Category: 2014

It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.

Paulo Coelho

Aleph

On May 11^th in the United States we celebrate Mother’s Day. In the Middle East it is celebrated on the first day of spring. My wonderful children and my delightful grandchildren will acknowledge and celebrate that day with me once again and as they do every year. It is a terrific way for reminding me, and all mothers everywhere, of that awesome role of Motherhood that we duly and dutifully perform.

Friends who have only met me and my children recently always tell me: You are such an incredible mother! Actually, I think I was pretty good, but by no means incredible. I honed my motherly skills along the way, and now that I feel I have almost perfected the art, my children are all grown up and gone!!! I have perfected a lot of things at my present age, only to find that it is a bit too late to make use of most of them, which oftentimes makes me wonder whether God is really that much of a Cynic??!!

I was a young mother in Beirut of those mid Sixties during a tumultuous and turbulent era in the Middle East (as well as across the world really) when many of us believed that we were the agents of change who were going to establish newer paradigms for our existence on a political, social and cultural level, and, as far as that goes, l was quite a role-model as a young wife, as well as a mother and as a woman. As an example, I used to go out on date night with my husband once every few weeks and to the utter surprise of my friends. Go on a date with one’s husband? With that guy you sleep next to every night? Why the hell would you do that? And the answer was, of course, and as many young couples today realize, because we need to catch our breath and connect away from the routine of children and the daily requirements of life.

And, as a woman, I was working, part time as it were, at the Lebanese Broadcasting Station and after that in managing the office cleaning company that my husband had established. I was one of the first women managers of the region during that time, and struggled for many years to prove that a woman can be and do and succeed in the male-dominated and chauvinistic world of that period. It wasn’t easy!

And, as a young mother, I decided that I was going to take care of my own kids. No maids to do that in my stead as I had been raised. I did not want anyone to feed, bathe or tend to my children other than myself. That was quite unheard of amongst my social class at the time. After all, it was only those poor women who did that because they could not afford to have a maid! I also, as another example, read bedtime stories to my children every night. Another unheard of! However, all four of them today have a marvelous talent for writing and love reading. Could our bedtime routine have had anything to do with that, I wonder? My friends and I also took our kids out every afternoon to the playground, for a walk and to interact with each other as we visited and exchanged ideas; another unheard of, as most women of our class sent their children off with the maids, or kept them at home. We also made a point of taking them to the beach, to the mountains and on picnics almost every weekend. That inclusiveness, too, was a fairly new phenomenon. My amazed Uncle Michel once told me: I have never seen or heard of a mother who takes the time to explain things the way you do to your children. I did a whole lot of other things too. However, what I’m trying to say here is that we, the few mothers of that era, were doing things differently. But, (always that But!) there was much that we did Not do. Looking back on it now, and seeing, reading, understanding all those new methods, tools and approaches young mothers have at their disposal today I know that there were missing areas in my child-rearing processes, and some unnecessary baggage that was carried over from my own upbringing and from the prevalent norms of the previous era. But, alas, there is no Undo or Rewind button in life!

My friends and I were also rearing children up during a hugely transitional period, followed by the years in which we were immersed in a bloody civil war whose turbulent political events continued unabated and until an uprooting to the West took place for many of us. We were very lucky that we could survive those war years the way that we did. Many of our country men, women and children went through tragic situations! Nevertheless, the war did leave its damage on our psyches and our moods, on our priorities and on our children. No excuses, but that’s exactly what wars do. Should anyone be surprised then when I rant and rave against wars and all those who start them? It was also at around that time when the “ideal” love marriage that everyone thought I enjoyed was coming so totally apart! It was, for me, another daunting period of my life! One of many! No doubt, my children bore some of the repercussions of all that. And, should you have asked them when they were teenagers and young adults, each one of them would have told you that the image of the near-perfect mother that my Uncle Michel, as well as many people in my community had of me, wasn’t really that perfect in their beautiful young eyes whence I was sometimes a Bitch, sometimes a Witch and sometimes plain Negligent. They sometimes loved me and at others hated my guts! They sometimes thanked me for all the wonderful things I did for them, and oftentimes blamed me for everything that was wrong with them, or with their lives. Maybe all children do that, but for those of us who went through major upheavals and wars in our lives, that guilt factor becomes more pronounced in these instances. That’s just the way it is!

At the end of the day, and now that I have reached this fantastic age in my life when I finally feel that I am in a very good place, and when I have come to know, to accept and to love and forgive myself, I realize that it could have all turned out to be much, much worse. After all, neither we, nor did our children arrive to this world carrying a How-To manual (as my dear friend, Jeff, once said) on how exactly we should be handled. We didn’t choose our circumstances or wars either. And, while my generation, too, had adverse conditions in our childhood and youth, there came a certain age when whatever were our issues with our own parents and with life in general, now belonged to us and it was entirely up to us to deal with them. And most of us did.  Our children’s issues too now belong to them. Yes, there is no Undo or Rewind button. However there is an amazing button called Love that can always do wonders for us, for our children, our parents and all of humanity. It is sometimes the easiest button of all to push . . . and sometimes – many, many times! – oh, the very hardest one of all . . . but do go on and give it a good push today! Go on!

Happy Mother’s Day!

April 28 is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today’s article, that was originally published in Bridges magazine in their Spring 1991 issue, is as timely today as it was then for, while the Holocaust was an unfathomable human tragedy, the Israeli government, whose people suffered immeasurably through it, are still perpetrating unfathomable and immeasurable tragic crimes on Palestinians. The high hopes of Peace that we had during the Nineties when this article was written were, of course, never realized. That Peace is still as elusive today as it ever was! And, while age has tempered my vehemence, the essence of what I said almost a quarter of a century ago is still fundamentally the same.

Our Shared Land and Destiny . . .

I was born in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1943. This seems to have become my standard introduction in life. I say it both as a confirmation of my historical birthright as well as in defiance. Somehow, I am challenging my listener to ask: “where?” so that I may score one more point in anger at those who had obliterated “Palestine” from world maps, history books, the media and the world’s short-memoried consciousness . . . until the Intifada, that is, until our children’s broken bones cracked the world’s clogged ears open.

Uprooted. Insecure. Stateless. Identiless. Angry. Bewildered. A refugee . . . a woman. A woman?

A woman, yes, a woman. Always uprooted from the very feelings of my womanhood. Insecure in a world of threatening and marauding men who controlled . . . oh! always controlled my very deepest expressions and thoughts, my actions, behaviors and words. Stateless in a world that belonged to them who ruled over my very sinews.

A woman. Yes! A woman!

A woman who only read and dreamt about Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug. Oh, yes! And Nawal el-Saadawi. An Egyptian. An Arab woman. Bold for the sixties, certainly . . . A boldness I yearned to emulate . . . but then . . . feminism had no part in my life. No. Not for me. A Palestinian. A refugee. Uprooted. Stateless. I had a political expression and a life of struggle to burden my shoulders, to demand my sacrifices, my acquiescence, my obedience, my being second class “for the cause.” Womanhood was not on my agenda. It had no place but in my secret fantasies, in my tomorrows which were “maybes” anyway, never guaranteed beyond the hour for, being a Palestinian could mean being annihilated by Israel, by my Arab brothers (my Arab sisters didn’t have a say in the matter) by anyone and anything who stood to gain one advance in a political maneuver, in an economic trade-off, in a social context. I was just a pawn, a chip in the game of men and nations.

The Seventies. My Thirties. A time of reckoning. Another uprooting. This time from Lebanon. This time “Western” bound. To the West which I abhorred for being the culprit in my political life and, yet, which I yearned for in order to free my sublimated expressions of feminism.

The Eighties. The IDF are in Beirut. Israel withdraws leaving a bill: the expulsion of the Palestinians from Lebanon. More uprooting. Massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Palestinian blood and intestines fertilizing the sewers once again. Once . . . the bloody hell . . . again!

Across the laundered green of my lonely kitchen window in the affluent suburbs of the United States I reached out to her. At first she was faceless and nameless. No, we don’t say “Israel” or “Israelis.” We do not pronounce such profanity. I pounce on her and demolish her arguments and reasoning. You have none, I shout! Because of you I missed out on everything, including feminism! Including a battle that would have pitted us both against a long-standing archaic formula rammed down both of our throats!

You and me, woman, we have nothing in common! I hate you. Simply. Concisely. A fact of my life. Forty years of it. Forty tormented, turbulent years of it. You can’t know. You don’t have the capability. You can’t understand. You are Jewish. You understand nothing but your fucking Jewishness! Trust you? That must be a joke, right? Me? Trust you? Woman, you’ve screwed me a hundred times over. What more do you want? No. No, I am simply never going to disappear from your life or from this world. You wish! But I won’t. I am not going to. Understand? I am a Palestinian, and I will always be. Yes, and so will my children and their children. Yes. Believe me. This is not a threat, neither is it a promise. It is a simple fact.

Peace? Never! I’ll drink your blood yet. You wait and see. I’ll make putty out of you and Israel. Just wait . . .

. . . wait for what? It’s the Nineties damn it! Wait for your men and mine to control, dictate, dismember, kill and obliterate people and earth for chauvinism. For your hawks and mine to send both our children to their death. Wait? There is no time to wait . . . to waste . . .

Forty-five waiting years . . . wasted on my abdicating the solution to them . . . to those for whom solutions have historically been just another act of violence . . .

Perhaps, that’s when I became a woman. Yes. That’s when it happened. Only then. Only when I enfolded you . . . yes, you, Jew, Israeli, you . . . into my life, incorporated you into my existence and validated you with my feminism. Then . . . and only then . . . did you become human. You and I, together, as one, are the only ones capable of filling the chasm of hates and suspicions which govern our lives. You and I, together, as one, are the only ones who have the genes, the hormones, the ingredients for remaking clean rivers and oceans, a fresh-smelling environment, an ozone-filtered sun! This is where our children will play, cleansed from enmity and hatred, anointed by our understanding, and blessed with our grief.

And, yes! It is possible! I feel it when I embrace Ellen Siegal, leave a meeting before it ends and ask Hilda Silverman to speak for me knowing that she would, see the understanding in Reena Bernards’ eyes as I hotly say: It’s not Occupied Territories, Reena. It is Occupied Palestine! Yes, it’s possible when Letty Cottin Pogrebin and I can discuss aspects of feminism in a cozy lounge and when I look up with respect and admiration at Esther-Leah Ritz. And there are others. Others who wish to be known and those who don’t. Certainly, we come from very different poles. I come to re-instate Palestine. They come to preserve Israel. I bring all of Palestine on my shoulders and they bring all of Israel on theirs. No matter. We did meet. We did proceed in a process that is so fragile we all know anything could abort it . . . but then, as women, we know that after an abortion another pregnancy is possible, a life can be born. Men of cold politics hardly ever experience the depth of such emotional realities.

I was born in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1943. This seems to be my standard mode of introduction. A confirmation of my historical birthright. An act of defiance which I once shared only with those of my kin and which I share today with a growing number of Jewish and Israeli women . . . women in black, women in grief . . . women reflecting on their sad yesterdays, hesitantly embracing their fearful todays and, yes, women reaching out to their doubtful, although possible, tomorrows!