Review: Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced by Rochelle A. Davis Review by: Rosemary Sayigh Journal of Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 118-121 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2012.XLI.2.118 . Accessed: 02/05/2012 15:23

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http://www.jstor.org 118 Journal of Palestine Studies

Islamic, and Western historiography and textual criticism, we can only admire a tour de force. Davis’s object of study is not the villages that the books memo- rialize but what their memorialization means, why this process began at a spe- cific moment (the mid-1980s), how the books were produced, by whom and for what audiences, how they are read and responded to, and what power relations they reflect. While challenging dominant Zionist narratives, the village histories, she writes, also express “Palestinian men’s authoritative perspectives within dominant definitions of what constitutes history . . . attempts at the ascendancy of certain families within local social structures; and . . . the pervasive and silencing presence of certain social values” (p. 17). Each chapter of Palestinian Village Histories emphasizes a different aspect of the historicity, community and na- tional embeddedness, motivation, and si- lences. The first chapter “Geographies of Dispossession” sets the historical, disci- plinary, and human framework through which Davis approaches her topic. Sub- THE MEANING OF sequent chapters deal with the different ways the village books relate to national MEMORIALIZATION struggle; the way they reflect original and current values; authors’ and readers’ Palestinian Village Histories: aims and réticences in representing the Geographies of the Displaced, by past; the place of the village books in a Rochelle A. Davis. Stanford University distinct tradition of Arab history-writing; Press, 2011. xxiii + 231 pages. Notes to their display of ownership through min- p. 278. Bibliography to p. 316. Index ute descriptions of property and land- to 328. 5 maps, 5 illustrations. $24.95, scape; and the relationship between paper. village places and their inhabitants’ iden- tity. Davis interweaves these themes with Reviewed by Rosemary Sayigh her encounters with authors and dias- Rochelle Davis tells us that she took ten pora communities, as she searches for years to research and write Palestinian publications often hard to find. Village Histories. For a Western scholar Although Palestinian Village Histo- to have read and analyzed 112 of the ries is thoroughly academic in its mul- 120 village histories published, as well tidisciplinary reach and rigor, it is also as interviewed many of the authors, is extremely readable. Davis begins each in itself a rare achievement. If we add chapter with an anecdote that takes the to this a range of scholarship that takes reader into the living heart of her mate- in the literature on memory, identity, rial, for example, by opening the first postmodern anthropology, and Arab, chapter with a recent court case involv- ing the eviction of Mizrahi families from what is now Kafr Shalem (Salama), rais- ing to the surface the Israeli state’s set- Rosemary Sayigh is the author of : From Peasants to Revolutionaries tlement of immigrants on land owned (London: Zed Books, 1979) and Too Many by Palestinians. The chapter on “Village Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Values” begins with a project given to Lebanon (London: Zed Books, 1994). school children in Syria asking for facts

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about their villages of origin. Their el- parents and elders. In rare cases, such ders, remembering the village in terms as the series produced by Birzeit’s Cen- of ethos and attachment, could not pro- tre for Research and Documentation, vide such “scientific” information. The the studies were carried out by trained assignment made both children and researchers. Thus authors mainly “be- adults reconsider what knowledge they long” to the village in question, and to should have about their past (pp. 64–65). the networks formed by the village’s The village books mark Palestin- descendants across the diaspora. It ian history in both obvious and subtle is to them, and to future generations, ways: life in pre-1948 rural Palestine as that the village books are primarily remembered in exile; the Nakba when addressed. the villages became “objects of mem- Davis conveys well the often frac- ory” through their erasure; the post- tious relations between authors and 1948 period when Arab nationalism readers, the pressure of community val- eclipsed memory of particular localities; ues, competing versions of family prop- the days of PLO predominance (1960s erty or prestige, and the editing needed and 1970s) when the Resistance ad- to avoid hurting particular families opted the peasant as mobilizing symbol through reports of poverty, land sales, but neglected the rural population in or collaboration. Readers are important its meta-narratives; and then the PLO’s to the village book authors as sources transfer to Tunis (1982), followed by the of information, fellow members, and Oslo accords of 1993. It was these last partners in producing an accurate repre- two dates (1982 and 1993) that set in sentation. Their corrections are solicited motion the memorialization of villages, and incorporated in second editions, through deepening the fissure between when these can be afforded. the national leadership and the refugee Davis’s investigation of readers’ masses. The first two village books (on opinions extends her research into the Duwaimeh and ‘Ajjur) appeared in 1985, refugee community at large, illuminat- marking this transition. Up to 1982, the ing their desires as to how their village national liberation struggle had sub- should be known. In many cases recep- sumed the issue of refugee return; after tion is critical, particularly when an au- it, the refugee stratum was sufficiently thor has aggrandized his own family at cut off from “a compromised PLO” to the expense of others. Fatima Hamdan insist on recapturing self-representa- complains of being omitted from the Qa- tion. Set in this historical sequence, the lunya book even though she brought up village books appear as part of a long her children alone after her husband’s class struggle waged first by the rural death, refusing to remarry. Yet the major- population before 1948 against feudal ity fully support the purpose behind the landlords, and later as refugees against village books, since they “embody the a national movement that abandoned desire of the villagers to communicate a them when the PLO “anchored itself in specific local way of being by focusing the West Bank and Gaza” (p. 58). on collectively held values, family ge- Historic change also shows up in ris- nealogies and origin stories” (p. 67). As ing educational levels that transformed Davis reminds us, the universal purpose some descendants of villagers into his- of history-writing is to remember for the torians. Most authors of village books future. Those who write and those who are men who took up writing after re- read the village books share a concern tiring from teaching, often from camps, to leave an inheritance for their children usually from the villages they write and grandchildren. about: an “educated local elite . . . [who] Bias toward male knowledge is remain enmeshed in and an inextricable shared by the village histories with part of their small communities” (p. 5). history-writing in general. Women are In a few cases, such as the book about consulted as sources in less than half Salama by Abdel Aziz Saqr, the author the books, and only on subjects such could describe the village from hav- as songs, handicrafts, food, and cloth- ing lived in it, but more often authors ing. Their essential role in agricultural are second-generation refugees who production and their specialized skills compiled their studies by listening to in healing, midwifery, sewing and

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embroidery, wedding celebrations, oral author of a book about ‘ did, pro- poetry, and “memory work” are hardly voking a corrective version by Abdal- mentioned, nor their share in property, lah Al-Sufi who understands history as economic transactions, and marketing. containing “useful information” (p. 94). In this respect, Davis notes, the land Insights such as these into concepts of documents that make up a large part “history” held by the village book au- of village books are revealing, show- thors and their local readers point to a ing that women could be sole owners of crucial difference between the written land as well as partners in sale and pur- and the spoken. The permanence of the chase. Davis makes the point here that text creates a tension around contents. such omissions reflect post-Nakba val- Oral histories on pre-Nakba village life ues. Probably linked to the shift in reli- collected recently in Bourj al-Barajneh gion from syncretic to reformist Islam, camp (Lebanon) show less reticence on this “domesticating” of village women topics such as women’s work, poverty, can be seen as evidence of a post-Nakba or practices deemed un-Islamic today. adoption of urban, middle-class values Despite their idealization of the past, among camp refugees, a transformation the village book authors are profession- largely masked to outsiders by poverty. als who explain their methods, cite their In the case of gender as in other sources, and are concerned about accu- topics, Davis points to individual ex- racy. Davis’s placing of the village books ceptions as well as collective norms in within local, Arab, and Islamic models writing about village women’s labor. of history-writing has special value, es- Sahera Dirbas, one of three women au- tablishing their roots in a tradition that thors presented by Davis, describes combines the written and the oral, and al-Birweh women walking with their has frequently focused on localities. products to ‘Akka, reminding us that Though this style faded in the twenti- Granqvist reports that Artas women car- eth century, it can still be seen in Mus- ried their produce to and sold tafa Dabbagh’s Our Country Palestine, a it there. Mahmoud Said (Tirat Haifa) source listed in most village history bib- writes of “women’s fundamental role . . . liographies. Thus the authors straddle an in agricultural work” (p. 107). Ghalib ancient multiparticipatory mode Sumrayn () writes of his moth- of writing history, and the modern mode er’s work as a healer and lists all the where a single author claims authority. wives of the Salama clan for six gen- One of Davis’s achievements is in con- erations, including their families and veying both the collectivism of the vil- villages. Yusif Ali Abdel Aal () lage books and the differences between mentions women by name and skill, authors in methods, inclusions, or use of and includes their photos. These excep- spoken Arabic. Vis-à-vis Western histori- tions highlight the tension between col- ans, the village historians claim to know lectivism and individualism that is also better about themselves than foreigners part of camp life today. Any topic raised “because they [the village historians] are in the village books could arouse lively using sources that lived that history” (p. debate among camp populations today, 138). The detailed knowledge that inhab- revealing processes through which di- itants have of village landscapes, homes, versity is expressed and yet contained. properties, orchards, and water sources Davis sets reticence about gender cannot be taken otherwise than as a and folk-religion in a frame of values proof of ownership. formed in post-Nakba reality, with ur- Among the many fascinating ques- banization and reformist Islam as ma- tions that Davis’s study raises is the jor influences. The desire to challenge origin and political meaning of the self- dominant outsider accounts also plays a reproduction of Palestinian villages. role in choice of contents. Village book Salim Tamari explains village self-as- authors omit other topics besides wom- sertion as a nineteenth-century reac- en’s labor, for example, poverty, mar- tion against city elites. Alternatively, we ginal families, sicknesses, and internal might view it as a form of resistance to conflict. Nor would most include anec- control by alien states, a habit of “anti- dotes such as the story about a mayor statism” that the Nakba reinforced and getting knocked off his donkey, as one that was transmitted to refugee camps

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where rural people formed the majority. That camps have been influenced spa- tially, socially, and culturally by villages is shown in preference for local and en- dogamous marriage; practical and rhe- torical efforts to reduce inequalities; and the way that camps are as differen- tiated from each other now as villages once were. Another question is to what extent social hierarchy—of gender, se- niority, income, prestige—is involved in village self-reproduction over time. Davis’s conversations with authors humanize them by showing their individ- ual/communal motives, aims, methods, problems with readers, and distribution. Long immersion in the refugee commu- nity allows her to record stories outside the village history accounts, such as the anonymous woman who fled from Pal- estine alone, pregnant, with an infant daughter, giving birth on the way to a stillborn baby she had to bury, a story so painful that she has refused ever to tell it publicly. Davis has the skill of bringing village book authors and audiences close to the reader, displaying the discipline of empathy on equal terms with more conventional academic disciplines. The vast swathe of experience of loss and at- tempted recuperation it embraces makes Palestinian Village Histories a book to read and read again.

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