Women, Water and Memory: Recasting Lives in Palestine

Front Cover
Brill, 2009 - History - 173 pages
This book tells a different story about water. Against the backdrop of the end of the Ottoman Empire to the Palestinian uprisings, old Palestinian women recount life before and after piped water. While talking about fetching and managing household water, women also talked about being women. Women, Water and Memory speaks of many different lives. We hear stories about women's own strength and beauty, and about the woman who married a man whose ugly face made her sick. While one woman married the man a oeshe cared fora, another was relieved that her husband died when she was too old to be forced to remarry. We learn about the joy they feel each time they dance at a wedding, the sheer satisfaction of lighting a cigarette, the loyalty and shared despair towards families with members in prison, and about the tears of sorrow at each death and the delight at each birth.

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About the author (2009)

Nefissa Naguib, Ph.D. (2003), is associate professor in anthropology and development studies at Oslo University College and is currently working on the research project Global Moments in the Levant, based at the University of Bergen and financed by the Norwegian Research Council. She is co-editor, with I.M. Okkenhaug, of Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (Brill, 2007) and has written extensively on women, armed conflict, and minorities and the politics of memory. At present, she is editing a book on the evolvement, journey and impact of cuisine(s) from the Nile Valley to the Indus.

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