Winter 1992

he War with Two Voices: Testimonies by Women from Egypt and Israel

Laurence Deonna

Translated from the French by Rosalind Sloman, edited by E. Williamson and Laurence Deonna. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1989.258 pages, illus. LC 88-20034. ISBN 0-89410-638-4 $24.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-89410-639-2 $12.00 paperback.

Review by Marilyn Booth, D. Phil. Urbana, Illinois

lus book falls at the intersection of two rapidly growing areas T of work concerning women in the Middle East, the genre of "testimonials" or "life histories" and the subject area of women and conflict. These in turn parallel major foci of interest w i t h North American and European gender studies; with the added bonus of an "Arab/Israeli" focus, this volume brings together some popular ingredients.

Laurence Deonna is a Swiss-based journalist who apparently has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East since the mid- sixties, much of it as a war correspondent. The War with TWO Voices is her attempt to personalize the politics she has long reported, and more specifically to give voice to those "who usually bear the brunt [of war] and hold their tongues" (p. 1). The book consists of thir- teen interviews with Israelis and fourteen with Egyptians, usually individuals but occasionally couples or groups, carried out in the early 1980s (some of them, ironically or perhaps appropriately,

Women’s hues

during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon). They concern wars from 1948 on in which Egypt and Israel have been involved.

Deonna is honest about the intrusive nature of her enterprise. Several times, we hear that subjects were reluctant to talk to her or even refused to do so: ”two or three women literally slammed their doors in my face” (p. 1). But she does not reflect on the ethical issues that this resistance might signify, or on her own positioning or power as the mediator and communicator of these painful, personal stories.

A few of the interviewees are well-known figures-Cherifa Fadel, Sakina Sadat, Naomi Scherer-but most are not. Some are women of economic privilege; but for more of them, the disaster of losing a loved one in war was compounded by growing economic hardship, while the minimal or nonexistent support of their governments was a bitter shock. Nicely presented is the irony of governments’ simultaneous indifference to these women’s situations and eagerness to find among them ”positive” women (the stuff of government propaganda) who can act as proper role models to other women. The meanings of patriotism are quietly tested in many of these conversations, as Deonna manages to find some not- so-”positive” interviewees on both sides. So are the meanings of community: the internal divisions of class, communal identity, and ethnicity-and, in Israel, region of origin-intersect with what are articulated as gender-based interests.

Deonna explicitly terms this odyssey a ”search for heroines” (p. l), different ”heroines” than officialdom would have her meet. Perhaps due to Deonna’s decision to concentrate on war and its effects, women are mostly presented as ”heroines” in their roles as nurturers, and consequently there is a narrowing process at work in characterizing the lives of women in both societies. While many of these women work outside the domestic sphere, Deonna presents them first and foremost in the context of home and family, for it is their modes of coping with the loss of a father, husband, lover, or son, and their consequent feelings about war, that interest the journalist. This in turn contributes to an occasional essentializing (in Deonna’s editorializing especially) of women’s attitudes to, and handling of, issues of violence and conflict. There is material here, however, that nicely complements recent feminist works on women and nonviolence such as Sara Ruddick‘s influential Mafernal Thinking.

diversity of women’s experiences, articulations, and actions, she If Deonna is trying to show both the commonality and the

D,igest of Middle East Studiu 19

Winter 1992

undermines her own project somewhat with an underlying, unstated assumption relayed in what I consider an unfortunate title: that assumption is that women of Egypt somehow speak with one voice, women of Israel with another. This is compounded by her tendency at times to resort to stereotypes when talking of Egypt, whde she successfully avoids stereotyping in the case of Israel. While there is no reason to doubt her claim that she has faithfully transcribed these interviews, her own interspersed editorial comments, brief as they are, remind us of the anything-but- transparent role of the interlocutor. Exposing her journalistic perspective, she labels her material ” [rleal life that I have thoroughly verified both in Israel and in Egypt ... and there was no way I could indulge in the slightest embroidery, the slightest lyricism. No way, in short, to romanticize” (p. 2). Yet, our first introduction to Egypt, bringing in the de rigueur trope of the Thousand and One Nights if only to contrast it with a modern day Egyptian nightclub, conjures some popular ”Arab images” of the Western media: “Dark jackets strain at their buttons over Egyptian paunches, long white robes flutter on the oil princes .... A donkey- cart loaded with watermelons drags its way through the Mercedes” (p. 17; see also her lyrical sketch of Luxor, p. 121).

highly informative and gripping, sometimes as interesting in their silences as they are in what is articulated. Some might be useful as teaching material in ” Arab-Israeli” courses, grist for discussion sections. I found the interviews with disabled veterans and their families in both countries, and those with ”peace-nik Israelis and Sephardic Jewish immigrants to Israel, especially intriguing. And over and over, Deonna witnessed and transcribed an ambivalence toward those on ”the other side” that is complex, shifting, and not without hope.

Thus book is worth reading: a number of the interviews are

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