Published by
University of Alberta Press
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2J4
Amiskwacwskahican | Treaty 6 |
Mtis Territory
uap.ualberta.ca
Copyright 2021
University of Alberta Press
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: Light the road of freedom / Sahbaa Al-Barbari ; Ghada Ageel and Barbara Bill, editors.
Names: Al-Barbari, Sahbaa, author. | Ageel, Ghada, 1970 editor. | Bill, Barbara, 1956 editor.
Description: Series statement: Womens voices from Gaza series | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210189444 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210189622 | ISBN 9781772125443 (softcover) | ISBN 9781772125689 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781772125702 (PDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Al-Barbari, Sahbaa. | LCSH: Women, Palestinian ArabGaza StripGazaBiography. | LCSH: Women, Palestinian ArabGaza StripGazaSocial conditions20th century. | LCSH: Women political activistsGaza StripGazaBiography. | LCSH: Gaza StripSocial conditions20th century. | LCSH: Gaza StripHistory20th century. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC DS126.6.A45 A3 2021 | DDC 956.94/305092dc23
First edition, first printing, 2021.
First electronic edition, 2021.
Digital conversion by Transforma Pvt. Ltd.
Copyediting and proofreading by
Angela Pietrobon.
Maps by Wendy Johnson.
Book design by Alan Brownoff.
Cover image : Sliman Mansour, Sad Tunes , Oil on canvas, 1977, 87 90 cm. Image courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. Used by permission
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To those who struggle for justice.
Preface
Introducing Womens Voices from Gaza
THIS BOOK is the second volume of a series on Womens Voices from Gaza. This series of seven stories recounts life in Palestine, prior to and after its destruction, narrated by women who lived through those experiences. The collected corpus of their accounts offers a detailed and vivid picture of places and people, of both the past and present, of a people. It traces Gazas history, a rich tapestry woven of many strands.
The oral history accounts recorded in this series complement a body of work asserting the centrality of the narrative of Palestinians in reclaiming and contextualizing Palestinian history. The research, through which these testimonies were located, solicited, documented, and gathered into a whole, aims to re-orient the story of Palestine by restoring it to its original narrator: the Palestinian people. In addition, the focus of this series is on Palestinians who lived in the Gaza Strip, whether prior to, or as a result of, the Nakba , the 1948 catastrophe that led to the collective dispossession of the Palestinian people.
While other works, such as that of anthropologist and historian Rosemary Sayigh, have aimed at narrating displacement as a defining experience of Palestinian people in modern times, this series describes life both before and after the Nakba as it was lived by the narrators: in different parts of Palestine, in Yaffa, Beit Affa, Beit Daras, Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis, Bureij, and Gaza, and in exile. More specifically, it provides a full account of life in different parts of historic Palestine, starting from pre- Nakba times, through the destruction of Palestines villages and towns and the dispossession of their inhabitants in 1948, to the Israeli invasion and occupation during the Swiss crisis in 1956, the war followed by military occupation in 1967, displacement and exile, and two Intifadas , to a failed peace process leading to the current impasse. While the series brings to the forefront experiences of normal life before displacement, dispossession, exile, wars, and occupation, the accounts also brilliantly illuminate much of the small, everyday detail of lives in villages and towns. They recount rituals associated with agrarian cycles, wedding rites, rites accompanying birth and death, as well as aspirations, fears, and hopes. Readers are invited to reimagine Palestine and the lives of those sidelined by traditional history.
Unlike some approaches, where essentialized framing of oral histories collected from displaced and refugee women has allowed researchers to reinterpret the outcomes of their research, our narrators own and have determined their narratives. Consequently, these are presented in all their complexity, fertility, and normality. Through their deep collective memories, each individual woman transmitted her own narrative/history, embodying a chapter of Palestines neglected history. Following Edward Saids observation that, facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretationfor interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place, our effort has been to seek out and foreground the narratives of Palestinian women with minimal interference. This has allowed the women unhindered ownership of their own story, with only minimal intervention or interpretation on our part. Our sole interference in each womans text was editing and positioning it so as to give it greater fluidity and allow it to read as a cohesive piece.
In contrast to works that have focused on women living in urban areas or on experiences of displacement, this series engages with women from both the urban and rural parts of the Gaza Strip, and with Indigenous women as well as refugees and returnees (women who had been exiled and were able to return to Gaza following the Oslo Accords). Although Gaza is small, it is densely populated, and small geographic variances may have significant impacts on how life is experienced. Life in rural parts of the Strip can be very different from urban life, and Indigenous vs. refugee backgrounds make for distinctly different life stories. Such considerations help move us toward a more fully comprehensive and representative account of life in this part of historic Palestine, both prior to and after 1948.
Unsurprisingly, many of the details of the stories recorded in this series overlap, although the women telling them are unlikely to have met each other. This universality of experience provides a multi-layered map in which human history becomes political history, allowing readers an opportunity to see into the heart of life as it was lived in these spaces from day to day. Individually and as a cumulative corpus, the stories offer a new contribution to the fields of both Palestinian oral history and womens studies.
