There is an incredible film festival going on in my city called DocAviv – The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival. Out of the Israeli and Palestinian films showing, nearly all are critical of Israel through some political lens or another – and I’m proud to be a part of any festival that openly supports municipally critical art. The other night I saw a particularly difficult film called “Brides of Allah” in English – although the original Arabic title is “Shahidah” (“Martyr”). The film follows Palestinian women serving time in Israeli prisons for aiding or attempting suicide bombings. In dealing with a subject so deeply emotional to anyone who has even touched the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the film manages to walks an incredibly fine line of showing the humanity of these woman while certainly not backing down from the frighteningly unapologetic rhetoric that motivates them to stare into the camera, smiling, as they talk about “spraying Jew blood,” across downtown Jerusalem.
The translation of the title is in itself an interesting examination of how films about Palestinians are filtered into a (-even a liberal, left-wing-) Israeli audience. The term “Shahidah” comes originally from the term “Shahidka,” (a term in Russian loosely translated to “Black Widow”) used for female Chechen suicide bombers in 2002. I don’t know where the impetus came from the change the title for this film, but already in the title we’re seeing the strong religious angle on suicide-bombing motivations. “Brides of Allah” carries with it something perversely hopeful, something full of dedication, an image of a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young woman turning her face to the sky. One woman in the film — who appears as the rebel-of-sorts in the ward due to her lack of allegiance to a terrorist group – insists time and time again that the motivations behind these women’s actions are personal problems in their homes and societies, and that their religio-political ideology simply provides a good excuse for escape. This woman speaks of the deep isolation and scorn she feels from her fellow women because of her refusal to join “an organization” – meaning Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The film poses several other deeply disturbing and unresolved questions throughout, including the question of whether children born to mothers imprisoned should – as is allowed under Israeli law – be allowed to raise their children for two years inside of the prison in order to avoid separating mother and child. Natalie Assouline, the film’s director, is somehow able to gracefully and bluntly place these kind of choices in front of her viewer and leave them there, balancing them on the edge of the question, refusing to push them to one side or another. Though there were plenty of reasons for it, I’m fairly certain the nausea I felt throughout the entire film was rooted here, in that odd and incredibly powerfully dangling of the unanswerable questions in this conflict.
-LSF
The “feminine” reaction to a suicide bomb is particular. They say lots of things about Israeli women (Sabras are prickly, tough, uninterested in sensitivity — ) but the women around me on the bus look coolly at their cell phones just long enough to make sure no one in danger has text-messaged them the news. The name of the yeshiva that was hit by the sniper gets tossed around a few times in light, quiet voices between stops, tightening the news and balling it in to small, swallow-able chunks. It’s the unspoken rule that mothers will call you within fifteen minutes of a terrorist attack, and if you don’t pick up your phone you’ll begin to be suspected dead. My adopted mothers here even call me, scold me mildly for hanging around downtown Jerusalem, wish me safety, and fade away into the night traffic. The voices are not shrill, their comments deliberate – “just checking,” “I figured, but, “ – no extra emotion wasted. It’s been half an hour since the attack and already we’re managing to put it behind us. The mourning mothers will be considered tomorrow.
-LSF
cherry blossoms and uncollected trash in the Palestinian city of Sachnin.
You’re a woman protective of your body, and it’s hard to know where boundaries end and racism begins. Lean too far to the boundaries, and your metal claws are out, scratching up against what may well just be cultural misunderstandings. Lean too far to the politically correct, and you may well get touched more than you want to. Ali drove us back to the train station, suddenly generous in the morning, touching my hair, my thigh, my shoulder, as he laughed about setting me up with his Palestinian nephews, repeating the question twice when I replied that, no, I wasn’t a lesbian. I am the most open person in the Middle East, he laughed, you can tell me anything, and instead of releasing my shoulders, I tensed. I especially have a weakness for beautiful young ladies, he said, and in the silence I figured I needed to say something. I giggled a short snort and said, most people do. He slapped the steering wheel and lowered the radio volume, sure, he said, but once you move in married circles, certain things place boundaries in your behavior that you want. I wanted to tell myself it is just the language barrier, that the man who so kindly taught me Arabic last night and argued politics with me that morning was just being friendly, wasjust trying to explain himself, that I was completely overreacting by feeling threatened here in the front seat of his white battered Accent between Sachnin and Karmiel. The hills wererocky at window-level. I should never have worn that dress. I would never have considered it scandalous – it covers my knees and wrists – but maybe he’d misunderstood me. Halas. I tucked my feet under the seat, slapped my boundaries upside the head and waited for the next green sign indicating our distance to Karmiel.
-LSF
for the first time: i am late in this unexpected sunday traffic, and directing a cab lost in the city to my grandparent’s house. pulling past the pond at the top of the street i see a gold mercedes idling on the far corner, coin-bright and waiting patiently. my exclamation halts the cab and i skip across the street, to where they wait my grandparents, placidly all dressed up from sunday church. she is crocheting, he is napping, doors open to the bright expectation of an afternoon grandchild.
nervously for me as they explain the shape the feel of the box that i will tick in that booth, illiterate as i am and powerfully exerting my rights. pulling into a busy carpark my arm to steady grandma’s steps up the building, please make way on that railing you are leaning against she supports it so, and inside. i fake it to make it, recognising my registration number and not my name, navgating bemused and terrified in front of my proud forebearers. i look so foreign, to the amusement of the thai audience— look at her she has a citizenship card too. okay my make X is made, the red box i am aiming for unmistakable. well guided, grandpa. i am a new immigrant, i am a freed slave, i am connecting across time to this experience of officialdom and uncertainty and hesistant footing in a new country.
SN
in the forest i didn’t drink whisky, feeling the weight of a full company of men i sat primly, envying the smooth liquor generating cheer across the space of the hut and trees. even i started in surprise when a bottle came my way, missing the offer of a drink to my astonishment when i learnt it was all okay to drink in this thai culture didn’t i know?
sometime moments i froze in those first two weeks like when Jane asked “what are you, a feminist” and i suppressed my reaction of arent you to smile awkwardly, and when Dave at the edge of a gave of gin rummy in the forest he said “well feminism is obsolete” and Nucha, who refers to me as a feminist always says things like “of course you intend to work, you are a feminist”. the spectre of this f-word rises everywhere i go and while i embrace the fierceness of this fight i don’t know what to do here, where native american in thai is literally “red indian” so that is what it is in english too, and how do you explain p.c.?
at work they make sure to write “gender inclusive” on the large posterboard bound for austria, because Westerners love that stuff, and i found myself arguing for inclusivity because our work cuts across national-ethnic-economic boundaries to all stratas of humans, as we all are too.
SN
