Equality
In Death
By Barbara Victor
25 April , 2004
The Observer
There
are certain monumental events in life that mark us forever, when we
remember time, place and person so vividly that our own actions or thoughts
at that moment replace the enormity of the event itself. For each generation
the references are different: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination
of John F Kennedy, and, of course, 11 September 2001.
Then there are other events that, because we happen to find ourselves
in the middle of the fray, touch us more personally; pivotal moments
that take a permanent place in our memories.
Many of these moments
happened for me while I was working as a journalist in the Middle East.
The first was in 1982, during the war in Lebanon, when I arrived in
Beirut just in time to witness the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps. When the press was finally allowed into the camps to
record the horrors there, and after we had digested the visual shock
of bloated bodies and houses reduced to rubble intermingled with an
occasional sign of life - a twisted plastic doll, or a broken plate
- an incident transpired that has remained with me throughout the years.
A Palestinian woman
was sitting on the ground, cradling a lifeless child in her arms, while
all around her was the stench of death that lingered after two days
of unrelenting carnage. Kneeling down next to her, I asked her the prerequisite
media questions: how she felt when she found herself the sole survivor
in her family and, more crucial, how she would manage to live the rest
of her life with those memories constantly there to torture her. She
knew immediately that I was an American, and without any hesitation
she looked up at me and said, in surprisingly good English, 'You American
women talk constantly of equality. Well, you can take a lesson from
us Palestinian women. We die in equal numbers to the men.' This tragic
concept of women's liberation stayed with me.
In one of those
horrific ironies that occur more frequently than anyone could imagine
unless one is familiar with that part of the world, the other moment
that has remained with me forever happened while I was in Ramallah in
November 2001, accompanying a French journalist who was filming a report
about the Palestine Red Crescent Society. My friend was doing a story
on these young volunteers as they rode in ambulances, tending to the
people left dead and dying after violent clashes with Israeli soldiers.
The Red Crescent
office in Ramallah is housed in a three-storey white building with a
red-tile roof, not far from the town's main square. On the first floor
of the headquarters, the room where the staff gathered in between emergency
calls was furnished sparsely with a wrought iron sofa and kitchen chairs
grouped around a low blond-wood table. In one corner of the room, perched
high on a wall, a television set tuned to the Palestinian Authority
station monitored all events throughout the West Bank and Gaza and gave
hourly news reports.
Waiting for the
inevitable call that day were five Red Crescent workers, three men and
two women who obviously knew each other well. There was casual banter
and a lot of joking, although what struck me was how they each rocked
back and forth in their chairs, arms clasped tightly around their chests.
Their body language was a sign of the extreme stress that each of them
undoubtedly felt, given the daily reality of closures, the possibility
of a suicide attack within Israel that would bring military reprisals,
and knowledge that at any minute they could be called out to the middle
of a confrontation. As my friend's camera panned the group, each one
gave his or her name and age, beginning with Tared Abed, 27 years old;
Ahlam Nasser, 23; Nassam al-Battouni, 22; Bilal Saleh, 23; and Wafa
Idris, who said she was 25. Almost immediately the others teased her,
since she had apparently lied about her age, making herself younger
than she actually was.
As I was observing
the volunteers, there was a moment when the image on the television
showed a man, his head and face wrapped in a chequered red and white
keffiyeh to conceal his features, speaking in Arabic, holding a Kalashnikov
rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other. While the others continued
laughing and talking, I saw Wafa's expression turn suddenly serious
as she watched the man on the screen make what was his last speech before
he set off to blow himself up in a suicide attack somewhere in Israel.
Concentrating on the 'martyr's' every word, she sat forward in her chair,
her jaw set, her demeanour intense, silent and unmoving, until he concluded
his videotaped testament to the Palestinian community, his friends and
his family. I remember a gesture Wafa made after the suicide bomber
finished his speech: she suddenly raised her right arm and waved.
Two months later,
on 27 January 2002, Wafa Idris entered Palestinian infamy when she became
the 47th suicide bomber and - more significantly - the first woman kamikaze
to blow herself up in the name of the Palestinian struggle. Back in
Paris, I would always remember where I was and what I was doing when
I heard the news. Several hours later, my journalist friend who had
taken me along that November day to the Red Crescent office called to
say he had footage of the suicide attack. I rushed over to see it and
while the entire scene was horrifying, the sight of Wafa's body lying
in the middle of Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, covered haphazardly with a
rubber sheet, was stunning. Even more shocking was the image of an arm,
her right arm, which had been ripped from her body, lying bloody and
torn several inches away. At that moment something clicked in my head
and I recalled her goodbye that day in Ramallah.
A week after Wafa's
suicide blast, I travelled to the al-Amari refugee camp to visit her
family. Approaching the house, which is situated in a narrow alley,
I noticed photographs of Wafa displayed on all the buildings. Children
carrying toy guns and rifles ran up excitedly to point to Wafa and ask
me to take a picture of them with their heroine, the woman who died
a martyr's death. 'One of us!' they exclaimed with glee. A group of
adults lingered near the Idris home, including several shopkeepers who
wanted to share personal anecdotes about Wafa so that I would understand
how she was revered.
But the Idris home
was deserted, the family gone into hiding. Immediately after Wafa's
death, the house had been ransacked by the Israeli military. Pushing
aside the remains of a white metal door that had been torn from its
hinges, and stepping over shards of glass that had once been the living-room
windows, I entered. Suddenly, an old-fashioned dial telephone on a table
began to ring and ring. The noise startled me and it took several seconds
to regain my composure.
There were bullet
holes in the walls, drawers had been tossed, beds turned upside down,
and slashed cushions strewn around the floor of the living room. The
only intact items were pictures on the walls of Wafa, in various stages
of her brief life: in a graduation gown and cap with a diploma in her
hand; standing with a group of Red Crescent workers at a reception with
Yasser Arafat; and finally, the now-familiar photo of Wafa wearing a
black and white chequered keffiyeh, the symbol of the Fatah organisation,
with a green bandanna around her head, on which was written 'Allah Akhbar',
or 'God is greater than all other gods.'
It seemed to me
that amid all the destruction and chaos, Wafa's spirit was still very
present and strong in her childhood home. It was hard to leave, but
since there was no one to talk to, no one to see, I finally walked out
into the street. There were more people crowding around the house, pushing
and shoving to reach me and to talk about Wafa. All of them, regardless
of age or gender, said the same thing: that one of their own had become
a heroine for the Palestinian struggle - a woman, a symbol of the army
of women who were ready to die for the cause. It was then that the journey
began that would take me throughout the Middle East in an effort to
understand this misguided feminist movement, which held up Wafa Idris
as an example of the new, liberated Palestinian woman.
In the course of
my research three more women strapped on explosive belts, following
in Wafa's footsteps, and blew themselves up in the name of Allah. As
I travelled throughout Gaza and from one West Bank town to another,
interviewing the families and friends of the four women who had succeeded
in giving their lives, as well as approximately 80 girls and young women
who had tried and failed, I discovered the hard reality - that it was
never another woman who recruited the suicide bombers. Without exception,
these women had been trained by a trusted member of the family - a brother,
an uncle - or an esteemed religious leader, teacher, or family friend,
all of whom were men. I also learnt that all four who died, plus the
others who had tried and failed to die a martyr's death, had personal
problems that made their lives untenable within their own culture and
society.
I found that there
were, in fact, very different motives and rewards for the men who died
a martyr's death than for the women. Consequently, it became essential
for me to understand the reasoning of the men who provide the moral
justification for the seduction and indoctrination that eventually convinces
a woman or girl that the most valuable thing she can do with her life
is end it; at the same time, I saw it was crucial to understand the
social environment that pushes these young women over the edge of personal
despair.
What stunned me
as I questioned these men, some of whom were in jail, was that all of
them, by virtue of their powerful role in these women's lives, had managed
to convince their sisters, daughters, wives or charges that given their
'moral transgressions', or the errors made by a male family member,
the only way to redeem themselves and the family name was to die a martyr's
death. Only then would these women enjoy everlasting life filled with
happiness, respect and luxury, and finally be elevated to an equal par
with men. Only in Paradise, and only if they killed themselves.
Three months after
Wafa Idris blew herself up to become the first Palestinian shahida (female
martyr), long after the mourners had gone and the excitement had worn
off, I went to the al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah to meet Wafa's
mother. The inside of the house had been made habitable again by friends
and neighbours with money supplied by the Fatah movement.
Dr Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi,
the charismatic spokesperson for Hamas, admitted during an on-camera
interview that, depending on who takes responsibility for the attack,
either Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Palestinian Authority distributes
a lifetime stipend of $400 a month to the families of male suicide bombers;
he points out that the families of shahidas such as Wafa receive $200
per month. It would seem that even in death women are not treated equally.
Only 56 years old,
Mabrook Idris looks far older, and feels years older, she says, given
her weak heart. Greeting me in her shabby living room, she holds the
tattered poster of her child, which she picks up automatically the moment
I appear, seemingly by rote after so many months of practice, when local
dignitaries, neighbours, friends and Western journalists have visited
her to pay their respects. 'Thank God,' she says. 'I am proud that my
daughter died for Palestine, proud that she gave her life for us all.
Thank God, thank God...'
But after an hour
of sitting with her, talking with her, listening to her, Mabrook Idris
is weeping. 'If I had known what she was going to do, I would have stopped
her,' she says. 'I grieve for my daughter.' Finally, Mabrook Idris stops
talking about death and begins to talk about her daughter's brief life.
Wafa was born in
the al-Amari refugee camp in 1975, conditioned to Israeli occupation
and experienced in street fighting. 'We once had a home in Ramla,' Mabrook
adds wistfully, 'but in 1948 we were forced to flee. Wafa never knew
any other home but this.' She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand.
She is silent for several minutes as two of her grandchildren, the children
of her son Khalil, scramble next to her on the sofa. She hands them
each a poster of their heroine aunt and instructs them to kiss Wafa's
image. Their mother, Wissim, Mabrook's daughter-in-law, sits nearby,
cradling an infant. The whole family shares the three-room house with
Mabrook, as did Wafa before she died. At one point during the interview,
Wissim recalls Wafa once saying that she would like to be a martyr.
'But only once,' she insists. 'When she saw pictures on television of
a suicide attack committed by a man, she said that she wished she had
done something like that.'
As had been previously
arranged, three childhood friends of Wafa's arrive. Ahlam Nasser, who
worked with Wafa at the Red Crescent, Raf'ah Abu Hamid and Itimad Abu
Lidbeh are still visibly shocked by the death of their friend. But while
Raf'ah claims that she had absolutely no inkling that Wafa harboured
such violent intentions, Itimad remembers how in 1985 she and Wafa travelled
once a month to the north of Israel to visit their respective brothers
who were in an Israeli prison. 'Our trips up north continued right into
the intifada in 1987,' Itimad explains. 'When Khalil, Wafa's beloved
brother, was arrested for being a member of Fatah and sentenced to eight
years in prison, Wafa told me that she didn't care if the Israelis killed
her, she would always try to see him on visiting day.' Mabrook Idris
agrees that the hardships of the occupation hit Wafa hardest then. 'My
two sons worked as taxi drivers and they helped support us. When one
son was arrested by the Israelis and the other lost his job because
of the curfew, my daughter was desperate.'
When the first intifada
erupted in 1987, Wafa was 12 years old, and her mother says she reacted
in the same way as hundreds and thousands of other Palestinian children
who were deeply affected by the first real display of rebellion and confrontation
against Israeli occupation. 'A friend lost an eye,' she explains, 'and
that affected Wafa very deeply.'
Mabrook maintains that her daughter was motivated more by nationalist
fervour than by religion, even if she attributes that fervour to God's
destiny for her daughter. 'She was a Muslim,' the woman explains, 'which
made her fearless, but the injustice of the Jews made her act.'
And yet Raf'ah Abu
Hamid is convinced that her friend, regardless of her patriotic zeal
and courage, could never have planned and implemented the suicide mission
on her own. 'She had to have someone behind her,' Raf'ah says. 'How
could she get the bomb? How would she know how to explode it? We never
learnt anything like that on television or on the street.'
How indeed?
Ahlam Nasser quickly
explains that it is not difficult to make contact with an organisation
and to volunteer as a martyr. 'Every group, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and
the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade,' she explains, 'has an office in every
city in the West Bank and Gaza. People who want to become martyrs know
exactly where to go.'
And then she offers
another interesting observation about Wafa. 'But I don't understand.
She was so happy when she was working. She was always so encouraging
and optimistic to everyone she cared for. I never heard her say anything
about violent retaliation or hate. It was only while we were waiting
at the office for a call that she seemed depressed. Once she was looking
through an old magazine and told me how she wished she could buy all
the pretty clothes she wanted.' The young woman shrugged. 'But which
one of us didn't wish that?'
It is then, at that
point in the discussion, that Wissim Idris suddenly changes her mind
when she says that she never really took her sister-in-law seriously
when she claimed she wanted to become a martyr. Instead, she maintains
that Wafa was never quite the same since her husband divorced her several
years before. The three friends agree, while Mabrook, tears welling
in her eyes, sighs heavily.
Apparently, while
Wafa Idris was known for having an independent mind and a profound feeling
of resentment against the occupation, she also had a reputation as a
troubled young woman who was prone to bouts of melancholy and depression.
Without prompting,
Mabrook Idris offers another piece in the puzzle of her daughter's decision
to die: Wafa had been a constant target for mocking after her husband
divorced her.
'My daughter's husband
divorced her because she couldn't have children,' Mabrook says. 'Wafa
knew she could never marry again, because a divorced woman is tainted...
She was young, intelligent and beautiful, and had nothing to live for.'
As is the custom
in Palestinian society, along with other Arab cultures, a dowry is paid
to the prospective wife's family by the father of the groom. Mabrook
Idris explains that because of the hardships of Israeli occupation,
because her husband had died of natural causes when Wafa was a little
girl, and because her sons have children of their own to support, her
daughter was not worth a handsome sum, which would have ensured that
her daughter would have a husband who could offer her a relatively comfortable
life.
'When Wafa was very
young,' she explains, 'we decided to marry her because the only thing
we had that made my daughter a prize was that she was young and would
have more years to bear children.'
In 1991, at the
age of 16, Wafa married her first cousin, Ahmed, who also lived in the
al-Amari camp and tended a small chicken farm along with his father
and older brother. Fortunately for Wafa, according to her mother, it
was a love story, since her daughter had had a crush on Ahmed, who was
10 years older than she, since she was a small child. But the euphoria
of the union and the hope that she would have a satisfactory life as
a wife and mother were dashed when, nine years later, social pressure
forced Ahmed to divorce her. After years of trying to conceive, in 1998
Wafa delivered prematurely a stillborn daughter. The family was devastated,
and Ahmed, according to his description of events after the tragedy,
was humiliated. During an interview with Ahmed later, he explained how
he had been disgraced by the tragedy. 'At first my family blamed Wafa,
and then they blamed me,' he says. 'They said that I was too weak to
provide an infant that would survive in her womb.'
After the trauma
of the stillbirth, a local doctor told Wafa and her husband, in the
presence of their families, that she would never be able to carry a
child to full term. Ahmed is vague and obviously embarrassed when pressed
about her medical problems. No, she didn't see a prenatal specialist
or a fertility expert, and in fact she had been diagnosed by a general
practitioner rather than a gynaecologist. No, she had no particular
tests such as an MRI or a sonogram, and it was only after her ordeal
that the hospital staff determined she could never have another child.
Was Wafa's plight
just another example of the hardship of living under Israeli occupation?
Was she a victim of poverty and ignorance? There are more questions
that Ahmed cannot answer and that the local doctor, when interviewed,
was also unable to resolve. Would things have been different if she
had had access to the best medical treatment? And what happened after
she lost her baby? Did she suffer from postpartum depression? Was her
judgment affected? Was medicine prescribed to alleviate her mental pain?
It is as impossible
to answer those questions as it is dangerous to diagnose so long after
the fact. Ahmed claims that after she lost her baby, Wafa stopped eating
and stopped talking. She stayed in bed all day and all night, and she
refused to get up to clean the house or cook his meals. Ahmed admits
that he was 'crazy with worry' and unable to cope with the situation.
'I called her brother Khalil,' Ahmed explains, 'to try and help, but
she remained unresponsive.'
Mira Tzoreff is
a professor at Ben-Gurion University whose research is in the field
of women's history in the Middle East from a sociocultural point of
view. Her doctorate is on Egyptian women in the period between the two
world wars.
Tzoreff explains
that throughout the Occupied Territories and the Arab world, a woman
is dependent legally and socially. In every aspect of her life, a man
- either a father, brother or husband - makes all her decisions and
takes care of her. 'It is called bila-umri, or "not without my
dearest one,"' Tzoreff explains. 'In Wafa Idris's case, because
her father was dead, it was her oldest brother, Khalil, who was charged
with the responsibility of his sister's life.'
After Wafa's marriage,
Ahmed took over from Khalil, but in the event of a problem that put
the marriage at risk, custom dictated that the husband consult with
his wife's father, or in this case with Khalil. According to Ahmed,
he also consulted his spiritual leader, a local imam, who quoted to
him from the Koran a special passage that offered instructions about
disobedient wives. 'In the marriage institution,' Ahmed says, 'the husband
is the driver of the car, he is at the wheel and it is he who sets the
rules that guides the family to serenity and happiness. When it comes
to handling problems, Allah has set down rules or guidelines that a
man can follow when a wife is disobedient.'
From his imam, Ahmed
learnt that there were two different kinds of disobedience in the Koran.
'Rebellion, ugly things she does,' he explains, 'or just simple disobedience.'
The imam suggested
that before Ahmed could define his wife's particular case, he should
watch a weekly television talk show broadcast from Egypt called Life
is Sweet, which featured a certain Dr Mohammed al-Hajj, a professor
of Islamic faith at the University of Amman. Once Ahmed understood what
constituted the different degrees of wifely disobedience, he was able
to assess the problem with Khalil.
'She did not disgrace
me in public or disgrace herself and the sanctity of her womanhood,'
he explains. 'She merely disobeyed me when I ordered her to get out
of bed and take care of the house, the meals, my family, my clothes.'
Itimad Abu Lidbeh,
Wafa's close friend, describes what she believes was Wafa's state of
complete 'inertia'. 'When she lost her baby, she lost the will to live.
I never understood why she reacted like that, but she did. She was a
woman in enormous pain, and although she never said the words, I sensed
she had no desire to go on living.'
Dr Israel Orbach,
a professor of psychology at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, whose
speciality is studying suicide and suicidal behaviour, maintains that
suicide 'is a very subjective experience...
A family member
or friend might see the person's pain as something marginal or insignificant,
but for the person who suffers, it is unbearable mental pain. As for
Wafa Idris, it would appear that she carried an inner turmoil and pain
for years, and the loss of a child was the culminating factor that made
the process come closer to a final resolution.'
Iyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist
and writer from Gaza, is not convinced that Wafa Idris ended her life
because of only one reason. 'I believe the woman who does this is an
exception to the rule, because basically, women are the source of life,'
he says. 'There is no doubt that there were other psychological reasons
or symptoms which drove this woman to suicide. Perhaps she was depressed,
and since sacrifice is the way for liberation and the way out - and
that affects people very strongly, especially with all the humiliation
and violence on the Israeli side - because of this, it brings out the
worst reaction in people. In other words, the cultural, religious and
nationalistic reasons, combined with her own personal depression, gave
Wafa the reason and the courage to do it.'
A fatal cocktail?
Martyrdom that is rewarded in Islam by everlasting life at Allah's table
in Paradise, combined with the political and economic oppression of
an occupying force, and exacerbated by personal problems caused by constraints
from one's own society that make life unbearable. What if the idea women
who die as martyrs will finally achieve equality to men were added to
that equation?
Dr Tzoreff not only
accepts Dr Sarraj's analysis, she adds her own reasoning about how Idris
achieved the dubious honour of becoming the first Palestinian shahida.
'If we take Wafa Idris,' Dr Tzoreff explains, 'the ultimate shahida,
who is she after all? She is a talented young woman, married and divorced
because she was sterile, desperate because she knew perfectly well there
was no future for her in any aspect of the Palestinian society. She
knew better than anyone else that the only way for her to come out against
this miserable situation was to kill herself. Look at her funeral and
what the Palestinian leadership said about her, calling her a national
flower and the embodiment of Palestinian womanhood.
She knew her own
society and the limitations they put on her and on women like her, and
she understood better than anyone else that she had nothing left - no
hope, no future.'
Ahmed, Wafa's former
husband, is a gentle man, quiet and profoundly shocked by what happened.
After the stillbirth, he was relieved to learn from his local imam that
the first step in 'rehabilitating' his wife was nothing more harsh than
to banish her from his bed, and if that didn't work after several days
and she did not stop bringing the 'family into hell', he could proceed
to the second step.
Banishing Wafa from
his bed was moot, since she was silent and as listless as a child. In
fact, she had grown gaunt and thin because she refused to take any nourishment
and, according to her mother, her hair had begun to fall out. And so
a week later Ahmed proceeded to the second step, which was gentle admonition,
accompanied by another video that he was given by the imam to play for
Wafa at home, which concerned the proper behaviour of a woman toward
her husband. Had he been rich, Ahmed says with regret, he might have
enticed Wafa with money or gifts but, of course, that was not an option.
After several weeks
of this crash course in good wifely behaviour, instead of getting better,
Wafa grew worse. She cried inconsolably day and night. The presence
of her mother, her sisters-in-law and her friends did nothing to assuage
her grief. The wisdom of Islam, the imam told Ahmed, was vast, and since
his wife was suffering from a physical ailment, she would be spared
from the usual subsequent punishment as stated in the Koran: a beating
with a thick block of wood, but never in the face or hard enough to
cause fractures or wounds. Instead, Ahmed was instructed to give her
a 'gentle beating' with a handkerchief or a toothpick.
When she still did
not improve, however, Ahmed broached the possibility that he take another
wife, as was permitted in Islam, on the advice of his family and his
spiritual guide. But when he raised the subject with Wafa, she became
hysterical.
Beside herself with
grief, she spoke for the first time in months to make it clear that
she loved him and was not prepared, under any circumstances, to share
him with another woman. More discussion ensued, and finally, in the
spring of 1998, after several weeks and repeated efforts to convince
her to change her mind, Ahmed divorced her. Two weeks later he married
another woman.
With her heart and
spirit broken and her physical health in decline, Wafa Idris watched
Ahmed's marriage procession winding its way down the main road of the
al-Amari refugee camp from her bedroom window. But what made the situation
even more unbearable for her was that the entire camp knew the reason
why she had been cast aside. 'Sterile,' they whispered behind her back
- an incomplete woman, unable to bear children, unable to provide soldiers
to fight the Israeli occupation.
Less than a year
later, Ahmed and his new wife had their first child, and a year after
that, their second. After the children were born, Wafa still wanted
to return to Ahmed, but he told her that his current wife was against
it and had already threatened that she would leave him and take their
children if he allowed that to happen.
The last thing that
Mabrook Idris said to me when I left her house that day was a request
to help her retrieve her daughter's body. I promised to try, and did
in fact talk to a contact in the military who was part of the contingent
assigned to the West Bank. It was then that I learnt the rules that
applied to all Palestinians who commit terrorist actions.
The law in Israel
states that when a Palestinian suicide bomber dies or is killed while
committing an act of terrorism against civilians or soldiers within
Israel proper, his or her body is never released to the family. Instead,
it is buried in an unmarked grave in a large cemetery in the north of
Israel.
The only way the
body of a martyr or shahida is returned to the family is if he or she
dies somewhere within the Occupied Territories or Gaza. Only then is
the body released for a proper Muslim burial and the honour of a martyr's
funeral, with the coffin paraded through the martyr's home town or village
while thousands follow behind, firing rifles and guns in the air.
A month after her
daughter died, Mabrook Idris honoured her daughter's memory with an
empty pine box. At least 2,000 Palestinian mourners marched in the streets
of Ramallah behind the empty coffin, which was draped with Palestinian
flags and pictures of Wafa, chanting and carrying posters of other Palestinian
heroes in a display of pride and joy. A large photograph of Wafa was
displayed prominently in the main square of Ramallah, and it remains
there today.
Ceremonies in her
honour were held all over the West Bank and Gaza. Elementary school
children as well as adolescents throughout the Arab world chanted Wafa's
name every day before classes began, and there were ads in newspapers
from various social and religious organisations that praised her for
her bravery and lauded her as an example of the 'new breed of Palestinian
womanhood'. 'Wafa, we love you,' a group of 15-year-olds chanted on
their way to school.
During the symbolic
funeral for Wafa Idris held by the Fatah, one of the council members
eulogised her in the following way: 'Wafa's martyrdom restored honour
to the national role of the Palestinian woman, sketched the most wonderful
pictures of heroism in the long battle for national liberation.' And
from as far away as Cairo, an Egyptian film producer named Fatuh memorialised
Wafa in a television programme broadcast throughout the Arab world,
and then later in an article entitled 'An Oscar Winner', which appeared
in the Egyptian government opposition daily newspaper, Al-Wafd. She
wrote, 'This is not a typical film; the heroine is the beautiful and
pure Palestinian woman Wafa Idris, full of life. I could find no better
than she, and I could find no film more wonderful than the one that
pierces Israel's heart. From Paradise where she is now, she shouts with
all her strength the glorification of the dead, enough glorification
of the victories of your forefathers, their part - and now it is your
turn.'
Between then and
the end of 2003, five more women would take this final directive to
heart.
· To order
a copy of Army of Roses by Barbara Victor for £8.99 with free
UK p&p, call the Observer book service on 0870 066 7989. Published
by Constable & Robinson on 29 April