{"id":37436,"date":"2025-07-04T10:08:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T08:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=37436"},"modified":"2025-07-04T10:08:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T08:08:40","slug":"memoricide-voided-by-four-palestinian-women-diarists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/memoricide-voided-by-four-palestinian-women-diarists\/","title":{"rendered":"Memoricide Voided by Four Palestinian Women Diarists"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

What is the capacity of words to communicate the unimaginable barbarism of Israeli settler-colonialism and genocide? How much trauma and catastrophe can a sentence hold? Might it be stronger, more resilient, than the concrete structures razed to the ground \u2014 or will it similarly buckle under the weight of 2,000-pound bombs?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Voices of Resistance: Diaries of a Genocide<\/em>
\nBatool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, and Ala\u2019a Obaid
\nComma Press<\/a>\u00a02025
\nISBN 9781917093064
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Francesca Vawdrey<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beshara Doumani\u2019s <\/span>observation<\/span><\/a> in 2009 that \u201carchive fever is spreading among Palestinians everywhere\u201d could not be more relevant now. The 20 month-long and counting genocide and <\/span>annihilation of cultural sites<\/span><\/a> and public institutions in Gaza, alongside heightened settler-colonial violence and the <\/span>mass internment<\/span><\/a> and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, has rapidly accelerated the need to document and preserve.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is within the context of this archival impulse that <\/span>Voices of The Resistance: Diaries of a Genocide<\/span><\/i><\/a> emerges, a collection of journals written by four Palestinian women writers, in response to the unfolding Israeli genocide in Gaza. The power of this collection lies in its diverse assemblage of voices, which sometimes depart and other times converge, illuminating the myriad perspectives and challenges of a people under attack. What unites these diaries is the unequivocal commitment to recording and sharing the Palestinian story.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, we have Batool Abu Akleen, a\u00a020-year-old poet and translator from Gaza City, who displays a cynical view of human nature and questions the function of literature in such times. Then Sondos Sabra, a 25-year-old translator and widely-published author, who embodies a more outward defiance that champions Palestinian resilience and the importance of popular memory. In addition, the diaries of Nahil Mohana, an established author and playwright, and Ala\u2019a Obaid, a writer and coordinator at the Rasel Center for Creativity, cover the trials of motherhood under genocide; Mohana with dark wit and Obaid with the somberness of a woman giving birth during war.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Voices<\/a>
Voices of Resistance<\/em> is published by Comma Press<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Voices of Resistance <\/span><\/i>deftly challenges the binary lens through which the Palestinian is typically portrayed, either as a terrorist or a \u201cperfect victim.\u201d The latter label denotes a Palestinian who is outspokenly critical of Hamas and opposed to all kinds of armed resistance; supportive of western intervention and inclined towards a general western sensibility; blessed with the noble skill of understanding \u201ccomplexity,\u201d and \u201cnuance,\u201d and the importance of \u201cboth sides\u201d; grateful for each and every crumb of Israeli hospitality; and above all, penniless, pitiful, and defeated. The title of the collection itself allows the reader to view the Palestinian resistance through a more holistic lens, since these voices do not fit the Kalashnikov-wielding, balaclava-laden stereotype of the resistance fighter in popular culture, but rather a quieter, more typical form of everyday resistance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sabra brilliantly lampoons the oft-espoused lie that Israeli attacks on civilians are carried out for counter-terrorism purposes. She wryly observes, \u201cTwo days ago, on December 5, \u2018terrorism\u2019 was hiding in the body of Omar, my six-year-old nephew, perhaps in his heart, or maybe among his soft locks of hair. So they killed him,\u201d highlighting the baseless absurdity of this excuse. Perhaps, she wonders, this \u201cterrorism\u201d might also be lurking \u201cin the bells of churches\u201d or \u201cbetween the pages of books.\u201d What else could explain the calculated destruction of three churches, including one of the <\/span>oldest churches in the world<\/span><\/a> (not to mention the 1109 mosques) and countless <\/span>archives, libraries, and museums<\/span><\/a>, in addition to the targeted bombing of <\/span>every single university in Gaza<\/span><\/a> and the destruction of over 95 percent of schools?<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not just the tropes of victim\/terrorist that the diarists unravel, but a third trope perpetuated by well-meaning liberals who are generally supportive of the Palestinian cause: the trope of the Untouchable Samid (which in Arabic means a person who is steadfast). Whilst typically not ill-intended, this stereotype is nevertheless harmful because it suggests an acceptance of the status quo; a heroization that, in elevating the Palestinian to the level of the super-human, ironically strips Palestinians of their status as humans that, like the rest of us, also succumb to fear, grief, and despair.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Mohana reflects, \u201cThe genocide has not made me a superwoman … I\u2019m still afraid of mice, and still I hate white beans.\u201d This is echoed by Sabra, who writes: \u201cSome have called me reckless, others: crazy. Only Yasmeen, my friend, has called me courageous. But none of these labels are quite true. I\u2019m not reckless, not courageous. I am afraid, afraid to the bone.\u201d Nothing sums up Palestinian fallibility and humanness better than this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abu Akleen witnesses the prevalence of another trait during the genocide, namely individualism, which she describes as the \u201ctruth of the human spirit.\u201d Individualism is usually understood in a <\/span>pejorative context<\/span><\/a>, raising connotations of selfishness and greed that are antithetical to community and religion, associated with western capitalism and its obsession with unlimited \u201cpersonal growth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Batool
Batool Abu-Akleen (courtesy Comma Press).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, Abu Akleen\u2019s self-prescribed individualism is one that arises when a missile lands and \u201cyou smile because you are still alive, even though you know that another person was killed the very moment you realized you were safe\u201d; individualism that occurs as \u201cyou rejoice when you realize that the home that was bombed wasn\u2019t yours, but the one right behind it.\u201d As the aroma of meat and onions fills her tent, she confesses: \u201cI don\u2019t feel guilty; I don\u2019t worry that someone hungry might pass by and suffer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not individualism in the conventional sense, but the mark of an ordinary human being forced to endure extraordinary suffering. What this really shows is that starvation is beyond moral consideration. For Abu Akleen, \u201cSurvival is individual, always individual.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At other points, community values and self-sacrifice triumph. As Obaid trawls the market in search of an egg \u2014 a luxury given the <\/span>extreme inflation<\/span><\/a> and scarcity of regular food items \u2014 an elderly man suddenly appears. Seeing her exasperation, he asks her why she is so desperate for an egg. She says it is for her daughter\u2019s birthday cake. Touched by her story, \u201cHe slips into his small tent, and returns with a single egg.\u201d He gives it to Obaid and tells her, \u201cThis is the last one I have \u2026 Happy Birthday to your daughter,\u201d not knowing if and when he will find another.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the <\/span>absence of cooking gas<\/span><\/a>, neighbors club together to build ovens from scratch, using pebbles and sand, with a local baker to oversee the process. Apartments become impossibly overcrowded: 30 or more people to a room, as families rush to provide shelter. Two best friends share a bed, giggling and singing to eradicate each other\u2019s fears, as one provides a home for the other. For Sabra, these moments serve as proof that \u201cGaza is not just what the war has destroyed; Gaza is the people who remind us every day that goodness still exists.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These first-hand accounts attest to the collective will to preserve Palestinian memory at this critical juncture, in addition to providing invaluable evidence of Israeli war crimes. Sabra asserts, \u201cThe sting of memory is painful, yet essential to our survival, dear reader,\u201d suggesting that, for her, the preservation of memory is existential. Sabra\u2019s repetition of the phrase \u201cI remember that I remember\u201d calls upon the reader \u2014 whose attention is already sharpened through her earlier use of direct address \u2014 to participate in the act of witnessing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sondos
Sondos Sabra (courtesy Comma Press).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sabra positions herself as \u201cstrong and defiant against forgetfulness,\u201d alluding to Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s <\/span>Dhakira lil-nisyan<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>Memory for Forgetfulness<\/span><\/i><\/a>), a book-length prose poem composed in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli invasion and siege of Beirut. Just as Ibrahim Muhawi writes that this invasion and siege was \u201can attempt to ensure a collective amnesia about Palestine,\u201d Sabra writes: \u201cThey want to amputate my memory. They want to erase every trace of that life. But still, I remember.\u201d This sentiment appears almost verbatim in Mohana\u2019s account, signaling the diarists\u2019 broader concern with Israel\u2019s systematic attempts to erase not only Palestinian memory but the <\/span>memory of Palestinian existence<\/span><\/a>, a phenomenon known as \u201c<\/span>memoricide<\/span><\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The extreme constraints in Gaza inevitably impact the structure and language of the writers\u2019 recollections. Sabra\u2019s following account shows how trauma forecloses the possibility of neat prose: \u201cMy words have become clumsy and tangled. My thoughts appear in half-formed sentences, splintered by the overwhelming things I\u2019ve seen and experienced.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The syntactic breeziness in her description of life before the genocide \u2014 \u201cstreets full of life, the little shop on the corner whose owner would expertly fry falafel, its smell stirring the birds in my stomach\u201d \u2014 sharply contrasts with the violent montage of subsequent memories that \u201caccumulate\u201d in the absence of space to process, or narrativize, each incident.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the ethics of writing in such times? For Abu Akleen, \u201cPoems built from death can never bring pride; they can only bring more pain. My poetry is nothing but stylized pain.\u201d Her shame at finding beauty in poems of suffering evokes Adorno\u2019s <\/span>famous statement<\/span><\/a> that \u201cto write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,\u201d a comment on the insufficiency of language, or rather the barbarity of aesthetics, in a time of genocide.<\/span><\/p>\n

He later retracted this view in his book <\/span>Negative Dialectics<\/span><\/i> (1966), where he argued that \u201cperennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured have to scream,\u201d foreshadowing Edward Said\u2019s argument about the \u201c<\/span>permission to narrate<\/span><\/a>,\u201d that is, the Palestinian right to tell their story. Yet the current circumstances compel one to revisit Adorno\u2019s initial remark. What is the capacity of words to communicate the unimaginable barbarism of Israeli settler-colonialism and genocide? How much trauma and catastrophe can a sentence hold? Might it be stronger, more resilient, than the concrete structures razed to the ground \u2014 or will it similarly buckle under the weight of 2,000-pound bombs?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from discussing the ethics of her own writing, Abu Akleen considers the role of literary criticism in such times. She asks, \u201cWho am I to tell someone being subjected to genocide that their pain isn\u2019t well crafted, that their pain doesn\u2019t seem authentic, that their pain isn\u2019t painful enough?\u201d In this she brings to mind Noor Hindi\u2019s satirical <\/span>poem<\/span><\/a>, \u201cFuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Nahil
Nahil Mohana (courtesy Comma Press).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Huda Fakhreddine\u2019s recent <\/span>essay<\/span><\/a>, \u201cNotes from the Field of Arabic Literature in the Time of Genocide,\u201d similarly considers how to analyze Palestinian literature whilst Palestinians \u201care being eradicated\u201d en masse. Just as Gazans cannot be defined by their status as victims of war, \u201cPalestinian literature is not [just] literature for times of crisis,\u201d but part of a long tradition of storytelling in Arabic culture and society. The diaries should be read with this in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

The diarists\u2019 use of intertextuality \u2014 or more simply, imbedded references or allusions to other literary texts \u2014 lends itself to this task. Mohana, whose diaries are replete with intertextuality, expresses concern around the fate of her house in al-Karameh that she and her daughter were forced to leave, \u201clike the horse in Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s poem.\u201d This reference to \u201c\u0100badu al-\u1e62ubb\u0101r\u201d (\u201cThe Eternity of the Cactus\u201d) induces the feeling of estrangement that accompanies forced displacement. In the poem, the horse is left alone, because \u201chouses die when their inhabitants leave.\u201d What has become of Mohana\u2019s home?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mohana\u2019s entries also point towards Arabic literature outside of Palestine. Her account \u201cThe Season of Returning from the North,\u201d which marks the day that residents were permitted to return home after being forcibly displaced to the north, is a particularly illustrative example. This playful allusion to the Sudanese writer <\/span>Tayeb Salih<\/span><\/a>\u2019s canonical Arabic postcolonial novel, <\/span>Season of Migration to the North, <\/span><\/i>helps to place the diary in dialogue with a broader Arabic literary culture, transporting readers far beyond the besieged enclave.<\/span><\/p>\n

While each diarist provides a unique account of womanhood in Gaza through the war, with Mohana and Abu Akleen in particular highlighting the challenges young and\/or unmarried women face, Obaid and Mohana are the only writers to address the trials of motherhood under attack. Here we see a determined Obaid, who is terrified of losing her unborn child due to the mounting risks during <\/span>pregnancy<\/span><\/a> in Gaza. This fear propels her to the south to seek shelter, despite the risk of being turned away (again). This risk is preferable to the alternative of staying, because \u201cThe bombing, the scent of gunpowder and the <\/span>phosphorus<\/span><\/a> hanging in the sky were threatening the life of the fetus growing inside me.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ala\u2019a
Ala\u2019a Obaid (courtesy Comma Press).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The reader anxiously awaits the outcome of Obaid\u2019s birth, wondering if and how she will succeed. She writes, with chilling brevity, \u201cI am five months pregnant. The air smells of gas. And it feels like the baby inside me has stopped moving.\u201d This stripped-back prose denies the reader any sense of comfort that would dilute the horror of the situation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One morning, she wakes up with searing pain and the realization that she is going to give birth \u201cas a displaced person.\u201d At the hospital she gives birth standing up, unassisted, because there are <\/span>no available beds<\/span><\/a>. Her baby drops onto the floor, \u201cscreaming his first sounds in a war that takes away all the colors of life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mohana\u2019s recollections of motherhood are comparatively less visceral, though no less powerful. Whilst she similarly experiences a near-death experience with her daughter, as they dodge \u201cshells and artillery fire \u2026 raining through the window and penetrating the walls,\u201d her primary struggle is that of negotiating motherhood as a single parent. She criticizes how her community \u201cstill cannot accept the idea of a woman living without a man, and still actively punishes those who abandon married life, as if their loneliness and exhaustion in facing all this hell isn\u2019t punishment enough,\u201d highlighting the additional pressures she faces as a result of her marital status.<\/span><\/p>\n

These diaries exist as a result of careful translation. While Sabra wrote her diary directly into English, Obaid wrote hers in Arabic \u2014 by hand \u2014 before translating it herself. Mohana and Akleen similarly wrote theirs entirely in Arabic, after which they were translated. These diaries were also edited and reformatted for readability. This is of course not unusual for published diaries, but worth noting. A diary written with an audience in mind is different to one produced solely for oneself \u2014 especially if the audience is from a different demographic than the writer. One should therefore be weary of treating these diaries as \u201craw material.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These entries are also excerpts from larger records, begging the question of what is left out and why. For Arabic speakers interested in the burgeoning Palestinian archive, a sequel of untranslated, unedited diaries would be a welcome treasure. Until then, <\/span>Voices of Resistance <\/span><\/i>stands as a vital work of testimonial literature that refuses to be forgotten.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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