A Woman of Nazareth

By Hala Deeb Jabbour

Hala Deeb Jabbour considers her novel, A Woman of Nazareth a mission that stems from her belief that a lasting peace in the Middle East will only come when both sides understand the concerns of the other.

A Woman of Nazareth seeks to air out the Palestinian side of the saga and validate the Palestinian people's emotions. Amal, the heroine, is a woman steeped in Middle Eastern tradition seeking to escape to forge a better life for herself and her children. Amal figuratively portrays the Palestinian people-encouraging them to break with the tradition of hate and to overcome the fear of moving forward toward peace in order to create a better life for themselves and their children. It is a moving and captivating novel, a page-turner, which leaves the reader with a better understanding of the tangled web of the Middle East.

Learn more at www.zaribah.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 19, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462095599

Hala Deeb Jabbour

Born in Jerusalem, 1943, married, proud mother of four, grandmother of four. Hala Deeb Jabbour resides in Virginia, USA. A free-lance writer whose heartfelt novel allowed the author to participate in The Dialogue Project Between Jewish American and Palestinian Women and to promote and speak on the urgency of peace in the Middle East.

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All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 1989, 2000 by Hala Deeb Jabbour

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Contents

Foreword

Thoughts . . .

Chapter 1

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Foreword

For the Palestinian people, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 constitutes a tragedy of shattering dimensions, and the Palestinian experience since that time has been an ongoing catastrophe. Not only have Palestinians been denied a normal national existence in the country where they and their ancestors lived for countless generations, but they have also been denied an identity and have been subjected to systematic dehumanization.

Palestinians refer to the establishment of Israel as the Nakba-the Disaster. And, regardless of where or under what conditions they live today, Palestinians have been deeply affected by the creation of the Jewish state and its consolidation during the fighting in 1947-49. Those events led directly to the dispossession and displacement of approximately 770,000 Palestinians-over half the indigenous population who fled to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and eventually scattered further around the globe.

Of those who left, a few were able to carve out a comfortable existence in the lands to which they migrated; but they have remained, in the deepest sense of the word, exiles. For the majority, exile was compounded by destitution. At the time of the Nakba two-thirds of Palestine’s Arab population were rural village-dwellers and peasant farmers. Almost overnight these proud, independent people were transformed into landless refugees, crowded into camps, and made dependent on United Nations relief rations. Some eventually escaped the hardships of refugee existence and reconstructed a normal life in another country. Nevertheless, the situation of exile and diaspora has been an experience of endless trauma and despair.

The treatment of Palestinian refugees by Arab host countries has ranged from distrust and discrimination, to rigid exclusion and repressive control, to systematic brutality and mass murder. The approximately 128,000 Palestinians who fled to Lebanon encountered the severest conditions. But even in Jordan, where Palestinians were readily offered citizenship, they were closely controlled and in 1970 a brutal massacre by the Hashimite monarchy resulted in the deaths of some 10,000 to 12,000.

When Palestinians fled to Lebanon they were initially received with warmth by the majority of the Lebanese population in the South. However, the Christian-dominated government in Beirut was concerned about the implications of this large influx of Moslems on the delicate balance of power in Lebanon. In 1949 the United Nations Relief Works Agency organized thirteen camps for the refugees and most Palestinians were confined to these restricted areas. By the mid-1950’s (and especially after the first civil war in 1958), as it became apparent that Israel would not permit the return of the refugees, the government grew increasingly fearful of the consequences of the presence of Palestinians on the Lebanese social and political system and began to institute harsh measures against them. The Lebanese Army and the Deuxieme Bureau-the secret police-entered the camps at will and governed them with an iron fist. The movement of Palestinians was severely restricted: Relocation from one camp to another became difficult and encounters outside the camps were frequently antagonistic.

After 1958 the problem of obtaining citizenship became more formidable, though between 1948 and 1978 some 40,000 Palestinians did become Lebanese citizens. Employment opportunities in the mid-1950’s also declined, and the government legislated prohibitions forbidding Palestinians from working without permits. The majority remained unemployed. Palestinians were also denied the right to study in the public schools.

It is of note that in Ms. Jabbour’s novel, A Woman of Nazareth, Munir, the father of the central character, Amal, found a job in Lebanon in 1950, with an employer who was sympathetic to the Palestinian situation. Through the intervention and generosity of this individual, Munir was able to obtain citizenship and with a passport went to the Gulf to seek more profitable employment. He was also able to move his family from El Buss camp to Tal Zaatar camp. Munir’s story is more typical of the early experience of Palestinians in Lebanon; later, such occurrences became rare.

Repression of Palestinians in Lebanon existed until approximately August 1967 when the Palestine Liberation Organization presence and activities began to grow. Between 1969 and 1982 the PLO governed the camps and developed a series of social institutions (medical, economic, welfare, educational, cultural, etc.) to meet the needs of the camp population and to begin the process of reconstructing Palestinian society. However, the siege and ultimate destruction of Tal Zaatar in 1976 by Phalangist forces during the second Lebanese civil war was a bitter reminder to Palestinians of their vulnerability in Lebanon.

In 1978 Israel invaded South Lebanon and thousands of refugees were again made homeless. Moreover, during the period from 1967-82 Israel frequently bombed the refugee camps, causing high numbers of civilian deaths and casualties. In 1982 Israel’s devastating war against the Palestinians in Lebanon forced the PLO from the country, leaving the Palestinian population defenseless and without protection. The institutions the PLO had developed then faltered.

The series of disasters experienced by Palestinians in Lebanon following the Nakba, has had its psychological consequences: an abiding sense of loss, humiliation, rage, shame, and incomprehension. Equally as profound have been the transformations in traditional social patterns and attitudes that have come about as a result of the Palestinian situation. Prominent among these has been the changing role of women in the family.

These changes in traditional patterns do, however, vary within Palestinian society. There are differences based on rural/urban dichotomies, class affiliations, religious confessions, and other distinctions. For instance, not all Palestinians are Moslems. Peasant women who must work in the fields would be unable to work if they were as encumbered with veils as women of slightly higher socio-economic status typically are; today very wealthy urban women, especially if they are Christian, usually enjoy more freedom than middle-class women; and so on. But the political, economic, and social forces that have impinged upon Palestinian society in the twentieth century have altered traditional attitudes and behavior.

The traditional Palestinian family is an all-encompassing institution that provides identity, security, economic well being, a set pattern of reciprocal relations, affection, support, and social solidarity for its members. It is the basic unit of Palestinian society through which cultural norms and social values are maintained and transmitted from generation to generation. The family is organized in rigid patterns of unequal relations based on age and gender that are expressed in inversely related levels of responsibility and dependence. It is intensely patriarchal, reflecting male dominance and authority. Women are dependent on and inferior in status to their father, husband and brothers; they are expected to be modest, deferential, self-disciplined, loyal, submissive, silent, obedient in the face of status superiors, and fruitful in bearing children. Male children are far more highly valued than female children since supreme importance is attached to the continuation of the male line, and young boys typically receive much greater attention, affection, and privileges than do girls.

The practice of subjugating women, institutionalized in the family, appears to originate primarily in cultural beliefs concerning women’s sexuality.

Such beliefs were found in Bedouin society pre-dating the Islamic era and were articulated in detail in the eleventh century by the Muslim theologian and philosopher Imam Al-Ghazali in the Revivification of Religious Sciences. Female sexuality is thought to reside in women’s quid-the power to deceive and defeat men by cunning and intrigue; in fitna-women’s ability to cause disorder or chaos and to make men lose their self control-fitna also means beauty, and female beauty itself is considered a source of chaos since it is viewed as an incitement to male sexual desire and as a distraction to men from their social and religious obligations; and in al-hawa-desire, the opposite of reason, the source of all that is illicit, and the cause of disorder. Thus the basis for the rigid control of women has its origin in the belief that such control is necessary to maintain the security, stability and continuity of the social order. The practices of segregating men and women, seclusion of women, arranged marriage, early marriage, the important role of the mother in the son’s life, prohibitions on women’s independent activity, and others, are essentially defenses against what is thought to be the disruptivepotential of female sexuality. And it is within the family that these practices can best be implemented.

In traditional Palestinian society, honor is given the highest value. The concept of patriarchal honor is constructed around ideas of assertiveness, self-determination, pride, fearlessness or courage, the ability to provide sustenance to one’s family, hospitality and generosity. These values, however, are associated exclusively with maleness. Female honor resides above all in sexual modesty. Prior to marriage, female honor is grounded in virginity and other aspects of modest behavior. Thereafter, female honor resides in fidelity plus decorous, proper and virtuous behavior. Honorable behavior for females mandates deference, early marriage, restriction to female spheres, and the appropriate attitudes and conduct. Women who behave in ways that raise questions about their modesty put the honor of the entire family at stake. To dishonor one’s family is considered the ultimate act of disrespect. A woman who so offends her family will be banished from the family so that the other members may retain their honor. In addition, since chastity is an aspect of deference, and because a man’s position in the social hierarchy is validated by the deference shown him by his dependents, when this respect is removed, his authority is challenged and his position undermined.

The importance of honor as it relates to virginity and childbearing remains quite important in Palestinian society. In traditional Palestinian society girls came under tremendous pressure to marry at an early age-fifteen or sixteen, sometimes even younger, often as soon as the onset of menarche. Typically, the father chose his daughter’s husband. Girls were expected to become pregnant immediately and to have large families. Barren women had (and still have) a very low status in Palestinian society; in fact, being childless is grounds for divorce. While in principle girls could reject a man chosen by their fathers, in practice it was very difficult for a girl to say no. And if she had successfully resisted her father’s wishes once, the longer she puts off a decision to marry the more difficult her relationship with her family becomes. A decision not to marry at all was, and still is, an extremely difficult choice for a Palestinian woman. Many of these practices have changed as Palestinians have been forced to reside in different social milieus as diverse as the United States, Brazil and Kuwait. However, aspects of the traditional patterns still affect the lives of most Palestinians.

Traditionally, the obsessive emphasis on chastity and virginity was primarily expressed in the segregation of men and women to prevent interaction between those not related by either blood or marriage. In effect, this meant that women were denied the ability to pursue an education beyond the elementary level, to seek employment outside the home, and to engage in political activity, or any activity that held the potential for association between males and females. Girls or women who did mix with boys or men-in school, work, socially, politically or in other ways-were typically perceived as corrupt or as loose women, and this brought enormous shame to the woman’s family. Males were then compelled to restore their honor by punishing their daughter or sister. In most places in the Palestinian diaspora (and in Palestine) this is much less true in the present than in previous times. In addition, traditionally, women who engaged in flagrant sexual immodesty-pre-marital or extra-marital sex-were sometimes murdered by their families in what was termed honor killings. This practice too is very rare today though it still occurs in some rural areas.

In many respects, Palestinian women in the camps in Lebanon have faced the most difficult situation of all Palestinian women. As a result of the Nakba, Palestinian males lost most of the sources of their honor-their land, their ability to provide sustenance for their families or to demonstrate generosity and hospitality towards others. As refugees made dependent on relief agencies, they became dependent themselves; they had little opportunity to be assertive, to control events in their own or their families lives; and they were essentially weak and helpless-traits associated with women and deeply disrespected among males. Palestinian male refugees lost their honor, their self-respect, and their social status. The only remaining component of honor left to Palestinian males in the camps was the honor of their women. Thus rather than allowing women greater freedom, as occured in other parts of the Palestinian diaspora (and even in many parts of Palestine itself), Palestinian men in the camps in Lebanon fixed obsessively on the maintenance of female honor and attemptedto rigidly enforce all the practices associated with sexual modesty. The situation was essentially the same in the refugee camps throughout the Arab world but was most pronounced in Lebanon because of the relative openness of Lebanese society compared to other Arab countries. Lebanese women in general enjoy more freedom than women in Jordan, Syria, Egypt or the Gulf countries.

The attitudes regarding female sexuality have also led to conflicting and difficult sexual relations between men and women. Women are expected to deny interest in sexual matters, and to deny their own sexuality, even in marriage. The fear of fitna and al-hawa and their supposedly disruptive effects on the social order combined with beliefs about women’s allegedly insatiable sexual appetites have resulted in a tendency to focus on the purely physical aspects of sex and to avoid emotional and intellectual intimacy. Affection and intimacy between men and women are seen as threatening to a man’s self-control and to his obligations to fulfill his responsibilities to those below him in the social hierarchy, as well as threatening to the fulfillment of his duties and obligations to God. In addition, such intimacy is viewed as a sign of weakness and dependency. Thus, there has tended to be a marked lack of friendship, mutually satisfying love, and intimacy between men and women-even within marriage-in Palestinian society.

The fundamental inequality in male-female relations in Palestinian society is illustrated very clearly by comparing the strictures concerning female chastity and monogamy with the male’s essential right to promiscuity. The latter is institutionalized in the practices of polygamy, whereby a man may have four wives simultaneously, and repudiation, through which a man may divorce his wife simply by saying I divorce you three times. Females do not have such rights. These practices have changed considerably in the contemporary period; very few males today have more than one wife. But, more recently a social double standard has arisen that turns a blind eye on male pre-marital or extra-marital sexual activity (so long as the woman is not Palestinian) for which a woman faces social ostracism and dishonor.

Amal’s sexual experience with her first husband, Abdallah, appears to be unusual as regards the freedom and joy of the marital bed and the intimacy of the relationship. Yet, Abdallah⁷s ties to his mother and his obligations to his family supersede his love for Amal and he divorces her to fulfill these duties. The obligations and hierarchical ordering of the family are very obvious in this situation, as is the fact that a wife has virtually no status compared to ties based on her husband’s relations. Amal’s experience with an Egyptian friend, Omar (and Omar’s later relations with his wife), are further reflections of the problematic connections between men and women. Amal’s political compatriot, Salah’s, ambivalence toward his sexual attraction for Amal expresses very poignantly many of the contradictions in male-female associations. That Salah ultimately marries Amal provides a basis for hope that the emancipation of both men and women from traditional oppressive mores is possible.

Amal’s ability to resist marriage offers through the age of eighteen was unusual at the time she grew up; as is the novel’s inference that she completed a high school education. Traditionally, as noted, girls were not permitted to attend school beyond the elementary level. Moreover, the schooling the United Nations provided in Lebanon was generally limited to the ninth year. However, Amal embodies all the very real changes, conflicts and contradictions of women attempting to escape the bonds of the traditional family. Amal’s determination to live her life to her fullest potential is the central theme of A Woman of Nazareth. She is an extraordinarily courageous woman who takes enormous risks and pays a tremendous price-psychologically and socially-for the basic human right of making independent decisions about what to do with her own life.

Amal’s story illustrates one woman’s struggle to become her own person; at the same time it is the story of every Palestinian woman who has chosen to confront the strictures implicit in the traditional female role. Amal’s ambivalence about her own sexuality as well as her experiences with men provide insight into the emotional conflicts facing women who pursue independence. Amal’s statement that she is living a schizophrenic life in so many ways is testament to the pain, alienation and hurt that women must endure who defy social taboos. The ostracism from her family and its positive attributes of support, affection and security is a heavy loss.

The novel provides many frames for viewing the clash betweentradition and progress in Palestinian-Arab-Muslim social relations. Amal’s mother, Nahed, is the epitome of the traditional woman-submissive, silent and obedient. The strength of patriarchal honor is evidenced in Amal’s father’s reaction to her decision to pursue an independent life. Munir’s shame is such that he never again acknowledges Amal as his daughter. And, here can be seen the dilemma of the Palestinian male who has lost everything in life associated with honor, compelled to view his daughter’s assertion of independence as the most serious form of dishonor. Similarly, the news of Amal’s decision to become an airline hostess elicits a response from her family’s friends and neighbors comparable to the news of a death. The difficulties and low status of unmarried women are seen in Amira, Amal’s Iraqi friend and mentor; while Firyal, her Egyptian friend, is a model of the thoroughly progressive woman.

As both Amira and Firyal illustrate, women all over the Arab world are beginning to challenge their traditional roles, and there are a host of factors that have brought about such change. However, in Amal’s case, as for other Palestinian women who have chosen similar paths, the circumstances surrounding exile and dispersion have been a major catalyst in the decision to seek independence. The abject poverty of growing up in a refugee camp was a powerful inducement to a young girl to aspire to a better life outside the camp. At the same time, the changes in the family itself wrought by the Nakba-for instance, the necessity for the father to be away from the family in order to earn a living-altered many aspects of the traditional household and undoubtedly contributed to Amal’s decision to become her own woman. Amal observed her mother as the competent, de facto head of the family but still bound to the norms of submission and obedience. Such a contradiction likely made a deep impression on the young girl. In addition, the mental and physical uprooting that Amal speaks of, associated with the processes of dispossession, deinstitutionalization, dispersion and exile, obviously contributed to her willingness to challenge traditional mores. It also happened that life in the camps afforded certain opportunities for the desegregation of men and women. For example, the camp meetings Amal describes, plus the political mobilization fostered by the PLO as well as its explicit efforts to educate, train, and employ women, and the education provided by the United Nations were all stimulants to women to assume control over their lives. The depth and extent of the loss resulting from the Nakba has inclined Palestinians to place great importance on education and led to more women receiving education for longer periods of time. Probably nothing is more subversive to the traditional order than the access of women to education. Education disturbs traditional sexual identity and sex roles, and it has an impact on women’s perceptions of themselves and their expectations about mobility. Education also provides women the skills necessary to become economically independent-a critical component in the transformation of traditional sexual roles.

While it is possible to offer all these factors as explanations for the decision by Amal to become mistress of her own fate, it remains true that the majority of Palestinian women, including those in the camps, have clung with remarkable tenacity to all the norms of traditional family life including the traditional role of the woman. Indeed, each of Amal’s sisters remained within the traditional bounds of family and society. The trauma of Nakba has of necessity produced different effects in different individuals. For some, like Amal, the effect was to catalyze new modes of thought, new behavior patterns and new social roles. But for others, indeed, for most, the effect was to strengthen traditional bonds as the only vestiges of normalcy, familiarity and psychological security available in the new situation. Similarly, for women elsewhere in the Arab-Muslim world, while education seems to be a necessary prerequisite to transformations in gender relations, it is clearly not sufficient. The ranks of the Islamist movement sweeping that area are filled with college-educated women electing to put on the veil.

In most societies from the very traditional to the post-modern including our own as well as those societies confronting wrenching social change, the norm is for individuals to cleave to what is familiar, safe, and comfortable. Those who step outside society’s boundaries are a small minority, and such individuals are essentially alone in a void filled with terrifying uncertainty and deep alienation. It is impossible to know with certainty what makes some individuals opt for taking such risks and for challenging their society’s normative universe. Undoubtedly elements of environment, experience, individualcharacter and even kismet combine in special ways.

Given the extraordinary pain, suffering, loss and trauma Amal experienced in her life, it is truly remarkable that she emerges with a vision of reconciliation and hope, and an affirmation of the fundamental dignity and equality of all human persons. The extension of Amal’s hand in peace to her oppressors-to the Zionists now residing in Nazareth-is a testament to the capacity of the human spirit and the human will for humanistic progress. Amal-the name means hope-provides a magnificent ray of hope in a very grim world.

Cheryl A. Rubenberg

Thoughts . . .

There is an anthropological theory that says the first man arose in the great continent of Africa.

He took form and shape and emerged from there to become my anthropological grandfather.

I will call him Kenya.

And Kenya married the woman called Nubia and together they brought forth many Kenyas and Nubias.

There they remained, from that part of Africa whence they had emerged, on terrain that was familiar, among predictable sights and sounds, amid landmarks whose threats were no more challenges.

Kenya and Nubia nestled in their cocoon. And as the days unfolded into the years, and the years into decades, and the decades into the centuries, they survived, unchallenged by new frontiers.

Unchallenged by new frontiers, their physique remained the same. Their outlook, their attitudes, their culture and their traditions retained the same characteristics.

But all the little Nubias and Kenyas that they had brought forth were not exactly cloned in the same pattern. A twist of genes here, a sway of chromosomes there had produced an offspring that was yearning for new, unknown, more exciting and more challenging frontiers.

Thus, little Nubias and Kenyas took off from the master cocoon and ventured out to the east, to the west, to the north and to the south.

And in their branching out and away, they created the new settlements, the new territories that have brought us to the world of today.

So we have arrived to this world, a trek of many centuries, multiple pitfalls, thousands of wars, millions of deaths, numerous germs, diseases, mutations, advancements, adjustments and uprootings.

And thus along the way, and in order to cope with the new challenges, we adjusted our physiques, opened our minds, learned new arts, dropped old ones and acquired new knowledge.

Such is the quirk of nature that those of the Nubias and Kenyas who settled in their lands stagnated into them.

And here we are today, divided into strata and castes of power, wealth and technological advancement. It is the way things are.

Kenya and Nubia, my anthropological grandparents, passed away centuries ago. Today I only acknowledge them when I go in search of my roots. But I meet the little Nubias and Kenyas they produced all over the world as we pass by each other, barely acknowledging our common ancestry, our original genes and our kinship in spite of the passing centuries.

Today we are strangers, each wrapped up on our own shore, swimming in our own brine, diving into one death and trapped by our own frontiers.

The offspring of Nubia and Kenya branched out and settled along the way in new territories . . . among which was a big, bountiful, beautiful spread that has come to be known as the Lands of Arabia . . .

These lands have been given many names across the centuries, and their faces are still changing, their boundaries not yet fully determined, their landscapes constantly turbulent and volcanic.

In tracing my roots, I cannot but encompass in and within the Lands of Arabia, all that is presently of the Arabic tongue and originally of the Semitic.

Thus, the off-spring of the Nubias and Kenyas who settled there centuries ago came to be known as Sara and Abraham, Mary and Joseph, Khadije and Mohammad. And there they reproduced and enriched the landscape with their evolving religions, culture, traditions, poetry, learning, medicine, art, sculpture, architecture and with their blood that oozes on and on and on . . .

In so doing, they developed and sharpened their senses, honed their skills, and then finally stagnated into them and lay there trapped in their frontiers. And that is where they are today.

I am the anthropological daughter of the Saras and Abrahams, the Marys and Josephs, the Khadijes and Mohammads.

I am the Arab woman, Jewish, Christian or Moslem.

And in me lies a history, a geography, a psychology, a depth of many, many centuries, of thousands of Nubias and Kenyas and all of their off-spring, in a complex, intricate, passionate, complicated character, that is only at this end of the twentieth century emerging as a crying, pleading, leaping, rebellious individual, trying to break loose from the stagnation, from all those aspects of my traditions and my culture that have enslaved me, castrated me, from a political and religious landscape that has throttled my growth, chained my freedom and suffocated my spirit.

And in attempting to create a new frontier in place of my old one, I have to create a revolution of thought, an uprising of the spirit, an insurrection of the soul and a destruction of all that has fortified my stagnation.

I am Amal, daughter of Sara, Mary and Khadije, granddaughter of Nubia, cousin of Indira and Marikosan, cousin once removed of Christina, Nathalie, Victoria, Anastasia and Elke, and cousin twice removed of Mary Jane, Nancy and Cathy.

I am the Arab woman who has opened her eyes to find that the centuries have been rolling by, one after the other, while I lay entranced in one of them.

I am Amal, the Arab woman, and I am waking up