Womens war stories

1. NARRATIONS
OF WOMEN
AND WAR
COMMEMORATING THE SABRA
AND SHATILA MASSACRES

2. The Sabra
and Shatila
Massacres
On September 16, 1982, following the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon, the right-wing Christian Phalange militia
attacked the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps located
in West Beirut. The Israeli advance was considered a
violation of the cease re agreement between the two
forces.
Israeli troops surrounded the camps in order to prevent
refugees from escaping and red ares into the night
to light up the killing eld. From September 16th to
September 18th, a massacre was carried out by the
militia. Over 3500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians
were killed -- mostly women, children, and elderly. The
accuracy of the number of victims is disputed -- many
of the victims were buried in mass graves by the
Phalange.

4. There are limits to every archive. There are impasses,
dead ends. Though the blanks often prevent historians
from getting a clear and linear narrative; sometimes the
stories could be found within these blanks. The
deafening silences in archives are not silent at all and
the absences say more than a presence ever could.
STORIES
TESTIMONIES
HISTORIES
The impetus for the “Women’s War Stories” project is
precisely this lack. The purpose of this project is to
draw attention to the gaps in materials, knowledge and
resources about women’s lives and the Lebanese Civil
War. We would like this project to be useful to all
scholars interested in Lebanon and Lebanese women,
the preservation of stories and histories, community
archives, and women’s lives in war.

5. This zine attempts to make
visible some of the
marginalized and hidden
narratives about women in
war. It is part of a series of
zines which aims to collect,
preserve, and present
stories and memories of
Palestinian and Lebanese
women during the time of
the Lebanese civil war.
Fictional stories are at the
centre of this zine.
Speci cally, it draws on on
the novels titled "Touch" by
Adania Shibli (Clockroot
Books) and "Mornings in
Jenin" by Susan Abulhawa
(Bloomsbury, New York).

6. "The departure of the sun allowed the
darkness to stretch its black over
everything the girl looked at. Before the
sun was created, black alone filled the
universe. Black was there before
creation. Before she was born. And after
she would die, blackness would return to
its place, her empty place. So God was
behind the darkness unfolding it and
folding it again whichever way He
willed" (13).

7. touch
"The brother's picture was hung up on the wall above the
television set, in de ance of death. The bedroom door
was open and rectangular, so the little girl was able to
watch television from her bed until the last moment of
wakefulness. If the television was on, she did not take her
eyes off it. But when death came, the picture left the
television and instead, the brother's picture settled in
above it. For some time now, her eyes had been staring at
the still picture in which they saw and would continue to
see forever her brother's crooked necktie, because he
hadn't taken more time, not much, to x it.
She tilted her head, and the entire rectangle of the door
tilted too, but the necktie was still crooked. She slid her
whole body halfway off the bed so she could tilt as much
as she wanted [...] now she saw that things were not just
tilted, but about to collapse. The television wanted to fall
off the table, the table wanted to come into her room, the
rectangle of the door was about to fall and take the
picture with it, shattering the glass, and the shards were
going to scatter everywhere on the oor, reaching her
hand, and the glass between her ngers was going to be
cold and hurt and bleed. She lifted her hand up off the
oor and quickly her body fell off the bed" (25-26).

8. "The war changed us, Mama most of all. It withered
Mama. Her essential ber unraveled, leaving her body a
mere shell that often lled with hallucinations.
Following the occupation and the disappearance of my
brother and father, Mama hardly left her prayer mat. She
smelled of fermented misery. Her lips hardened into a
web of cracks and her body shrank, while she prayed.
And prayed. I watched her eyes grow more vacant,
betraying a mind that would henceforth slowly forfeit its
charge of reality.
Baba was gone forever. My mother kept waiting for him
until the day she died, just as she waited to return home,
just as she searched her mind for Ishmael. I needed to
believe Baba was dead. I could not bear the thought of him
suffering away from us and I chose to know he was in
heaven wearing his dishdashe and kaf yeh proudly, the tip
of his pipe at his lips, a cup of coffee at his ngers, and a
beloved book in his hands. I struggled all my life to keep
that image of him -- a strong, proud, and loving father. But
inevitably the image of Abu Sameeh dead with his gun in
his hand near the rubble of his home overtook me, his face
eventually becoming Baba's face" (86-8).
Mornings in
Jenin1967

10. "What we found inside the Palestinian Shatila camp at ten o’clock on the
morning of 18 September 1982 did not quite beggar description, although it
would have been easier to retell in the cold prose of a medical examination" (224).

11. "But there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists
and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot
in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies --
blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier
and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition -- tossed into
rubbish heaps alongside discarded U.S Army ration tins, Israeli army medical
equipment, and empty bottles of whisky. Did I know those women, or those
babies? How many of the children had been my students?" (225).
Did I know those women, or those babies? How
many of the children had been my students?
Did I know those women,
hose babies? How many o
the children had been my
Did I know those women, or those
babies? How many of the children
had been my students?

12. "Whatever you feel, keep it inside"

13. "The little girl stood on the edge of the veranda, hugging the paint-chipped post
beside her, her hair covered with the mother's headscarf, and her eyes glued to
the distant street where the sounds seemed to have disappeared. After
seventeen cars passed, the brother would come.
One,
two,
three,
four,
ve,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten.
eleven,
twelve,
thirteen, she was not sure if the brother would come,
fourteen,
fteen, if only he would come,
sixteen, maybe he would not,
seventeen.
touch
The blare of an ambulance siren pierced the scarf over her ears" (22).

14. A short while, then she snuck in there. The mother was
sitting on the multicolored rug with all the stripes, her
legs encircling the brother's motionless head. The rest of
his body was covered in an ironed white sheet with pale
brown squares. Silence engulfed him. Not a single sound
from him anymore. The little girl listened very closely to
the dead brother, but silence was all there was of him,
forever."
touch
"She pressed her face against the post, despite the
roughness of its peeling paint, her eyes still glued to the
rear door of the ambulance, which was going to open and
the brother was going to jump out and fly to the veranda
so he could rip the scarf off her ears and scream as loud as
he could into them and then she would die. The door
opened, but the brother did not jump out. Instead, he
was carried out and rushed into the house.

15. "Whatever you feel,
keep it inside"
"silence was all there was of him"

16. "They murdered you and buried you in their headlines, Mother. How do I
forgive, Mother? How does Jenin forget?
How does one this burden?
carry
Is this what it means to be Palestinian, Mother?"
(317).

17. "They were everywhere, in the road, the
laneways, in the back yards and broken
rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and
across the top of garbage tips. When we had
seen a hundred bodies, we stopped counting.
Down every alleyway, there were corpses --
women, young men, babies and grandparents
-- lying together in lazy and terrible
profusion where they had been knifed or
machine gunned to death. Each corridor
though the rubble produced more bodies.
The patients at the Palestinian hospital had
disappeared after gunmen ordered the
doctors to leave. Everywhere, we found signs
of hastily dug mass graves. Even while we
were there, amid the evidence of such
savagery, we could see the Israelis watching
us. From the top of the tower block to the
west, we could see them staring at us
through field-glasses, scanning back and
forth across the streets of corpses, the
lenses of the binoculars sometimes f lashing
in the sun as their gaze ranged through the
" I s e e h e r f a c e i n
e v e r y t h i n g I d o .
E v e r y t h i n g I t o u c h . "

18. "Even through the telephone wires, there was enough
agony in his voice to break the sky. I can still hear it
shatter the wind when I walk.
How much must we endure and how much must we give?" (226-7).

19. " I s e e h e r f a c e i n
e v e r y t h i n g I d o .
E v e r y t h i n g I
t o u c h . "

20. This zine was created by Research Assistant
Sarah Abdelshamy and it is part of Professor
Michelle Hartman and Professor Malek
Abisaab's Women in War Stories project.
The artwork is procuded by Lena Merhej.
For more information on this initiative, please
visit womenswarstories.wordpress.com