Narrations of women and war

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

2. The Sabra
and Shatila
Massacre
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.

3. 3

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.
This particular zine draws
upon the ctional stories of
women in war. More
speci cally on the novels
titled "The Ninety-Ninth
oor" by Jana Fawaz
ElHassan (Massachusetts:
Interlink Books), and
"Woman From Tantoura" by
Radwa Ashour (The
American University in Cairo
Press).

7. "What's the use of recalling what we endured and
bringing it back in words? When someone we love dies
we place him in a shroud, wrapping him tenderly and
digging deep into the earth. We weep; we know that
we must bury him to go on with our lives. What sane
person unearths the tombs of his loved ones? What
logic is there in my running after the memory that has
escaped trying to ee from itself? Do I want to kill it so
that I can live, or am I trying to revive it even if I die
because ... because why? I suddenly scream: Damn
memory, damn its mother and father, damn the sky
over it and the day it was and the day it will be.
I saw the ies with my own eyes. In a deep pit that was
yet big enough. Ambulance crew with gloves and
protective masks were scattering white powder, bringing
the bodies on stretchers, placing one body next to the
other. They were stretching a sheet over them all, a
covering of the plastic from which garbage bags are
made. They would take the stretchers back to the narrow
lanes, to bring other bodies. They came and went. From
daybreak until sunset. A smell and clouds of ies. Let it
escape, let it go. May it never return. Stretch out a sheet as
you saw them doing, to cover what you saw throughout
the years, and the day of the smell and the ies" (149).
The Woman
From Tantoura

10. "My father left. He carried me far from death but he
wasn't able to get back to my mother and the baby who
hadn't yet seen the light of day. Flare bombs surrounded
the Shatila refugee camp afterward and the genocide
started. Corpses were piled up on the ground and my
father couldn't go back, he couldn't penetrate the
human rubble and save my mother. If only she'd left
with us. If only she'd gotten to my Aunti Zahra's rst. If
only she hadn't been pregnant. Perhaps then my
father's face wouldn't have transformed from that
militant hero into a broken man whom the war and its
tragedies had annihilated. Going backward: September
16, 1982, at precisely ve pm, the massacre began. It's
impossible to memorize this date as merely a number.
In an attempt to restore memory, events always seem
scattered and incomplete, for no reason but their sheer
terror. In my head, the massacre is always linked to silence
except that my father escaped with me before the
bombardment stopped and the camp's soul was severed.
The severity of a massacre isn't only about the destruction
but also the idea of returning there, to a place reeking of the
dead, a place sti ing their voices, depriving them even of
their death rattles, rejecting their having been killed. [...] This
tragedy, like all tragedies of war, didn't end after these
events. Instead it started there, with tales of buried body
parts and corpses that hadn't bid farewell to life on their sick
beds with a smile, as we're used to seeing in lms but rather
with panicked stares, with begging and pleading" (31-32).
The Ninety-
Ninth FloorLebanon, 1982, Sabra and Shatila Camp

11. "You should see the tangled mess of electric wires. This tiny community
we live in is getting more and more cramped by the day. Believe me, the
small camp that was here and that our ancestors thought would be
temporary has become detached buildings, narrow camp alleways, and
houses with balconies. This is not our tragedy, my friend. The tragedy is
that day by day we lose hope of ever escaping here" (79).

12. "It started there, with tales of buried body parts and corpses that hadn't bid
farewell to life on their sick beds with a smile, as we're used to seeing in films,
but rather with panicked stares, with begging and pleading."

13. “Our neighbor Abu Hassam miraculously survived
because he was able to hide in the attic closet. He was
alone at home when he heard gunmen outside. He
couldn’t search for his children and his wife. “The hardest
thing in the world is to know that the people you love are
being murdered next to you and you can’t do a thing
about it,” he told my father, painfully biting his lower lip
and curling his lips to expose a lone golden tooth shining
among his other, Arabic-tobacco, cigarette-stained teeth.
The gunmen had entered his home and turned it upside
down, he recalled, while he was holding his breath above
them. He felt handicapped, on the ground for hours with
water a couple of meters from him and him unable to
reach it -- either by crawling or walking. “We aren’t men,”
he told my father, “we aren’t anything at all.”
There are many stories of death after the massacre.
Women slap the sides of their faces and curse the
Arabs and Arab nationalism. Dead bodies packed into
plastic bags and nameless corpses buried under the
dirt. Black bags containing intact corpses if the dead
person was lucky. If not, body parts. Sometimes
perhaps, so-and-so’s hand is put with so-and-so else’s
foot. No difference. The important thing was to nish
completing the death scene. Mass graves were dug to
put dead bodies in, without the right to a decent
funeral" (33-34).
The Ninety-
Ninth FloorLebanon, 1982, Sabra and Shatila Camp

14. "I don't know how my mother was killed
that day ....
they didn't leave us ....
any narration of her murder
No one said if her screaming
rang throughout the place ...
No one counted the bullets
that hit her ...
No one said a thing."

18. "What do you want to be when you grow up, Majd?"
"I want to be a pilot"
"Why?"
"To fly up and see things from above."
"Aren't you afraid you might fall someday?" (65).

19. "THE ONLY HIGH PLACE I EVER
REACHED WAS THE ROOF OF THE
REFUGEE CAMP."
"Leave me alone, Yamma, I want to see the sun" (69).

20. This zine is part of the "Women's War
Stories: Building an Archive of Women and
the Lebanese Civil War" initiated by
Professors Michelle Hartman and Malek
Abisaab of McGill University .The zine was
created by Research Assistant Sarah
Abdelshamy. The artwork is procuded by
Lena Merhej.
For more information on this initiative, please
visit womenswarstories.wordpress.com