Abstract
Jerusalem & I (1990) by Hala Sakakini (1924-2003) is a personal record of her life as experienced and lived in Jerusalem. This study focuses on Sakakini’s re-reading of the history of Jerusalem prior to 1948 through her personal remembrances and recollections that she uses as a strategy for resistance. Hala Sakakini is a representation of a woman as a national subject developing a nationalist consciousness within the general flow of nationalism. This study attempts to explore the “alternative truth” rendered by Sakakini in her text. This “alternative truth” dismantles mainstream history written by the powerful. Palestinian women’s self-narratives disentangle a number of correlated topics that convey an exploratory outline for approaching the topic of this study. Sakakini’s writing in English was to carve a place for the experience of a female Jerusalemite voice. Her narrative is a lens through which reality is seen. What Sakakini is delivering to her readers is different from political traditional history; she is after the story of ordinary people. It is a form of oral history where she ponders to offer a socio-historical analysis and an ethnographic and geographic map of the land and the people, conveying another version of history, which subverts mainstream narrative. Hala Sakakini’s quest is a quest for a lost place not a personal gendered quest; it is a collective discourse of belonging.
Highlights
History has usually been the story of the conqueror or the great or the powerful
This study focuses on Sakakini’s re-reading of the history of Jerusalem prior to 1948 through her personal remembrances and recollections that she uses as a strategy for resistance
What Sakakini is delivering to her readers is different from political traditional history; she is after the story of ordinary people
Summary
History has usually been the story of the conqueror or the great or the powerful. In his poem Questions From a Worker who Reads (1935), Bertolt Brecht writes: Who built Thebes of the seven gates?. This “alternative truth” dismantles mainstream history written by the powerful It focuses on Sakakini’s re-reading of the history of Jerusalem prior to 1948 through her personal remembrances and recollections that she uses as a strategy for resistance. This is how she describes every corner of the streets and the places where she has lived, among other fellow Jerusalemites. She is injecting life into her narrative by relating to real people with names. Sakakini’s writing in English was to carve a place for the experience of a female Jerusalemite voice Her narrative is a lens through which reality is seen: At last we started going uphill on the stretch of our journey. Sakakini is writing the “self” to deliver the “collective”, offering an “alternative truth” to dismantle mainstream historical records
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