VOICES: PALESTINIAN WOMEN NARRATE DISPLACEMENT
Now accessible on Internet: the voices of women in different
regions of historic Palestine – Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem
and Israel/1948 Palestine – telling their stories of loss of
home, whether through displacement, refugeedom, demolition and
threat of demolition, deportation, imprisonment, and total
transformation of environment. The stories of about 70 people,
mainly women with a few men, are recorded here. They are not
known leaders but ‘ordinary’ Palestinians of varying ages and
social backgrounds – urban, rural, Bedouin; citizens and
refugees.
This is a multi-media project, a digital book in which you can
hear the speakers’ voices, see portraits of their faces and
surroundings, and read texts that describe individual speakers
and give historical background. The site will be expanded as new
information and readings become available.
The voices and texts were recorded and written by Rosemary
Sayigh, anthropologist and oral historian, through a grant from
the Diana Tamari Sabbagh Foundation. The digital book was created
by Børre Ludvigsen, webmaster of Al-Mashriq, and Susanne Olsen,
layout artist and computer programmer. .
Photographs were offered to the project by Leena Saraste, Sallie
Schatz, Rania Matar, Muhammad Omer, Darren Ell, John Torday,
Peter Fryer, and many more.
The book is available at: http://almashriq.hiof.no/voices/
-Rosemary Sayigh
