{"product_id":"sharon-and-my-motherinlaw-isbn-9781400096497","title":"Sharon and My Mother-in-Law","description":"\u003cb\u003eBased on diaries and email correspondence that she kept from 1981-2004, here Suad Amiry evokes daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A literary protest done with great wit, skill, and passion. Not only is it really funny but it shows the kind of courage, vision, and humanity needed to bring peace to the Middle East.\" —Eve Ensler, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Vagina Monologues\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCapturing the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of her experiences, Amiry writes with elegance and humor about the enormous difficulty of moving from one place to another, the torture of falling in love with someone from another town, the absurdity of her dog receiving a Jerusalem identity card when thousands of Palestinians could not, and the trials of having her ninety-two-year-old mother-in-law living in her house during a forty-two-day curfew. With a wickedly sharp ear for dialogue and a keen eye for detail, Amiry gives us an original, ironic, and firsthand glimpse into the absurdity—and agony—of life in the Occupied Territories.\u003cp\u003e\"Full of marvelously detailed, colorful human complication, as funny as it is galling  and heartbreaking.\" —Tony Kushner, author of \u003ci\u003eAngels in America\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Sharply, gloriously  different . . . The seemingly casual narrative . . . works its way into your heart  without asking you to hate anyone: just to hate a situation.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Scotsman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Powerful.  . . . Extremely funny.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A literary protest done with  great wit, skill, and passion. Not only is it really funny but it shows the kind  of courage, vision, and humanity needed to bring peace to the Middle East.\" —Eve  Ensler, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Vagina Monologues\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSuad Amiry is an architect and the founder and director of RIWAQ, Centre for Architectural  Conservation, in Ramallah. She grew up in Amman, Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo, and  studied architecture at the American University of Beirut and at the Universities  of Michigan and Edinburgh. Amiry participated in the 1991—1993 Israeli-Palestinian  peace negotiations in Washington, D.C., and from 1994 to 1996 was assistant deputy  minister and director general of the Ministry of Culture in Palestine. She is the  author of several books on architecture and was awarded Italy’s Viareggio-Versilia  Prize in 2004 for this book. She lives in Ramallah.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eI Was Not in the Mood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Summer 1995\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You kick us out of Jaffa, then wonder how come we're born elsewhere!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    These words flew out of my mouth when I opened it to answer the first   in a long list of questions asked by the Israeli security officer at   Lod (Tel Aviv) Airport.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was certainly not in the mood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was 4:30 in the morning on a hot summer day in 1995. The   almost-five-hour flight from London had fatigued me and all I wanted   to do was rush out of the airport to meet Ibrahim, who had sweetly   come all the way from Ramallah to pick me up at this very early hour.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    My anxiety and irritation increased as the young woman at passport   control slipped a pink tag into my Palestinian passport. I, of   course, have no problems either with pink or with being Palestinian.   But at that very moment, all I wanted was a white tag. As I had   experienced many times before, pink automatically meant at least an   extra hour with security officers at the airport.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Oh, how I wanted a white tag this time!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"How come you were born in Damascus?\" the officer repeated, obviously   neither pleased nor satisfied with my impulsive reply.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell the security officer that in 1940 my   father, who had come to Beirut from Jaffa, was overwhelmed the minute   he saw my Damascene mother. She was eighteen, he was thirty-three. He   had graduated from the American University of Beirut some twelve   years before, while she was still a student at the British Syrian   Training College.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The minute he stepped inside the grandiose courtyard of her family   mansion in Damascus old town and realized how rich her merchant   father was, his dream of marrying this tall, dashingly beautiful   woman with greenish-grey eyes started to fade. In the end, this   particular dream was fulfilled, but many others were shattered, and   my father and mother lived a tormented life together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell him that in December 1978 my father had   died of a heart attack in Prague while attending a writers'   conference. The well-known Palestinian writer Emile Habibi was the   last person to see my father alive and spend the evening with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to inform the Israeli security officer that   every time my mother got pregnant, she went back to Damascus to give   birth. In 1943, 1944 and 1949, she traveled between Jerusalem and   Damascus to give birth to my sisters, Arwa (now a psychologist living   in Amman) and 'Anan (a sociologist now living in America), and, much   later, to my brother, Ayman (a diplomat). She also traveled between   Amman and Damascus, where I was born two years after that. I did not   want to admit to this, as it would only complicate matters and would   certainly increase the security officer's fears for Israel's   security, thus prolonging the interrogation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Have you ever lived in Damascus?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No,\" came my brief answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell the officer that until the age of   eighteen, when I left Amman to study architecture at the American   University of Beirut, my workaholic mother, who owned a publishing   and printing firm, looked forward to getting rid of her four children   every summer. The very first week of our summer vacation, she sent us   off to her parents' house in Damascus or to her relatives in Beirut.   My brother, Ayman, and I were more than happy to spend part of the   summer vacation with our unmarried aunts, Nahida and Suad (for whom I   was named), who completely spoiled us and my two teenage sisters.   They took us to pick cherries at my aunt Farizeh's summer house in   the Syrian resort town of Zabadani, up in the mountains some   twenty-five miles west of Damascus. On Fridays we helped my aunts   pack food and watermelons, in preparation for a picnic in one of the   many restaurants along the Barada River (which became filled with   watermelons that were being chilled), in the lush Damascus   neighborhood of Dummar. One of the highlights of our summer vacation   was the Damascus International Fair, where Aunt Nahida always bought   us what she thought were the latest Russian products: a set of wooden   dolls (matryoshka) for me, and wooden cars and planes for Ayman. When   she ran out of ideas, Aunt Nahida took us for a stroll in the busy   Suq el-Hamadiyyeh, where we quenched our thirst with sticky pistachio   and gum arabic ice cream from the Bukdash ice-cream parlor. Some   forty years later, I can still remember the taste of gum arabic. In   the afternoons, while my aunts were having their siesta, we played   and ran around the huge water fountain in the middle of the ed-dyar   (courtyard) with our many cousins. But our summer vacation would not   have been complete without a visit to Beirut. After a few days of   continuous nagging, my two aunts always agreed to accompany us, or   sometimes sent us alone, to stay with Uncle Mamduh and Aunt Firdaus   in the neighborhood of Zquaq el-Balat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    To avoid our bad-tempered Uncle Mamduh, we spent most of the day   swimming off the crowded St. George's Hotel beach of humid and hot   Beirut. At the end of our three-month vacation, and just a day or two   before school started, we arrived in Amman and the first thing my   mother did was complain about our dark complexions. The Damascenes   had an obsession with whiteness, and did not appreciate the concept   of a fashionable tan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Do you have relatives in Syria?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No.\" End of conversation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell the security officer at Tel Aviv   airport that my mother was the youngest in a family of eleven, and   that was just her nuclear family. I did not want to scare him by   saying that I had four aunts and four uncles, and more than twenty   cousins. They and their families all lived in Damascus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell the Israeli officer that from 1950   until today, my mother's groceries had been delivered weekly from   Damascus. It was impossible to convince my mother that Amman had good   meat, vegetables or fruit. This was also the case when she lived in   Salt and Jerusalem. The only time she bought local produce was in   1968, when we lived in Cairo. She often complained that the Egyptian   Airlines pilots were not as cooperative as the taxi drivers between   Damascus and Amman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell him that Damascus is not, as he seemed   to think, just one huge military base filled with SAM-1 and SAM-2   missiles, but rather a vibrant city, especially our neighborhood in   the old town where my grandfather's house still stands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It would have been difficult for me to explain to the Israeli   security officer that I have always envied my parents, and even my   grandparents, for living at a time when residing in, or traveling   between, the beautiful cities of the region was not such a big deal   and did not call for security checks. I was always intrigued when my   father described his trips between Jaffa and Beirut, which included   lunch at a seaside restaurant in Sidon. I was even more intrigued   when my mother described to me how in 1926, as a child of four, she   had visited her mother's family, the Abdulhadis, in the village of   'Arrabeh in Palestine. I have always been enchanted by the route they   took between Damascus and 'Arrabeh, which went down through the   Yarmouk valley and the beautiful plains of Marj Ibin 'Amer and Sahel   Jenin. \"First we went to our relatives in Nablus, and a few days   later we went on horses to the village of 'Arrabeh,\" my mother would   say. It was the horse ride which fascinated my mother, whereas it was   the very impossibility of taking such a trip between 'Arrabeh and   Damascus now which bothered me more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The security man handed me and my passport over to a security woman   sitting in a room behind a desk, then disappeared, leaving me alone   with her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She flipped through my passport, and rather aggressively asked, \"And   what were you doing in London?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I went dancing,\" I answered, looking her straight in the eye, with   an expressionless, tired face, and a voice even more aggressive than   hers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Do you think you're being funny?\" she said, her voice louder and more serious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No. And do YOU have any problem with dancing?\" My voice now much   lower and more sarcastic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What was the purpose of your visit to London?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Dancing,\" I insisted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As we went back and forth, she started to lose her temper and I   started to lose my sleepiness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A few minutes later, she picked up the phone and started talking in   Hebrew, a language I do not understand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Dancing . . . Dancing . . . Dancing . . .\"--the English word jumped   out of her Hebrew sentences.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not in the mood to tell the Israeli security woman that I had   been on vacation in Scotland with friends, friends I had not seen   since 1983, when I had been working on my thesis at the University of   Edinburgh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I did not want to explain to her who these friends were. Going   through their names one by one would only complicate matters and make   the interrogation unbearably long.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I didn't tell her that my friendships with some of these people went   back to the 1970s, and my golden university days in Beirut. Even   though I was totally exhausted, I had enough common sense to realize   that \"Beirut\" was a buzzword for the security officers of Israel.   Some of those friendships went back to the fifties and sixties,   during my childhood and adolescence, growing up in Amman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As a tall and hugely built male officer (obviously her superior)   entered the interrogation room, I was more certain than ever that one   should never take the risk of mixing friendship with security issues,   especially if it concerns the security of the State of Israel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As the two officers exchanged a few words in Hebrew, my anxiety increased.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What were you doing in London?\" asked the male officer, extremely   aggressively, while looking me straight in the eye.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Dancing,\" I insisted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You know that failing to cooperate with us on security matters will   result in your arrest?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Fine,\" I replied, quickly resigned to this ridiculous verdict, \"but   I need to go out and inform poor Ibrahim, who has been waiting   outside the airport for hours to pick me up.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No, you are not permitted to go; and who is Ibrahim? Is he a relative?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I did not want to tell the two security officers that Ibrahim was not   exactly a relative, as none of my relatives, and neither my husband   nor any of my friends from Ramallah, are allowed to come pick me up   from the airport. I wondered if the officers knew that I, like many   other Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, needed many   types of permits to move about: a permit to enter Jerusalem, another   to go out to Jordan, a third to enter Israel, a fourth to work in   Israel, an impossible one to enter Gaza, and a four-hour permit to   use the airport, which gives you just enough time to get there with   no flat tires, lasamahallah (God forbid).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ibrahim is one of two or three taxi drivers in Ramallah who happens   to have a car with a yellow license plate, which allows him to pick   up passengers from the airport.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was not exactly in the mood to tell the officer that one of my   dreams is simply for my husband to be able to pick me up from the   airport or from Allenby Bridge when I come back from a trip. But that   is a privilege no Palestinian has.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You cannot prevent me from going out to tell Ibrahim to leave. It is   not fair to make him wait any more, especially now that I am going to   be kept here for much longer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No, you cannot leave!\" screamed the male officer, losing his temper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Watch me do it,\" I said as I turned around and started walking out   of the interrogation room into an arrivals hall filled with   passengers, many of them coming to enjoy the sun and beautiful,   relaxing shores of Israel. My heart was pumping as I walked towards   the exit; by then, two security men were walking very close to me,   one on each side. One of them kept repeating, \"Don't make us do   things we don't like doing.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Yes, arresting me in front of these tourists will create a scene   which is not favorable for tourism in Israel!\" I screamed back. \"Why   can't I be treated just like any of these tourists?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By that time, the three of us were standing outside the arrivals   hall, right in front of Ibrahim, the driver.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Elhamdullah 'ala es-salameh Suad khir inshallah shoo fi (Welcome   home, Suad, what is the matter, I hope all is well)?\" he said as he   formally shook my hand, his eyes fixed on the two security officers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Where is your luggage?\" he added, busy trying to figure out the   story of me and the two men in civilian clothes with the hostile   faces accompanying me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Ibrahim, these are security officers. It is a long story. In short,   I am under arrest and I just came out to let you know that you should   not wait for me any longer--please call Salim and tell him that I   have been arrested at the airport.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Arrested?\" Ibrahim repeated, shocked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Don't worry, Ibrahim. It is not a big deal,\" I reassured him. \"I   have been arrested because I told them I went dancing in London,\" I   added.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Dancing? Did you say dancing?\" Ibrahim was now in total shock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Oh, God, that was all I needed. It seemed that Ibrahim was even more   troubled by my dancing in London than the Israeli security officers.   What can I say? I have always believed that the Occupation ruined the   spirit of both Israelis and Palestinians.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    These were the last words Ibrahim and I exchanged before one of the   officers approached Ibrahim and asked him to accompany them. The   three anti-dancing men disappeared inside while I stood there outside   the airport with no passport and no luggage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    So much for being frivolous, Suad, I started castigating myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Less than half an hour later, Ibrahim appeared through the big gates   of the arrivals hall, pushing my luggage trolley with one hand and   waving my passport in the other. With a victorious expression on his   face he said, \"Come on, let's go, Suad.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What happened, Ibrahim? Tell me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"It takes a man to talk to men,\" he bragged. \"Come on, Suad, let's   get out of here. I just assured them that you are a bit strange.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Ibrahim!\" I bellowed.","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299977154789,"sku":"NP9781400096497","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400096497.jpg?v=1767736475","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/sharon-and-my-motherinlaw-isbn-9781400096497","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}