January 19, 2003

It all began with the birth of a little baby girl into a Palestinian family from Nablus. Not unexpectedly, the baby girl was received with discomfort punctuated with sobs and tears; she came fifth in a chain of eight girls. The father, who was yearning for a boy to preserve his name and inherit his property, was badly affected by that unhappy event.

The fact that girls were unable to preserve the family name was not the only reason for disappointment. He felt that his image as the “father of girls”, as Arab tradition has it, with all the concomitant implications of a diminished virility, was fixed for good. Mother’s reaction, however, was far stronger. She wept for days on end and considered herself a most accursed and unfortunate woman.

In such a gloomy and hostile atmosphere, I learned the meaning of my existence and my value in this world.... I was told time and again that I had to train myself to obey and comply with all kinds of rules that covered every single aspect of my life.

I resorted to reading, writing, and then painting as a means of escape. I could not think of myself as belonging to any society; I was rather an outcast and an outsider, a victim, a lost soul unable to find a safe haven. This is reflected in my first novel, We are no longer your slave-girls, my first experience with characterization, where all of my characters are prisoners of chronic problems and intractable circumstances.

It was Mother who stood against my rebellion at that time. She was an intelligent woman with a strong character, iron will, and unbeatable pride. At that time, I understood her power as an expression of nothing more than her bitterness, grief, and desire to defend herself. She was simply afraid that I might do something outrageous, being the most troublesome girl in the whole family. She also felt guilty for spawning a whole brood of creatures belonging to a weak and worthless sex.

However, Mother’s pride would never allow her to show her buried feelings. With her sharp intelligence and innate ability to tell and enact stories, she managed to cover her fears and pretend to be as strong as steel, as stable as rock. She always felt that she deserved better than she had received: eight girls and a single boy — a SINGLE boy!

I sensed her thoughts and they tortured me.... I gave her reason to cry more than once; she swore time and again that she would break my neck, and when she couldn’t do that, she sent me to a boarding school in Jerusalem. The school was run by the strictest martinets imaginable — the Nuns of Zion, but even they failed to break me. Then they yoked me in a hasty, senseless marriage that broke my heart.

Sobs, prayers, and curses
It was a miserable, devastating marriage. With encouragement from my family, I finally broke loose after 13 years of suffering. I did need encouragement because I lacked determination and perspective, proving that even the strongest woman — if I really qualify as one — gets cold feet when motherhood is at stake and when it comes to making a decision. From childhood, we women became accustomed to watching somebody else make decisions on our behalf. This is why we remain stuck in the same place; we opt for words rather than deeds, and settle for sobs, prayers, and curses rather than for action.

That was exactly what I had done for years, until salvation came in the form of a letter from Hilmy Murad. He was the editor of the Kitabi series published by Dar Al-Ma’arif of Cairo. At that time, Dar Al-Ma’arif was the largest and most famous publishing house, not only in Egypt, but in the Arab world as well. In his letter, Hilmy Murad said that he saw in me the signs of a great novelist. Naturally, this thrilled me to the point of euphoria. I believed him; I wanted to believe him.....

Some momentous events changed my relationship with my mother and the world. My only brother was in a car accident when he was sixteen. His spinal cord was severed, leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life. As a result of this calamity, the family fell apart. My mother lost her desire to live and shrank away.

My father, however, reacted completely differently; after crying for weeks, he suddenly woke up, regaining his vitality, energy, and appetite for life. He looked for a young blond girl to take as his new bride. I have never hated my sex the way I hated it at that time. I chased my father everywhere, begging and pleading with him to have mercy on us, but he was deaf and blind to my words and tears.

He minced no words: “Tell you what, Missy. God has allowed it! Do you want me to die with no successors?” Just because God has allowed it, my paralyzed brother, my sisters, and I are good for nothing, for we are unable to bear his name for posterity. His words were engraved on my heart until he died.....

After Father’s death, Mother grew more hopeless and sorrowful; she became a mere lifeless body.... I discovered, for the first time, that my mother — like me, like all women, like my sisters and all the sisters — was a mere victim. In her tragedy and mine, I saw the tragedy of all women regardless of traditions, laws, or cultures. That is how I became a feminist.

Our defeat in 1967 was the third tragedy to take place during my marriage. I discovered that our political defeat was a result of our cultural defeat. I could see very clearly that the debacle of 1967 was the fruit of a rotten tree that needed a cure — the internally defeated do not triumph. The cure must start with our households and with those in power, with our social values and ties, with the fabric of the family, with the rules and basics of the upbringing of the individual at home, in school, and at university, and then progress to the street. Mothers can be both the dough-baker and the steel-maker of nations. Mothers are the nation because they are the source and the cornerstone.