A world we don’t own!

By: Samah Saleh

    It is my pleasure to share with you some thoughts and ideas from

my fieldwork notes about women experiencing absence between Israeli

prisons and the occupied Palestinian territory. This reflection is

through my PhD research as I follow the life journey for Palestinian

women who have been released from Israeli prisons, by looking into

their life before, during and after imprisonment.

Today I am going to share with you stories from women talking about

their imprisonment experience, which reflects different experiences of

absence. In the first half of the paper, I will be looking into the

different mediation that builds the bridges between the prison and the

outside world… In the second half of the paper I will be looking at

their experience when they leave prison and return to normal life.

I am going to use cartoons from Mohammad Sabaaneh who painted them while he

was imprisoned and succeeded in sending them to his family and

he finished the paintings after his 6 months of administrative detention.

I know that I am talking about women‘s experiences, but I think these

images can reflect the ideas and thoughts that all prisoners have and can

complete the story.

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Let me start with Rula, who was imprisoned for ten years.

I remember everything about my imprisonment experience it is not easy at all to

forget this experience, when you are locked between four

walls and your life is stolen. You don’t own anything other than the

images from the past because you don’t have present. Your present is

confiscated and closed and your future is indefinite… everything stuck

in your brain and you just keep it… prison is a really hard experience

inhuman, at the end human wasn’t created to be locked it was created

to be free

Let’s imagine how we will be in prison! Prison is a complete isolation;

you are surrounded with high walls; the surveillance system is part of

your daily life, cameras, guards, and investigations. Your movements

are limited to a small room that you share with other people; you have

45 minutes to see the sun or to breathe. Prisoners call this time

“FORAH” “release time”, there is a wire between you and the sky so

still you can’t feel it or see it clearly.

What are the things, then, that mediate or serve as some kind of a

bridge between inside and outside/between absence and presence? Perhaps the

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first and most important thing is family visits:

Family visits are limited and can happen every three to four weeks

if the person is lucky. These visits are through windows so there are

no real interactions because this visit is under surveillance, Manal

who was imprisoned for seven years is a mother of four and described

this first visit for her children “I got a family visit after so many

weeks…it was my children, my youngest was five years…she was in

shock… when she saw me she started to cry, she wanted to come to me…we had

glassed window, she got the phone the only way we can hear each other…. I started to

sing a song she likes… she was putting her hands

and fingers on the window trying to touch my face, I felt it… she

started to kiss me…. I was shaking I started to give her kisses… I had

tears on my eyes…. the phone was cut and lights turned off… she was

waving to me and crying when she left”

The second way of mediating absence:  Radio and TV. Radio is one of

the most important pieces of technology for prisoners as it is the

only way they can learn about the outside world, and then to add to

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their imagination and to develop the images they have about their own

life after imprisonment. It is also the only way they can listen to

special programs that their families can call and send them voice

massages and update them about the family news and condition of the

surrounded…. Each prisoner can own a small radio with which they can

search some Arabic channels to follow the news and to listen to family

greetings program, and to listen to other things like the following

cartoon which represents the way prisoners follow a football game and

each one comments according to the way they imagine the game.

Also each room has a television set with few channels, which the

Israeli prison Authority choose for prisoners but this can be the only

window to see how the outside world is. When the prison Authority want

to make any pressure on prisoners they confiscate all the radios and

TVs and they stop the family visits so these windows looking to the outside

world will be closed and they will be in total isolation…and left with

their memories and thought about the absent life of the outside.

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Another way of making contact with the outside world/what they are

missing is the role of new prisoners in refreshing imagination and

memory.

Routine is a major thing in prison as women have told me, when they

started to repeat their stories and memories…. But when a new woman

arrives things change…new stories and images they can use to fill the

gap in their imaginations, which generate their memories about spaces

and people, even though it is painful…. this “newcomer” as they call

them made them happy.  Lenan said: you could see how happy and excited we were

when a new prisoner come, we always wait for those people, we

wait them because we know they will tell us how the life looks like

outside of prison, how the life is developed and how the different

cities start to look like, and then we started to use our imaginations

of how Nablus look like for example, what new roads they opened what

new cafe, how people changed what fashion they wear… so we start our

game by imagining that we are in this cafe and we start to act as it

is exactly according to the girl descriptions… we use to feel happy

even it is just our imaginations.

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Lets move to look at women experience when they get out of prison and

back to life

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Women leave prison so excited to go back to their own lives and

continue the dreams that were on hold for so many years… they don’t

realize things would change because they are living in complete

isolation, even if they were trying to follow the changes of the

outside world through stories they heard or radio programs or TV. They

are prepared theoretically, but the reality is a completely different

story. Most of the women were focusing on how space is completely

different, people are different, and even the political vocabulary is

different. They describe their feelings and respond to all of these

accelerated changes in the outside space. We felt a gap? To what does

this gap refer? What exactly did they find out they had ‘missed’/been

absent from? The point is that you don’t know what you are missing

while you are missing it/you don’t know what you are absent from while

you are absent. It is only when you are out that you fill in the

‘gaps’…Can this gap mean the presence of their memories from their

past.

As we all know things change quickly and we can realize it

because we can see it and also take part of it even if we are not in

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some spaces but technology facilitates this for us but not for those

women prisoners who live in complete isolation.So this experience of

release can cause a gap for women especially those who have been in

prison for so many years…. Women prisoners experienced absence and presence of

many things.

In Ramallah which I would characterize, in general/broadly speaking, as

'the absence of a world that they own':

This may take the form of an absence of familiarity and familiar

social relations: Hanan who considered from the returnee “A’deen” and

was imprisoned for 5 years in the early 80s and then exile for 18

years, said: “we people of Ramallah use to know each other, even people

from Al-Berih we knew them… I was craving to come back to Ramallah

after all these years… but when I was back, I felt… and said… no it is

not Ramallah that I wanted, people use to know each other, there are a

lot of random building, streets are dirty, people you don’t know….

Never accepted the place in the beginning but now I am use to it now”

The skyline of Ramallah for example changed dramatically in the decade

following the Oslo accords, Liza Taraki argued in her study, the

arrival of PA led to the surprisingly rapid elaboration of a new

globalized urban middle-class lifestyle, which found its most

hospitable terrain in Ramallah. Many of the new higher-ranking

bureaucrats were PLO figures and allowed to enter the West Bank and

Gaza after decades of exile. These returnees (‘A’ideen), while small in

number, made their imprint on Ramallah’s cultural and social scene

through their outlook and lifestyles, all of which contributed to the

elaboration of the urban and modernist they had imbibed in Beirut,

Tunis, and other Arab cities.

Rula was imprisoned in the first Intifada and then released after

Oslo. She heard about all of the changes of Ramallah, and also described

the absence of a world that she once owned, and which was once

familiar. In the following quote, Rula refers not just to the changed

physical and social organization of the occupation, but also of the

political language that was used to describe it: I felt hug gap…

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before prison the social life and the economy was really simple, the

occupation was inside our cities and villages and streets, I was

seeing the Israeli Jeeps it was like good morning for me… the life was

really simple in the first Intifada, we were released five years after

Oslo to find the division of opinions between people with Oslo against

Oslo… with suicide bombers and against… there was a social gap between people,

and the structure changed a lot. A lot of people become a PA employees… phone and

mobiles were new… new cars all this is different from our imagination and

preparation in prison… we were released to a globalized world…. I always say out of

my house is a world I don’t own… I don’t like this situation in the city… I don’t

know people.

This 'division of opinions between people', of a changed political

terrain which was reflected in a changed political vocabulary, were

also clear to Abeer after five years of imprisonment between 92 to 97

said when I was released it was really hard to find Abou Amar (Arafat)

in Ramallah, this shift was really hard as much as the interrogation

period for me in prison, I never understood the situation and

conditions I was released to, it was completely strange place for

me…. We lived really hard period not easy at all… in 1992 it was the

first Intifada and in 1997 the Palestinian Authority… concepts changed

we cant use words like enemy about Israel anymore and a lot of

concepts disappeared.

Women who have been imprisoned in the second Intifada had similar

experiences, that Second Intifada created another change for Ramallah

the intensification of the spatial regime of cantonization, Ramallah’s

status as city apart has been consolidate. Since 2000 it has become

more socially heterogeneous than it was at the onset of the Oslo

process and the closure of the cities that made a lot of people from

all over the West Bank and Gaza live in Ramallah.

So I want to say a few words in conclusion. Clearly, many things are difficult

for the women when they first come

out of prison. It affects them for example at a bodily/sensory level.

Heyam told me that the first month was really difficult I did not like

to go anywhere… I was in a complete quietness in prison we never heard

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cars or children’s noises there are no noises… and it was quite long

period and then to be released to all this sounds and clutter city…

With time however, the women begin to be present in the society to

which they have returned in different ways.

Nevertheless, their own experiences in prison still follow them; their

imagination about other prisoners and moments they shared and they

consider that other people don’t understand their feelings. Abeer who felt the

loss of her prison friends said at that time I was wishing to go back

to prison I know there is nothing worse than prison but that was my

wish… I felt I am stranger with this people… For a sudden you are

separated from the other girls and each had to start her own life… I

was feeling people didn’t understand me, and also they are not the

same people they changed they are like new people… but now things

change and I am fine.

Most of the women I have interviewed there chose to be close friends

to women who had been imprisoned because as they said they are the

only ones they can understand their feelings and also they shared with

them the suffering of prison and understand completely how they feel

when they are released…. This suggests that the women can be “absent”

in some way from the society they have returned to, and still in some

ways, present in prison. The overwhelming presence of prison – from

which they wanted to escape is now present to them again even though

they are out from it physically, the prison experience of ‘absence’

doesn’t really end until they are able to reestablish their presence

to themselves outside of it. Those women are strong and most of them

back to be activists in their community and work to serve their own

community.

References:

• Taraki, Liza (ENCLAVE MICROPOLIS: THE PARADOXICAL CASE OF

RAMALLAH/AL-BIREH). Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. XXXVII, No. 4

(Summer 2008), pp. 6–20

• Mohammad Sabaaneh is a Palestinian painter and caricaturist. He was

detained by the Israeli force and held without charges for six months.

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