reappeared. When I recorded with her, she was raising the children of two of her sons.
25. Julie Peteet, "Icons and Militants: Mothering in the Danger Zone," forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women and Culture 23, no. 1 (1997), pp. 103-29.
26. For more about this speaker, see Sayigh, "Gender, Sexuality, and Class."
27. This is the same Umm Subhi whose story of confrontation with the Lebanese army was quoted earlier. Struggle and witnessing tragedy are linked in camp women's narratives, as Palestinian destiny and as class- and gender-specific formations of the "self."