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(Printed with permission from the Jerusalem Quarterly File, Fall
1998)
Focusing on Jerusalem’s women provides us with a distinctive lens on
the city during this period, illuminating in particular the
pressures on and transformations in attitudes about gender which
accelerated with the events of 1948, but which have their origins
even earlier. These stories reveal rich information, showing a
Jerusalem whose special atmosphere enabled certain Palestinian women
to live less restricted lives than in other parts of Palestine.
Quite a number of Palestinian women participated in the dynamic
women’s movement, which originated in Jerusalem and brought
involvement in politics and social affairs. The creation,
development, and existence of this movement belie commonly accepted
notions that Palestinian women were “passive, inarticulate and
disorganized.”
By
weaving together a composite portrait of Arab women’s lives through
telling their stories, this article will address the question of why
Jerusalem constituted fertile ground for the development of the
Palestinian women’s movement. The narrative is not centered on the
national issue; we can take it as a given that the political
situation permeated the very air of Jerusalem during this time.
Instead, I wish to indulge in evocative history, focusing on the
social and cultural environment that nourished women for a limited
segment of the population, the middle and upper class. The
trajectory of the narrative is directed by the stories and memories
of certain Jerusalem women who generously shared them with me in
conversations.
The
Social, Cultural and Educational Climate in Mandatory Jerusalem
Jerusalem during the Mandate was the seat of government and “the
center of intellectual, social and political activity” in Palestine.
In the wake of damages wrought by World War I, in the 1920s the
government focused on renovating the city and establishing new
institutions, government departments, and schools. In the 1930s, the
world depression, the effects of escalating Jewish immigration, and
the Strike and Revolt of 1936-1939 adversely affected the economic
situation of many Palestinians. With World War II, economic
conditions improved due to war demands.
The years
1939 to 1946 were perceived as a time of prosperity and peaceful,
albeit uneasy coexistence between Arabs and Jews.(1) As
Hala Sakakini wrote, “ both sides seemed to forget their enmity of
over twenty years and to relax…. It was as though we were enjoying a
prolonged holiday that we knew must soon come to an end.”(2)
The
depictions of the social environment for women in Jerusalem varied
according to the identity and experiences of the commentator.
Certain western visitors considered Jerusalem a “stronghold of
religious conservatism rooted in the past.” Yet Palestinian women in
interviews perceived Jerusalem as more “liberal” than other cities
in Palestine, a place where, in the words of Nahid al-Sajjadi, “if a
woman wanted to take the veil off, she just did. Men did not bother
her.”(3) Hala Sakakini remarked that “the first Muslim
ladies to become free” were from Jerusalem. Fadwa Tuqan, who moved
to Jerusalem in 1939, experienced release from her restricted life
in Nablus. She described Jerusalem as a “free society” where the
“the modern woman” engaged in “natural behavior” and “the veil
separating the two sexes had been lifted.”(4)
The
attitude of male relatives played an important role in women’s
efforts to unveil. Nahid al-Sajjadi was encouraged by her husband to
discard the veil, and Sa’ida Jarallah recollects that her father,
Shaykh Hussam al-Din Jarralah, an eminent judge of the Islamic
court, supported her unveiling.
Yet
throughout the 1930s, women often incurred criticism from Arab
society and the wrath of elders for unveiling. While riding the bus
to school unveiled, for example, the young Sa’ida was accosted by an
older female acquaintance who scolded her, “Sa’ida, why are you not
wearing the hijab? Do you think when you get married that your
husband will allow you to go out without the hijab?” Sa’ida
retorted, “if Shaykh Hussam gave me the permission to go out without
the hijab, then there is no one in the world who can force me to
wear it.”
The
mobility of women of certain classes continued to be restricted in
the early years of the Mandate. Hala and Dumya Sakakini described
their aunt Melia, a teacher, as “a window to the world” for her
secluded Muslim friends, whom she frequently visited, entertaining
them with accounts of plays and concerts she had attended.(5)
Yet over time, many Muslim women began to perceive the world with
their own eyes, moving about the city to work and to attend school
or cultural events. The support of male relatives also played a role
in facilitating women’s increased mobility. Nahid al-Sajjadi said,
“We were from the liberal class. Neither my father nor husband stood
in my way…they used to encourage me to work outside.” Sa’ida
Jarallah recollected:
We
used to go to the cinema at the holidays. My father did not mind
us going, but my mother was against it… But we did anyway. There
were beautiful old movies. I remember seeing “Gone with the
Wind” three or four times. Sometimes my mother and father used
to go with us, and my father used to explain the movie to us.
The
period witnessed a blossoming of cultural and civic endeavors,
including the establishment of literary and sports clubs and civic
and religious associations.
Jerusalem women attended films, poetry recitals, lectures, sports
events, and concerts,
as
spectators, participants and, in some cases, performers. In 1936,
the Palestine Broadcasting Service was established, and was soon
broadcasting special programs for girls and women, featuring women
renowned for their literary, political or charitable work, such as
Fadwa Tuqan, `Anbara Sallam al-Khalidi, Matiel Mughannam, Shahinda
Duzdar, and Henriette Siksik.(6) Every Friday, when the
PBS broadcast the women’s hour, Shaykh Hussam Jarallah interrupted
prayers to listen to his daughter on the radio. Institutions like
the Y.M. and Y.W.C.A. were “social and cultural center[s]” offering
young people opportunities for entertainment, education, sports and
cultural events. Julia Awad, a former officer of the Y.W.C.A.,
reminisced that it “was the only outlet for girls…a place where you
could go and feel safe… The whole environment of the Y.W. was to
develop girls. You had mixed religions.” The Y’s also attracted
young people disseminating radical political ideas; Samira Khoury
remembers becoming politicized in the 1940s through attending YMCA
lectures at which the Communist Party passed out pamphlets. The Arab
Women’s Union expanded its arena from politics and charity to
literature, theater, and sports, building its own playing field and
tennis court. Its members performed plays as fundraisers. Jerusalem
hosted a concert tour of Umm Kulthum and traveling theatrical
productions featuring renowned Arab actors such as Najib Rihani and
Yusuf Wahbeh.
Jerusalem
was a magnet for Palestinian women seeking higher education since it
was one of the few cities in the country with educational
institutions beyond the primary level.(7) Young women
left their natal towns and villages to study at the city’s private
religious schools or the only government-sponsored secondary school
for girls, the Women’s Training College. Nirma Tannous moved to
Jerusalem from her village near the Lebanese border with her mother
and sister in order to attend secondary school, but instead of
taking the usual course of teacher training, studied a vocation. “I
was born to be a rebel” she said. “ I revolted against being a
woman, against the conservative stigma attached to feminism, and I
wanted to prove that if girls were given equal opportunities like
boys, they might excel.”
Many girls
did excel. Sa’ida Jarallah’s sister Nafisa and sister-in-law Samiha
were among the first graduates of the WTC. She commented that the
principal, Miss Ridler, “used them as propaganda to show that women
could succeed in school… So when the high class families agreed to
educate their daughters all the people were encouraged to do so.”
Mrs.
Jarallah was the first Muslim Palestinian woman to study abroad on
her own, in 1938. Her father was an enthusiastic advocate of
education for all of his children, including his seven daughters
[foreigners jokingly called them “the little college”]. She
describes his attitude:
My
father was supposedly a fundamentalist shaykh… Everybody was
angry with him for sending me in 1938-1939… to England. I was
supposed to be a Muslim girl and I shouldn’t travel to Britain
alone… I remember one time there was a big feast and King
Abdullah was attending... one of the people told the king that
Shaykh Hussam teaches his daughters how to play the piano and
sends his daughters to foreign schools. My father stood in front
of the king and cited some of the Prophet’s sayings about
education and culture in front of everybody [and] told him that
the Prophet said, `You should pursue your education even if it
takes you to China`, and the education was a requirement for
every Muslim man and woman…My father believed in educating
women. He would say that a woman should have her diploma like a
bracelet in her hand. For if she did not get married or married
but was widowed or divorced, she should be independent and have
her own job and not depend on her father or brother to support
her… this is a favor my sisters and I will never forget from our
father for as we live… he loved us and respected us and treated
us like real women….
Employment opportunities also drew women to Jerusalem. The British
government required a corps of educated, capable civil servants,
both male and female, to service the colonial administration. Women
such as Nabiha `Audeh commuted to Jerusalem from places like
Ramallah. She worked as a stenographer for the Police Department,
and became very popular “fixing” the tickets of anyone she knew! The
most desired jobs for women were in education, which is where the
majority of the educated among them ended up working. Many women
taught at the Women’s Technical College or worked in the Ministry of
Education, as did Sa’ida Jarallah and her sisters Nafisa and Ra’ida.
Melia Sakakini and Sa’ida sisters-in-law, Samiha and Sara all
eventually became school headmistresses. Henriette Siksik taught in
a girls’ elementary school in the Old City, where she had 80 girls
in one class.
Determined to get a job quickly in order to support herself and her
family, Nimra Tannous falsified her age in order to obtain work as a
telephone operator at the Department of Telephone and Posts on Jaffa
Road. “What I wanted was to be independent. I didn’t want to rely on
anybody,” she emphasized.(8)
Page two
Back to Index
Ellen
Fleishmann is Assistant Professor of History at the University of
Dayton. This essay is part of her work on the women’s movement in
Mandate Palestine, The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women: Feminism,
Nationalism, Colonialism and the Palestinian Women’s Movement,
1920-1948, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Georgetown
University, Washington, D.C., 1996. This paper was originally
presented at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Symposium on
Arab Jerusalem (Washington, D.C., April 18, 1996) and the above
essay was printed in the Fall 1998 issue of Jerusalem Quarterly
File. It has been posted in Jerusalemites with permission from JQF.
End Notes
1. Wafi’a Duzdar remembered
the 1940s as an economically prosperous time: “In the thirties it
was really bad, but in the forties everyone was happy. Every body
lived in his or her own house. Nobody rented. Workers used to work
in the British camps, just like they now work in Israel. Even the
villagers in the forties were well off.”
2. Sakakini, Jerusalem
and I, 79. Versions that departed from the theme of the “happy
life” which some women recalled, can be attributed in part to
women’s different family experiences during their youth. (The
quote is from Sa’ida Jarallah). The presence of and character of a
supportive father was mentioned frequently by women and affected
the tenor of their youth. The death of a father profoundly
affected young girls; in Hind Husseini’s case, it meant economic
deprivation, and prevented her from being able to continue school,
since all the family’s meager resources went to support her
brothers’ education. The tone of her remembrances are distinctly
less nostalgic than those of Sa’ida Jarallah or Hala and Dumya
Sakakini.
3. Most women I interviewed
used the word hijab (the head scarf); it is not clear how many
women wore face coverings or merely covered their heads.
Photographic evidence indicates both. See, e.g., Walid Khalidi,
Before Their Diaspora: A photographic History of the Palestinians,
1876-1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991), and
Sarah Graham-Brown, Images of Women (London: Quartet Books,
1988).
4. Fadwa Tuqan, A
Mountainous Journey, 99.
5. Melia Sakakini was a
sociable woman of strong character, whose career as a teacher and
involvement in the Arab Women’s Union garnered her much respect
and the friendship of women from different backgrounds.
6. The service sponsored a
training course for the Arabic service, out of which 8 of the 30
applicants selected were women. “PBS News,” Jan. 17, 1947, ISA RG
15 File 33; HC to SSC, July 3, 1936, CO 733 398/ 12; Fadwa Tuqan,
Mountainous Journey; Filastin, Jan. 26, 1941; Sa’ida Jarallah,
interview; Henriette Siksik, interview.
7. There were no secondary
schools for girls in the villages, and even the number of primary
schools was limited. In the 1940 Annual Report to the Permanent
Mandates Commission, the number of rural (primary) schools for
girls was 27, and town schools, 33 (The numbers of the same for
boys were, respectively, 303 and 39.) CO 733 439/23.
8. Nimra means “tigress” in
Arabic. Her mother had lost 22 children in infancy before Nimra
was born. During her pregnancy with Nimra, she sought the advice
of a fortune teller who told her to name the baby a fierce animal
name so that it would survive. Her sister (her only living
sibling) was named Diba, which means “she-wolf”. She later changed
her name to Rida, but Nimra kept hers.
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