Eleven Lives

Préface

• Leverage contributors’ academic networks and social media followings to promote the book.
• Pitch excerpts and reviews to wide array of outlets including Mondoweiss, The Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye, Middle East Monitor, The New Arab, The Nation, Jacobin, Jewish Currents, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The London Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, The Observer, New Statesman, The Times Literary Supplement, Tribune, Red Pepper, Morning Star, ROAR Magazine, Words Without Borders, and more.
• Pitch television, radio, and podcast interviews with contributors.
• Conduct extensive outreach to Middle Eastern Studies departments.






Auteur

Muhammad Ali Khalidi is Presidential Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center, where he teaches and publishes mainly in the philosophy of science, especially cognitive science.  He also does research on Arabic-Islamic philosophy from the classical period.  In addition, he has written on various aspects of the question of Palestine, including Palestinian refugee rights, the ethics of war, the right of political self-determination, and the ethics of boycott.  His edited volume, Manifestations of Identity: The Lived Reality of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, was published by the Institute of Palestine Studies in 2010.  He has translated a wide range of texts from Arabic into English, notably the collection, Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2005).  He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University and a BS in Physics from the American University of Beirut.  He was born in Lebanon to a Lebanese mother and a Palestinian father.

Texte du rabat

• Eleven Lives brings together a selection of stories told by Palestinians living today in refugee camps. It provides a rare window into their lives, past and present. It will be of interest to academics, activists, and anyone seeking to understand the issue from a more personal perspective.
• The book is suitable for university courses on refugees, Middle East politics, creative writing, and modern Arabic literature. It contains a diverse set of reflections on being a second- or third-generation refugee at a time when the world is witnessing the worst refugee crisis in history.




Résumé

Written by the refugees themselves, this highly original anthology of Palestinians forced to live outside their homeland brings together stories of what it means to be exiled, reflections on the events that led to being displaced, and the raw experience of daily life in a camp.

The 11 lives given voice here are unique, each an expression of the myriad displacements that war and occupation have forced upon Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. At the same time, they form a collective testament of a people driven from their homes and land by colonial occupation. Each story is singular; and each tells the story of all Palestinians.

As Edward Said argued in 1984, the object of Israel’s colonial warfare is not only material—seeking to minimise Palestinian existence as such—but is also a narrative project that aims to obliterate Palestinian history “as possessed of a coherent narrative direction pointed towards self-determination.”

In these pages, Palestinian refugees narrate their own histories. The product of a creative-writing workshop organized by the Institute for Palestine Studies in Lebanon, 11 Lives tells of children’s adventures in the alleyways of refugee camps, of teenage martyrs and ghosts next-door, of an UNRWA teacher’s dismay at the shallowness of her colleagues, and of the love, labour, and land that form the threads of a red keffiyeh.

What unites these 11 stories is “the inadmissible existence of the Palestinian people” highlighted by Said. Their words persist, as one contributor writes, “between the Nakba and the Naksa, throughout defeats and massacres, love affairs and revolutions.” The stories of Palestinians in exile are also open-ended, and will continue to reverberate across borders until Palestine is free.

With contributions by: Nadia Fahed, Intisar Hajaj, Yafa Talal El-Masri, Youssef Naanaa, Ruba Rahme, Hanin Mohammad Rashid, Mira Sidawi, Wedad Taha, Salem Yassin, Taha Younis, Mahmoud Mohammad Zeidan

Co-published with the Institute of Palestine Studies.

Échantillon de lecture

From “My Heart Hangs from a Mulberry Tree” by Wedad Taha 
 “Mama, I want to be veiled,” I said to my mother absent-mindedly when she came to visit me, as I buried my little head in her lap. I shut my eyes and took in the scent from her long black dress. It was my mother’s scent and lap. She hadn’t visited me in a month and a half, leaving me to toss and turn at night, yearning and longing for her. I missed her dear spirit and missed playing with my siblings. I was the middle child, but I always behaved like a mother to them. I cried for an hour as I buried myself in her lap and held on to her, as though I was trying to plant her in my soul so that I could have my fill of her. My mother was and has always been my comfort and the soul of my soul. I’m not sure whether being deprived of her made me more attached to her, or whether it was her short stories, or her sweet singing that mingled with the steam and smell of soap when she bathed us. I held her head with my hand and told her not to leave me there, to take me with her, wherever that might be. I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t know where I stood or how to make sense of what was happening to me. I wasn’t fully conscious of the significance of what I had lived through.
One of the clearest images that I had came from my dreams. Like most Palestinian families, mine was pious, following traditions inspired by the face of God and his power over hearts, minds, and practices. Did I just say the “face” of God? It was a face that I saw through thick, high, white clouds, an ethereal face that visited me in a dream and I spoke to it. I don’t remember what He said, but He spoke to me too. Yes, I spoke to God when I was asleep, and in the same dream I saw the prophet. When I woke up in a muddled state and said, “Mama, I want to be veiled,” my mother refused. She feared that I would take off the veil after a while, and she wanted me to be sure of the first free decision that I would make. Did I say “free decision”? I don’t know how free my decision was, nor do I know the meaning of that idea now. I don’t even know if it was a decision, or just the outcome of the traditions speaking to me in a dream. 
 All the women around me were veiled. My grandmother was veiled, despite the fact that she continued to flirt with my grandfather into her seventies. My mother was veiled, covering the most beautiful hair of any woman—apart, perhaps, from the hair of nymphs, if they exist—with its waves and thick locks that fell in layers, and its magical, saturated color. I always contrasted it with the thin and wiry hair of my paternal aunts, and I thanked God that I didn’t inherit it. All four of my aunts, and all the women of the neighborhood, were veiled. Even Umm Sulayman in her dark, cramped hole in the wall wore a headscarf, though she never went out and was hardly capable of walking. She had barely any visitors except me, my grandmother, her daily plate of food, the ravages of winter, her grinding poverty, and the memories of her children. 
 For my first veiled photograph, I smiled before the lens of Ibrahim al-Susi, posing in front of a white background. I sent the picture to my father alon…