Interview with Suhayr Salá¹­Ä« al-Tall

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Interview with Suhayr Salt? al-Tall
2014
TAPE 1
Nicola Pratt: Okay... go ahead.
Suheir Al Tai: Okay. I was born in the city of Irbid in the north of Jordan in 1952, to a cultured
family, relatively educated, my father had graduated from the American University of Cairo in
1951, he studied political economy, he was a communist, a member of the "communist party",
and a poet, he wrote poetry, my uncle was a famous poet in Jordan and he opposed the regime
too, he was Mustafa Wahbi Al-Tal AKA Arar. My mother is cultured too, she has a high school
certificate, she didn't go to university because back then it was difficult for girls to go to
university, but she finished high school and worked on herself, she reads, she follows political
events, she reads political and cultural magazines, and since she married my father she became
closer to the communist party and to the Marxist school of thought in general. I was raised in
that environment. The main point in my life was that in 1958 when the coup happened against
the national movement, my father was threatened with jail and he was sentenced in absentia
to 15 years in jail, because he was a member of the communist party, so we went to Syria as
political refugees. My childhood in Syria was spent among communist, Ba'tahi and Nationalist
and Nasserist circles, because we all fled Jordan as entire families, because we were all being
hunted down in Jordan, so it's natural that in such environment I would care about the political
issues and the general issues as well as the Palestinian Cause because there's something here,
the word "refugee" used to give me a shock when they asked me at school, in kindergarten and
elementary school where I was from and I would say I was a refugee, and what does refugee
mean? So I connected the dots in my mind, I was a refugee and the Palestinians were refugees
too, hence my interest in the issue of refugees and human rights, whose lands or houses were
stolen, and those who could be jailed or assassinated if they returned to their country... we
spent around 10 years in Syria until King Hussein issued a general decree. So we went back but
still my father was arrested, there was a chance that he wouldn't get arrested but he did, and
my cousin Wasfi Al-Tal was the Prime Minister at the time... so, in a way he was saying that
even if my uncle was opposing the regime I could take a decision to arrest him, although there
was a decree, he shouldn't have been arrested, he spent almost a year in jail. From there I built
my relationship with prison as I used to visit my father, and you know we are a tribal society
and everyone knows everyone so the jail officers let me go inside the cell to see my father, so
"cell 303" became an icon in my life, my father was detained in that cell and before him my
uncle and before him my maternal grandfather because he was in the opposition too. Later on
my communist friends were detained there in the 1960s and 1970s, and then the father of my
daughter was detained there, the same cell, cell 303. Even my daughter's first birthday was
celebrated there because her father was in jail. So you can imagine how connected I was to the
world of prisons, so all that had an influence on me, the turning point was the 1967 war, we
were very optimistic about the 1967 war, with the Arab propaganda and Abdul Nasser and the
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prepared Arab armies, so the defeat was a catastrophe, a real catastrophe, I don't know how, I
was young, 13 years old, I was born in 1952 so in 1967 I would be 12 or 13 years old, but that
was a huge shock and the first step that I used to go out with my father to help the retreating
soldiers, we were in the North and if you're familiar with the map you'd know that Irbid is close
to the Palestinian borders and the Syrian borders with Golan Heights, so the soldiers of the
Syrian army would go down to Al-Yarmouk Valley and from there they would continue to
Jordan because it was difficult to retreat, they were surrounded, so I would go out with my
father to do civil defense work, we would help soldiers with food and tending to the wounded
and taking them to hospitals and whatnot, so it was very hard, and it was then that I decided to
reconsider everything I knew, I was still young. That was associated with European movements.
If you remember, the students' movement in France, there was the Hippie and civil rights
movement in America, so I started to read, since my father was an erudite man, he used to
bring magazines and translate articles from English into Arabic, so we started to think and the
New Left was bor. I became convinced that the Communist Party with the ideas it held back
then was not enough, although I was too young to think like that, it amazes me now, but I
thought that we should reconsider all our ideas as the Communist Part, Ba'ath Party, Jamal
Abdul Nasser himself, he was a leader and we liked him but there was something wrong, so I
became closer to the New Left movement. And that eventually led me to the Palestinian
Resistance Movement. I didn't join the Communist Party but I was close to the communists. I
joined one of the leftist confederations of the Palestinian Resistance which was the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine for two years, in those two years I discovered that nothing
was serious, it's true that we had the Fidayees and the image of Guevara, the Oriental man who
had a long beard and held a machine gun and whatnot, that was just an image but there wasn't
real action on the ground, especially that I started to grow p and I noticed their behavior
towards women, I expected that these people would be the most progressive in dealing with
women, but I found that they were progressive in their political ideas, but when it came to
dealing with women there were two types of dealing with women: Either as a friend, which
means an open relationship with no limits and where there would be taking advantage of her
under the motto of freedom, or to make her stay at home, if it was his sister he would make her
stay home, if she was a comrade in the Party then he would say you're free and you can sleep
with me and whatnot. You see? So that made me pull away from them, I believed that you
wither be progressive in all aspects, applying progressive measures to yourself first of all, and
then you move it to society. What helped in that was my father too, since my father was a
communist, it's true that he left the Party back then as he had intellectual disagreements with
the Party, so he left it quietly, there was no bad publicity or public criticism, just discussions
with his comrades so he pulled out, he resigned and stayed home, and he wrote independently.
My father was a real Marxist, he used to deal with us as a Marxist, I was his eldest of three
daughters, and he has practiced any kind of discrimination between boys and girls, so I found it
strange that when I went out with my father's comrades or my comrades in the Party, they
were much different. My father used to support me, we had our disagreements, I was a
teenager and we would disagree on many intellectual and political issues, but he has never
used his authority as a father to impose anything on me, he highly respected my privacy and my
opinions, he would advise me, because I was young, so he tried to pass his experience on to me
but I was in the stage of teenage and rebellion and revolting against all the prevailing concepts
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including the image of the father, I wouldn't listen to him, but later on I discovered that he was
right. So, that was the first thing that led me to resistance and to the idea of reconsidering the
old partisan ideals, the sayings, the issue of women, and to ask where do they stand on that?
And I started to build myself because my resources were limited to the Party, the press, and all
of them didn't walk the talk, there was a duality between the proclaimed ideals and what's
practiced on the ground, so I wanted to kick the idea around, I couldn't practice it alone and
have fingers pointed at me, you can't be free alone. The society is not free, women are not free.
So, I started to work on myself, I wanted to read and write, and hence was my choice to be a
journalist and scientific research later on. That was the main determining factor, the duality
between theory and practice... now stop recording and I'll go make...
N.P: Okay. May I ask you, when you were a child and your family was in prison, weren't you
upset?
S.A: Of course, I used to ask why all the time. I felt bad that... you see, sometimes I think of
writing an open text, I don't know whether it would be a novel or what, bout the moment we
crossed the borders to Jordan. We were in a car, my mother, father, my younger sister and I.
they took our passports and went to stamp them and my father was gone. A while later I looked
over and saw my father in handcuffs, and then they took him and put him in the prisoner
transport vehicle. This is a sight I'll never forget. I was a child, happy that we were back in our
country with my grandmother and my uncles and all that, and then suddenly my father was
taken away in this scene which was completely incomprehensible for me. I couldn't visit him in
prison before 3 months. So there was also the image of prison bars behind which my father was
and I couldn't reach him, and then later on, you know he was the PM's uncle and a well-known
figure as an intellectual and a political figure, so he wasn't treated in prison like any other
ordinary prisoner, so he received special treatment. As I told you, it's a tribal society and people
respect each other, besides, he was an intellectual, so even the jailer looked at him differently
that he wasn't a thief or a n ordinary criminal, so that always made me think, that if I closed my
eyes and remember my father these are the first images that would come to my mind, my
father in handcuffs and getting into the prisoner transport vehicle, with my father's face divided
by the bars. So, of course there was sadness and that what made me so interested in the issue
of freedom and human rights, you can't work on one political cause alone, the issue of
freedoms comes with it naturally, freedom of thought, of belief, of forming parties and others.
You also can't work on women issues without dealing with the issue of freedoms, so everything
is connected. Actually freedom is the core issue and other things branch our from it, you would
become active in the field of human rights or in the field of environment, in political activities,
students' activities and whatnot. The "main point" is freedom, when my father was walking
towards the prisoner transport car, I asked why? Okay, we had the issue of refugees before that
and why we were in Syria and not in our country, especially that sometimes they would sent me
alone in the summer, they would put me in a car with driver they knew and send me to Irbid,
because there's only 200 km between Damascus and Irbid, they are very close, so I would
always ask myself why couldn't my mother or father come to Jordan? I lied being with my
uncles especially that my grandfather who was also in the opposition since the days of the
Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, his house had an orchard, he was a "landlord" and
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there were trees and horses and whatnot, so that was a fun world for me and I wanted to stay
there, but there was always a barrier which is that my father or mother could be imprisoned,
especially that my mom was being wanted too for a while, and one of very few women who
were wanted in the 1950s. So, that led me to realize the importance of freedom, and things
would diverge, all kinds of freedoms become laid on the table in front of you, hence you would
have strange feelings, a mix of sadness, challenge, stress and worry. But the challenge was
bigger than the sadness, the stress and the worry, that I wanted to challenge that which had
changed the course of my childhood. And hence came my interest in women issues and my
boldness in writing, I don't know, maybe you heard or read about this, that I am one of the
boldest writers compared to other writers. So, that was the biggest challenge element. There
was sadness, there was worry, there was anger but the challenge was the biggest of all, that I
wanted to break all these taboos, be them about religion, politics, sex, everything. I wanted to
break them all.
N.P: So... you were talking about the 1970s
S.A: Yes, as I told you in the 1970s we were opened to the ideas of others, there was a
transition from being a child with the families from my father's circles who were Ba'athis, the
political refugees, Ba'athis, Nasserists and Communists in Syria, and moving to the New Left,
because these Parties failed in the 1967 war and led us to defeat. So, there must be another
intellectual solution. I wasn't old or educated enough to find my own solution, the solution
came ready from Europe, the civil rights, the New Left and the students' movement in France,
so we adopted that with its negatives and positives in a naive way, we didn't fully comprehend
it. Now, 40 or 50 years later when I write I tell myself that I should be aware about the ideas
being circulated in the West and I know there are very important ideas which can be adopted,
but I have to be aware of how much I can fit them into a local frame, how suitable are they for
this socio-economic development because my society is not developed yet. We didn't
understand that, even the people older than me and the leaderships, that what Europe has
reached today is the accumulated result of 200 years of revolutions, civil wars and the industrial
revolution and whatnot. I can't just take it as a ready-made product and apply it to this pre-
state society, a primitive society with its own economic and social relations. We didn't pay
attention to that, in all the stages you mentioned, in 1967, in September 1970, the Palestinian
Resistance, Beirut war, the invasion of Iraq, all these political blows were directed at a society
dealing with a mindset that's way ahead of its development; that's why it was unacceptable,
how else would you explain this huge comeback of religious extremism? The people... no
matter how much we say it was a conspiracy and that Al-Qaeda was backed by the USA, but
there is suitable environment for that whether we like it or not. Why is that environment
suitable for that? Right? This is what nobody thinks about, we always want to blame the West
and the conspiracy theory, like blaming the defeat on the Balfour Declaration and England,
okay, but what did we do? This is for the Palestinian Cause. The 1970 events were an American
conspiracy against the idea of resistance, okay, but what did we do? The beginning of religious
expansion which also started in 1970, it was in 1970 that the religious expansion started to
spread in that way with political Islamism and whatnot, and how it spread and prevailed over all
the other liberal thoughts, be it the pure liberal school of thought, the Leftist Marxist school of
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thought, the socialist or nationalist and others. Okay, we know that historically the Muslim
Brotherhood movement was established with the support of the British intelligence, be that as
it may, but there is a suitable environment for that. Okay. That's what we're not thinking about
as a society, our composition, our culture, our economic and social relationship, how are we
developing to embrace these things that are happening, adopting them, processing them and
reproducing them. Every stage is a stage of defeat; we are processing the previous defeat and
reproducing it in the form of a new defeat, from 1967 and on. We are not thinking about it on
the level, not that of the elite because the elite probably think about it, but on a popular level,
how to deal with women, how to deal with women movement and women organizations, how
to deal with the human rights movement, we don't think about that, this is the fertile ground
for all these defeats which are producing a negative mindset if I may call it so, or a negative
behavior in my opinion. What's forming that? What are the factors? What role does the elite
play in encouraging it or reducing its impact, I don't think we're thinking about that, we're still
working from ivory towers, and we are so proud of ourselves, we lie to ourselves and we
believe it, and things are going from bad to worse. I can't imagine Syria, let's go back to the
issue of Syria, which I knew from 1958 to 1968, home of Damascus International Exhibition,
where I attended my first theatrical play, both children and adult theater, where I watched the
first serious motion picture, listened to my first serious song, this is the same Syria where there
is now ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, where they slaughter people in the name of God. You may say
there is a conspiracy and militants were sent from the outside and that would be fine but there
was a suitable environment for that. Am I right? No matter how many people came from the
outside, except if the NATO came in with its weapons and soldiers, other than that there is an
environments that nurtures those fighters and these ideas and whatnot. So, this is our original
problem. I talked a lot. I talked about all the stages at once... I talked about everything at once.
N.P: May I ask you about the details... when did you come back from Syria and did you go to
university and what did you study?
S.A: I came back from Syria in 1966, I pursued my studies here until shortly before September
1970, I left Jordan again in early 1970 before the battles of September ensued. I went to
Yugoslavia to continue my education, and the crisis had started between the Jordanian regime
and Palestinian resistance, you can say that at the time of the 1967 the situation was calm but
there was internal rage, not for me as a person but in the society as a whole. In 1968 there was
the battle of Karama and we felt some hope that we could do something, with the beginning of
the resistance movement, we started to see armed fighters and hearing about fidayee
operations. In 1969 the crisis started between the regime and the resistance, during that time I
was closer to the resistance and we would hear, read and follow the news about what was
happening and criticizing the previous experiences and whatnot. That affected my study, I was
in high school and about to take the general secondary certificate exam... at the same time
Israel used to bomb Irbid every day because the Fidayees used to go out through the North and
carry out operations at the borders inside Palestine, so they responded by bombing the civilian
areas in side Irbid, and that affected us greatly. I remember once while I was taking one of the
exams there was a bombing while we were in the exam room, and the principal in charge
wasn't smart so she let us out, the exam room was close to my grandfather's house while I was
5


leaving with my friend I told her we should go to my grandfather's house as they had an
underground shelter in case of bombing and whatnot, we were talking and suddenly she fell
down and I fell down too, turned out she was killed by a shrapnel to her chest. They took us
both to the hospital, when she was killed she felled upon me and we both fell down and I was
covered with her blood, so they carried us both thinking I was injured too, so that was another
shock, she was my friend and classmate, so that affected my academic results, and the exams in
Irbid were stopped for a week while the rest of the country continued to do the exams, they
changed the questions and they moved the exam rooms to villages in places father away from
the range of Israeli artillery at the time. So that created a big shock for me which affected my
results and I didn't score high grades, I was supposed to be one fo the tope students, I was a
very smart student and I was expected to score high results and I wanted to study engineering.
So my father felt that I would face lots of problems if I stayed in Jordan so he sent me to
Yugoslavia to pursue my education in Bulgaria, as you know the socialist camp was there but
my papers weren't ready yet so I went to Yugoslavia until my admission papers in Bulgaria were
ready. And then Black September happened, and that the second catastrophe, we didn't expect
at all that this would be the end of the resistance in Jordan. Imagine that I way away, I didn't
speak the language of that country yet, my English wasn't very good yet, and anyway in socialist
countries you rarely found someone who spoke English. I was learning the Serbian language. I
would watch TV and see Irbid and Amman and explosions and bombs but I couldn't understand
anything, I would just cry, until I went out the next day and saw one of the Arab students, they
were mostly from the confederation, and they would explain to me what was happening, and it
was a disaster. I was an expat at the age of... I was born in 1952 so in September 1970 I was 18.
Perhaps I was the first "pure Jordanian" girl, not one from Palestinian origins, who went to
study abroad, and from Irbid not from Amman, from a small city which was supposed to be
more traditional... so I couldn't continue, I finished my first year of the language course and I
felt that my academic future wasn't there, especially that Yugoslavia was in between, it wasn't a
socialist society nor a capitalist one, in the days of Tito and whatnot... what also helped in
taking that decision was that there were lots of disagreements between us students after
September 1970, we asked why did that happened and there were speculation and discussions
and conversation and I was in between the Democratic Front as a leftist movement and the
communist party, as an organization that had friendly ties with my family, so each pulled in an
opposite direction so I was very tired and I returned to Jordan. I returned but before...
TAPE 2
Suhair Al Tai: Before I entered Jordan I called my parents and they told me not to come
because I was wanted; as the resistance had fallen down and anyone connected to the
resistance in any way was summoned by the Intelligence apparatus, some people went to jail
and some were tortured, some of them were dear friends and relatives of mine. So, my family
came to Damascus and decided that I would go to Beirut to pursue my education there, and
that's what happened. The situation in Beirut was disastrous because the resistance went to
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Beirut, all the comrades who withdrew from Irbid and Amman; everyone was shocked,
wondering what happened. I remember 3 of my friends, one killed himself, another one
withdrew from public life completely and started a chicken farm, and a third one who was the
closest to me went to London, he took courses and things like that so I was left alone. But of
course that took a year, I have even wrote a story in my first short story collection about that
situation we lived in that stage... so, in Beirut I studied accounting, I didn't have much choice,
my GPA didn't allow me to be accepted in a different faculty, but I wasn't very serious about
studying as a whole, I was in a very difficult psychological state, and an intellectual conflict with
my surroundings, the idea that we withdrew from Jordan and the resistance received a harsh
blow, the idea of the behavior of the resistance in Beirut itself, and here the issue of women
poses itself bluntly. In Jordan things were a little better but in Beirut it was too blunt, the issue
of female comrades and girls in the parties was posed in a very hard way, and we hadn't gotten
yet into the civil war. So, studying was something marginal for me, but I used to study, I
attended classes and took exams and whatnot, and it was then that I got into journalism, it was
a coincidence, a colleague of mine said to me: "You write in the University magazine and you
read and go into discussions, why don't you come and train in our magazine?" It was called
"Addustor" magazine owned by Ali Bailout. I went there and I got hooked, I was trained and
then hired in the magazine, and there I met the man I married later on, and I continued to work
in journalism, I finished my university education, I obtained a B.A in accounting, but the main
thing for me was working in journalism, and I pulled away from the resistance a little bit, I was
more involved in cultural work, given that I was training to be a journalist, and Beirut back then
was living its golden age, all the intellectuals of the Arab World were there as well as the poets
and authors of the Arab World. So it was a chance for me to learn as much as I could, I would
leave the newspaper to go to Mara street, to the cafes were intellectuals gathered like
[inaudible:03:56], there were names like that, you see? Where else would you see such
prominent intellectual figures of poets, authors and intellectuals, and of course I used to read.
So that's how the second transformation happened, I went towards literature and intellect and
I pulled away from the daily work, until the war broke out; since I was living in a camp, when I
married my first husband he was from Burj Al-Barajneh camp in the Southern Suburb, we lived
at the edge of the camp between the Christian and the Muslim areas, so I had to do something
because people were dying... I couldn't go to the newspaper or write every day... I get nervous
when I remember that phase... so I went back to daily tasks which weren't basic tasks in my
life, but I dedicated my time for political and union work when I came back to Jordan. I worked
as a journalist from 1976 to 1984, but my writings touched upon the issues I was interested in
like the issues of human rights, the Palestinian Cause, the political developments in the region,
women issues, but from my position as a journalist not as an activist. When I came back to
Jordan in 1983 I was back to my position as an activist. During that time from 1976 to 1983 I
used to go back and forth to Jordan, I wasn't settled down in Jordan or anywhere abroad, I
spent some time in Beirut, sometime in Kuwait, sometime in Rome, sometime in France, I
wasn't settled down in one place, but when I came back to Jordan I would become active right
away whether in the Women's Federation, the Press Association, the Writers Union, I was
active, sometimes I even came to Jordan to work on a certain issue, to be part of it, I would
leave my work and come to Jordan. Until I finally settled down in Jordan in 1983, in 1983 I
became a full-time activist, I was still a journalist and working in journalism but I was an activist
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along with my work in journalism, my whole day would be divided between the newspaper, the
association, the union and the federation, and then naturally there were political developments
after that, the First Gulf War, the Second Gulf War... the picture is clear?
Nicola Pratt: You were in Beirut during the civil war for 2 years only?
S.A: No, more than that.
N.P: More?
S.A: I don't know exactly, the war started in 1975, I stayed there without leaving until 1976, in
1976 I came here, I couldn't stay so I came back, and then I went to Rome, and then I went back
to Beirut, then I came here, then I went to Kuwait, and then I went back to Beirut, so I was
there during the invasion of and the siege on Beirut... but I would stay for 3 months in Beirut
then spend a month in Amman, or a month in Rome or 2 months in Kuwait and then I would go
back to Beirut and stay there for 3 months, something like that... For example, my official place
of residence would be Kuwait but I didn't stay in Kuwait, I was going back and forth between
Amman, Beirut and Kuwait, Beirut, Amman and Rome, Beirut, Amman and Kuwait and so on.
N.P: In Beirut you only worked with...
S.A: Yes, I pulled away from the nationalist circles in terms of direct political work, but I was
close to the Palestinian Writers Union, they were my friends and I got involved in their activities
and whatnot, but I was concerned with gaining the biggest amount of knowledge possible. I felt
that the resistance movement, the beacon of resistance and the conflict with Israel pushed
many generations to be shallow, to take things at face value, there wasn't in-depth
understanding of the situation. You need tools to understand, you need knowledge and
methodology. So, I paid attention to that point, I wanted to know through a firm scientific
methodology, I wanted to build myself with that methodology, I don't know if I was right or
wrong but I used to think that if I kept involved in activism I wouldn't be the person I am today,
I would've been like anyone who repeats the same speeches and holds meetings and whatnot,
I'm not like that. Of course that doesn't undermine the value of those who fought and who led
the political work, but that wasn't me. Some women struggled a lot and paid steep prices, and
men as well, some people lost their lives, some were crippled, and there were others who
became rich by selling us out... but for me the intellectual issue was the basic things because I
thought that through it we could understand reality and lay foundations for change, but to keep
repeating the same slogans since the days of Abdul Nasser and in each of the catastrophes that
befell us, the stages which you've written down, that's merely an act of yelling slogans, and
until this day. So, that took me away from the daily life and daily activities, but I felt that at least
someone should stop and think, so I stopped and thought, I don't know how influential I was
later on.
N.P: How was Jordan when you came back?
S.A: It was a disaster, a disaster! It was worse than when I had left. I'll give you a picture of the
situation: we were in Irbid, which is the second important city, I don't want to give you a
8


shallow analogy, I'll try to give you a deeper dimension for the picture, we as girls had male
friends, there was no social problem with that, we used to wear short skirts, we would sit
together, hold discussions, listen to music. When I came back I found that people started to
point at girls and say: "this girl did so and so", this wasn't something we were used to. The
relationship, instead of evolving, they became more reserved, I started to hear about
distinction between Palestinians and Jordanians, I started to hear more things like: "You're a
girl, you can't do this". But we used to work on that 10 or 15 years ago, we were still talking
about that. The more difficult part was that the leaders of the feminist and unionist movements
were more backward. More backward. And at that point a very important issue was posed on
the intellectual level: How much could we balance between politics and feminism? I have the
issue of women which is a socio-political issue, okay, and I have the national issue, be it the
Palestinian Cause or the issue of democracy in Jordan, that's a political issue. Now, as a woman
in this society and as a women confederation, how much can I discuss the socio-political issue
which is the women cause and the political issue? That balance was absent as the scales were
tipped in favor of the political movement and that was what made me undergo intellectual and
political conflicts with my colleagues in the Women's Federation and in the Feminist movement
as a whole, and with the state of course. The political issue was overriding the work on women
issues, I felt like we were no more than a flock, I was a member of the administrative
committee in the Women's Federation, but as an independent member, not affiliated with any
entity. The leadership of the Federation was divided between FATAH, the Democratic Front, the
Communist Party, the Popular Front and Al-Ba'ath Party. Each one of them would come
carrying the instructions of her respective party in the issue at hand, there would be a decision
to hold a sit-in or a demonstration or a strike, a partisan decision, we didn't have a say in it.
Then I would interfere and say that we want to hold a demonstration or a sit-in but why are
women absent from our agenda? You can see that in my book because when I wrote the history
of the feminist movement I mentioned the activities in detail, how many activities we held for
the benefit of women, how many activities we held for the benefit of the political movement,
so there was a big difference, so I felt that we were practicing the patriarchal partisan mentality
through women, instead of men penetrating the circles of women because they couldn't do
that they would send the female members in the parties to operate within the circles of women
in favor of the political movement, on one hand that is not wrong, but not when it's done at the
expense of the women's cause, starting from the issue of violence, divorce, early marriage, the
poverty and unemployment of women, the difference and wages and things like that. These
issues were not addressed at all except on the International Day of Women and such occasions.
When we discussed them with the parties they would say we should focus on the national
cause, so the parties became like the ruling regimes, the regimes would use the Palestinian
Cause as an excuse to impose martial laws and restrict freedoms on the pretext of the conflict
with Israel, and those parties were disregarding the issues of women and the social issues on
the pretext of the political conflict whether it was related to the Palestinian Cause or the
regime. What's the point? So, in the end I was tired of that, the last stroke was in 1990 during
the Gulf war, it's a little funny story, we were gathered and I was representing the Women's
Federation in the Associations Complex, I was the only woman in the meeting, there were all
representing parties and associations, it was 10 pm, my parents' house was very close by, 3
minutes on foot, it was 10 pm and I was living with my parents, I had my daughter with me
9


after divorcing her father and I was living with my parents. 10 pm wasn't very late and I was a
fighter. So then one of the participants came up to me and said: "Comrade, why don't you go
home and in the morning we will tell you about the decisions we reached?" what? ... I was
representing a whole organization of several thousand women and we worked more than they
did, whether by collecting donations for Iraq, mobilization through the media, in the protests
and demonstrations against the war and whatnot, how could you tell me your decisions later as
an organization called the Women's Federation or the women's sector in general? I lost my
mind. I went to the federation and told them what happened and that it was wrong but they
said: "Don't put us in an embarrassing situation, Suhair. You know the society and so and so..." I
said okay, farewell that was it. I'd rather stay at home to read and write; it was very hard. There
was also another issue that had an impact on me... in the period of secret work when the
Women's Federation was shut down, although we won the lawsuit in court and we were
supposed to come back, perhaps Amy Naffa'a told you, we and the Arab Women Organization,
we both filed a lawsuit against the state and we both won. Now, the organization went to work,
as for the Women's Federation, the dissent of the Communist Party happened, and since there
was a defense they were worried about who will be the majority there so the Federation was
put on hold. But we won a lawsuit and it's very important to resume work after being shut
down by a martial law... the political disagreements between the Democratic Front and the
Popular Front in addition to the dissent of the Party froze the Federation and remained frozen
for 8 years, or maybe less than that, I'm not sure about the time period, form 1982 to 1990, 9
or 8 years. So, during that time we formed something called The Popular Committee of
Women. We were representative of parties as well as independent women, national figures,
and we held secret meetings and we were being hunted down, our situation was very difficult,
we didn't know where to meet so we mostly met at my father's house. At that time I was being
sued for the story, I told you about that if you remember, it was basically a political issue but
they invented a whole new reason for it. So Mrs. Asma Khader who was my lawyer and a
member of the committee, she was then still in the National Movement, before she became a
minister, she addressed my issue and said: let's do something in solidarity with Suhair, Suhair is
a comrade of ours and she's being sued." They refused, and they were meeting in my house.
You know Nicole, you might have experienced this in the beginning of the century but not now,
it's so hard to open your door for a meeting of a secret organization in Jordan at that time
under the martial laws, ad my father had grown so old, he didn't have the strength to be
summoned for interrogation or something like that, and yet I would let them meet in my house,
imagine that, they were in my house and I was with them in the meeting and they refused,
why? They said it wasn't a good time and that I didn't have to write something like that. I told
them it was a political issue not a moral issue, but they wouldn't listen. So, I wondered how
would you work on women issues if you were too short-sighted to realize the dimensions of
that trial, and to take action regarding it, it was a writer, a colleague of yours who was being
sued. They all refused, the Communist, the ones from the Popular Front, the Democratic Front,
the Ba'ath Party, and one of the independent members [inaudible:21:38], of course I didn't say
anything since it was my problem, only Asma Khader suggested the issue. So I felt it was in vain,
as long as these organizations were dominated by political work or rather the political
organization in that way, and those political work cannot reconsider and renovate their ideas
and they still look at the issues of women, environment, youth, students merely as sectors they
10


could use for mobilization then it is in vain, the work would be a waste of time and would be to
no avail, and it was then that I quit everything, I handed over my resignation from the
Federation, I was expelled from the Press Association because I changed my occupation and I
didn't go to the writers' union often, so I dedicated my time for writing and studying, I obtained
my Master's degree and then my PhD, and for journalistic work. That's it. So what I'm trying to
say here Nicole is that you pay for these failures from your own expense, there is no distinction
here between a private and a public issue, your private issues are part of the public issues, and
how the public I dealing with the private? It's dealing with it from its very narrow perspective of
private issues. They still said to me there were issues bigger than your private issue, I even
remember in one of my lectures, after I have published my book "the city of roses and stones"
which had sparked a huge controversy and people were angry about it, that it wasn't a good
time to publish it and why did I write such a thing. I got irritated and responded to someone
angrily, I said: "You want to free Palestine with a people half of which are pimps and the other
half are prostitutes?" So, when they keep saying it is not a good time, when is a good time?...
and I discovered I wasn't alone, there were also the wives, daughters, girl friends of the
comrades, they were all suffering the same things. The simple woman in the village or the camp
who is abused by her traditional father or brother is just like the wife of the comrade who is
abused because she didn't cook. But the difference is that the latter didn't cook because she
was in a partisan meeting while the former didn't cook because she was having coffee with her
neighbor, but the result is the same, you're a woman who has to cook and you'll be abused if
you don't cook. So, that's the mentality that brought us to this. Excuse me, I need to get some
water... when we went for a meeting somewhere I would fill my car with fuel and take the
women with me at my own expense, nobody thought of demanding compensation for
transportation costs, and we were excited to work, but now they are comfortable, being paid in
elegant offices, and here are the results. So, I feel sad because so much effort was wasted
because we didn't strike a balance or pay attention to ourselves, I think this is just like a woman
who studies and pursues her education and then she gets married and stays home to raise her
children, she raises her children and marries them off and then she sits alone with herself and
thinks: "Where am I? What did Ido for myself as a person? Nothing, I served a man, raised
children and gave up all the advantages I could've gained through knowledge and a career, and
in the end everyone went their separate ways, okay, they might say "thank you" but "so what"?
What would I do with this "thank you" when I'm alone?" that's exactly how we are, we worked
and made sacrifices and paid money so that in the end the Islamist movement would take over
and we try to coax it, the problem for me now Nicole is that there is Leftist and Partisan
movement that is coaxing the Islamists. There are fundamental contradictions between you
two, how could you coax them? Do you consider them a national movement? No, they are not
a national movement, any religious mentality means dividing the society, and it's no longer
national. We started with Islam and Christianity, then there was division in Islam itself with
Sunnah and Shiites and I don't know how far it will go. So, they coax them and form alliances
with them, how? That's an issue which shocks me a lot, that in the end I would sit with an
Islamist, not a Muslim, a political Islamist, everyone is free to choose their religion, and form
alliance with him and adopt his agenda, and in the end he would take over things and all the
rights I gained even those in the course of the natural evolution of society, not only the ones I
fought for, would regress and given up...
11


N.P: After you left the union and the federation, did you do any other public work?
S.A: I used to work in the Jordanian Association for Human Rights, most of my work was done
there, I was an advisor for the Arab Magazine of Human Rights, I only focused on the issues of
Human Rights and specifically the intellectual aspects of the issues, I wasn't an activist in the
common sense, we would write, hold training workshops, [inaudible:28:22], my work was
mostly in the field of training and writing, the issues of freedom and human rights which we
started from remained the main points. And until now, one way or another, if I don't have
research work I work in that field. That's it.
N.P: Do you like that work? Are you happy?
S.A: We're suffering the same problem, especially when the funding factor came into play and it
became a profession. Now you see among the circles of human rights activists people who have
nothing to do with human rights except that they memorized national conventions and
whatnot, they know how to repeat slogans, but in their daily lives they couldn't be farther away
from the idea of human rights, and they practice persecution against workers more than the
capitalists themselves. So, I'm not very comfortable with it, I'm even doing so little work, even
when I'm asked to do a training course or a lecture or something I like to go to the "pure"
places, the camp, the villages, where people are still natural and unaffected. So, it really
bothers me, even conferences and workshops, I don't participate unless it's something that
would really add a value to me and where I could add value to it, I receive many invitations to
workshops for women and reports and things like that but I send my regrets, because I go away
for a year and when I come back I hear the same things, I don't see much added value. Few
days ago I was in a conference held by the Royal Society for Religious Studies, about extremism,
the causes and the solutions, religious extremism, so people are starting to talk about it, but a
few months later we will hear the same things. Besides, it's becoming sort of a fad, for example,
when violence is the hot topic...
TAPE 3
Suhair Al Tai: or when CIDAW is the hot topic, or religious extremism, or Islamic Feminism, and
so on. So, how could you decide? It depends on the agenda of the funding, so it's disgusted, I
really feel disgusted sometimes, especially that I know everyone, I know them since their
beginnings until now, so when I know someone who used to hurl insults at me and others
because we talked about women issues and feminist issues like early marriage and violence and
whatnot, and now they speak about violence and challenge me... I wonder what happened, and
then I discover it's all about funding, they want money, and then I discover how much
corruption there is in this field, Nicole. The other day I was telling Ahmad, since they provide
funding for NBI, I told him: "do you know how much corruption there is?" When I worked on
camps, on the situation of women in camps I was a trainer for a while, so the director of one of
the centers said to me: "Why are you taking the training so seriously as if they will graduate
12


from university tomorrow?"... then she said to me that this is how it goes in their organizations
which are concerned with training, the trainers comes and takes the name sheets for any
course, she copies it, and then she writes a report that she trained those people, and then they
split the money... I was taken aback, how could that be possible? How could you approve that?
As a director of a center you're responsible for training people and those trainers are being paid
to train others, so you're not losing anything. She made a gesture like this... and then you get
frustrated. I used to go into the training room, I was supposed to finish at 4 but I would stay
until 8 in the camp, I wanted to give more, and if they asked about something I didn't know I
would go home to search for it on the internet. And I had friends and everything, and they she
simply comes to me and says: "why are you taking the training so seriously?" But you have this
and that woman, who are well-known figures [inaudible:2:50] so Ahmad tells me that many
donor organization know about that. Why don't they say anything then? We write reports
about the people we trained, but did you see that on real ground? If you're to conduct a survey
for the number of courses that were given in one camp, just one area, take one area as a
sample, a village or a camp, or a neighborhood in a city, the Women's Federation itself, when I
go there I tell them: "where am I? In the Islamic Labor Front?" in the Women's Federation
everyone looks like this... is that privacy and personal freedom? No, it's not personal freedom.
Okay, we have different ideologies, I respect your right to wear whatever you want and adopt
the ideas you want but your place is not here... like that woman who wears a hijab and who
used to be a Marxist, and then she wore the hijab, and she still talks in the name of Marxism,
how is that possible? And she's in charge of the women's sector in a Leftist organization. The
other day she appeared on TV on Al-Mayadeen channel saying that there is no contradiction
between Marxism and Islam, and that a Marxist woman could wear hijab. I couldn't wrap my
mind around that, I studied philosophy. Not only I have a Marxist background, while I did my
Master's degree and my PhD I went deep into this so I have deep knowledge about it, how did
she find it possible? I don't understand... I don't know if you heard this from someone else.
N.P: Do you still go to camps?
S.A: No, I don't have work in camps. I haven't gone there in a long while, but I call them and
they call me and they visit me, all the girls I trained are all my friends, most of them formed
organizations and started small businesses, they ask me about things and I help them,
sometimes I go as a volunteer to train there or give a lecture or something, but not that often,
not frequently... I'm more into writing now, I published "the history of the feminist movement",
and now I'm gathering the small studies I did and I will publish them in a book, I'm working on
something for my father too, I gathered all his articles and poems and all his papers after he
passed away, I couldn't bring myself to do that for a while but then I pushed myself to do it, I
also want to publish a book. There's a project now, I forgot to talk to my daughter, do you know
Dr. Rula Qawwas? They are doing a book in America about the term "Bad Care" so I wasn't to
contribute something to it, so few things here and there... look, I'll tell you something, I'm
moody, and emotional. Political work needs more toughness or cruelty, I don't call it toughness,
I am tough, it needs cruelty, and to be flexible with your principles, and that doesn't work for
me. Yesterday I was talking to my mother and said: "I want to understand something, Saudi
Arabia supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and fights them in Egypt. Iran supports the
13


MB in Egypt and fights them in Syria. How is that possible?" It's more than surreal, it's
ridiculous. So, I can't work in such environment, I can't sympathize and form alliances, they call
it "lobbying" or whatever, but I feel it's sheer immorality, I can't do it. If I have a cause then I
should cling to its fundamentals, you could call me backward or dogmatic or whatever, but
there are basics I can't play with. I could play with marginal things, but not at the expense of
the basics. Now they are playing with the basics and leaving the marginal alone.
N.P: May I ask you about the Arab revolutions or...
S.A: The Arab Spring?
N.P: The Arab Spring. Did you join any protests here in Jordan?
S.A: No, I just followed the news. I followed the events very closely and what was written about
Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen. Syria is a different case, let's put it aside, it's a completely different case,
and Jordan is a different case too. Generally each country is different; the Arab Spring is
different in each region. Now, there are two theories when it comes to Arab Spring: the
conspiracy theory, which I don't acknowledge, and there's the theory of accumulation and
overlapping [...] so there's the theory that says it's a conspiracy and whatnot, that is nonsense, I
don't respect it. [...] there's accumulated pressure on the peoples. Now, everything I talked
about is what led us to this point, that everything that's "revolutionary", between quotation
marks, I don't know how you'll interpret it, from traditional parties, traditional powers and
traditional unions, that all caused accumulated pressure and that accumulated pressure made
them revolt like this. Now, people revolted, the people lost faith in the traditional leaderships.
When you say revolution you need a mindset to govern this revolution, and you need a
leaderships, not in the sense of an inspirational leader, but there must be a leadership,
someone to move these groups. Now, people revolted without these two factors. The mindset
that would govern the change that would happen after toppling the regimes, and the
leadership that would take over these masses. Missing these factors gave way to the Islamists
to take over. Islamists from my point of view which might be wrong but I have read a lot about
them and I have experiences with them, they are committed to certain agendas. Since they
came into being, since 1932 their main mission was to divide national movements, since 1932
in Egypt to Hamas in the First Intifada (Uprising) in Palestine, to Iran, the Iranian revolution, I
don't put them above the issue of dividing the society, and to Syria. Now, they don't have a
socio-economic agenda, they only say: Islam is the answer. That's it. They work on hypnotizing
the masses and the Rentier state, I talked about this in the conference the other day, that
instead of carrying out development projects they give you your daily bread so that you stay
dependent on them, and so they could make you vote for a certain candidate or support a
certain decision in change for the food they give you. That's what happened. The main
responsibility... I don't want to blame it all on the failure of the parties, the parties were
suffering too, for example, in Jordan in particular, for 40 years the Islamists have been allies
with the regime and helping it to oppress national movements, be them communists or others,
that's why I told you earlier that I couldn't understand an alliance between the Leftists and the
Islamists, up until recently they had been the allies of the regime, and they had a role in
oppressing you, okay? So, as for the Arab Spring, the people needed to move and they did
14


move because of the pressure they were under, with the accumulation of small activities
demanding the rights of people, like in Egypt for example, how many labor strikes and sit-ins
happened prior to January 25th? Same thing in Tunisia, even here in Jordan, there were
activities demanding a teachers association, activities against violence against women, equality
in wages and other things, students activities in universities, all that accumulated until it
reached a certain point, but in Jordan, since the society is very fragmented, we're not in the
pre-state phase, we're in the pre-pre-state phase, how does that manifest, Nicole? You go to a
city like Irbid and you find several youth movement, why? You're a small city and you have the
same demands, you demand reform, eradication of corruption, democracy, why would you be
divided into 4 or 5 youth movements or organizations? That indicates that the primitive tribal
mentality, which we said earlier that it was present in parties, it moved from the structure of
the tribe to the structure of the party and to the structure of the youth movement and so on.
That's why I didn't join the protests; first because I would not participate under the flag of the
Muslim Brotherhood, I would join under the Jordanian flag or the Arab flag, under a national
flag. I wrote a lot about how I don't understand why a protest would have several flags in it, we
are one country. You see a flag for the Popular Front, a flag for the Communist Party, a flag for
the Democratic Front, a flag for the MB, a flag for the Liberation Party, a flag for the Salafists
and a flag for Al-Qaeda, wow! Seriously, look at a picture from any popular demonstration and
you will see a hundred flags. That's why the Egyptian revolution was beautiful in its beginnings
in January 25th; there was only the Egyptian flag. Here in Jordan they didn't learn their lesson,
you see a hundred flags, that's why I didn't participate. Now, when the events unfolded in Syria
the people got scared, they didn't want to form any movements, they saw king Abdullah,
despite his corruption and the corruption of the regime, as a blessing compared to the killing
and destruction taking place in Syria and Iraq, the closest countries to us... so, it was a great
popular movement which was derailed for reasons that had to do with the movement itself, as
we said, the absence of a leadership, a mindset and an agenda for after toppling or changing
the regime, as well as the other interventions which wanted to lead people to a certain place,
because, to be fair, I can't be convinced that America, or the West in general not only America,
care about having democracy in the region, I don't buy that, because we're talking her about a
60 years journey of experiences, it's quite the opposite, so if you told me that America or the
West want to change the regimes so that we would have better regimes, democratic and what
not, that would not be convincing. They want to keep their grip on the region and the issue of
Israel's security is very important for the Western World, so they have to do whatever they
could to push the cause off-course, and they succeeded in that, but why did they succeed? That
takes me back to the first point I made, they succeeded because we have an environment that
is suitable for their success factors, we are prepared to accept the conspiracy and go with it, not
in a crude treacherous sense, but in the sense of immaturity, I'm not pointing fingers or
accusing anyone of treachery, but we are not ready or mature yet, and the proof is that all of
us, starting from Libya to Jordan and Syria, we went back to sectarian conflicts, regional
conflicts and tribal conflicts. We haven't matured yet. 60 years of struggle and political,
partisan, unionist and social experiences and we still haven't matured, we are still tribes... I feel
like wailing. So, that's my opinion in the Arab Spring, it's sad. We were so happy, I'm talking as a
follower of the events in Tunisia and Egypt, I have Egyptian friends who came here and spoke
about their experience in Tahrir Square. There was a lot of interaction, and even when we saw
15


the results... but that doesn't mean accepting silence. I always use the French revolution as an
example, and the movement in entire Europe, that despite all the religious wars and after all
the fighting and killing that took place between people after the French revolution, it took some
time until things got settled. And since we've been in this era of backwardness for so long, it
goes back to 1400 years ago, it's true that there were scientific and intellectual breakthroughs
during the Abbasid period, but after that, since Al-Ghazali, in the middle of the Abbasid period
until today we've been deteriorating. So, to eliminate all that lots of things would happen, there
would be civil wars, bloody conflicts and whatnot, until people mature and the experience
ripens. I don't think there is any other way. Be that as it may. There's an Arabic saying that says:
If it is not destroyed, it will not be rebuilt. If you don't destroy everything you won't be able to
rebuild it. And it appears that this is what will happen, let everything be destroyed until we
have a generation that will build again... incomplete things won't work. We have incomplete
democracy, incomplete freedom, incomplete state and incomplete family; all of these are
illusions... I like the elections in Iraq or Egypt; I even feel bad and wonder why do they spend
money? It costs the state and the society lots of money... our mentality is not democratic, even
at home, if I couldn't argue with my father, how would I argue with party leaders or politicians
or my boss at work or... and the West take us for fools, they fund NGOs and we keep talking
about democracy and spend money... but we can't only blame the West, we have our share of
the blame.
N.P: Is there anything else you want to say? Anything I didn't ask about?
S.A: In general, we didn't address each of the topics you specified in details but they
overlapped... there's nothing much else, only September 11 and its ramifications, we addressed
it indirectly in the end... the West needs an enemy, America must have an enemy to busy itself
with, so first it was the Socialist bloc and then they invented this. Sometimes I feel like, you
know Nicole, I'll turn 63 in June, and I feel like I'm in a surreal play, like one of Brecht's absurd
theatre plays, with the events that took place, you would be an active ad enthusiastic member
and then you discover that you're a small cog in a big wheel, you think that you are moving
things but the fact is you are being moved, you are moving and being moved at the same time,
and the result is not in your favor at all... who's to blame now, the cog or the wheel? I don't
know... the thing that bothers me the most now, Nicole, is feeling this dangerous radical
religious wave, here in the building there are people with long beards, they are doctors,
engineers and lawyers, all of them are "well-educated", their women wear the niqab, they
don't talk to me since I sing a different tune, of course it doesn't bother me that they don't talk
to me, what worried me is, where are we headed to? This society, these buildings, cars, laptops,
ipads, all this huge technology we're using, how did it affect us? Where are we going? How will
the society look like? It's terrifying. When I go back in time, let's go back to the fifties, from my
father's sacrifices, becoming a political refugee, our hard life in asylum, the poverty, the jail,
that's why... we were talking about democracy and socialism and whatnot...that's why I feel
very frustrated. Did you notice my door? Because a couple of days ago, a week ago, there were
people who tried to break in at midnight, they were on the porch, the police came and even the
police told me it could be someone from the surrounding area, since I lived alone ad had a dog,
they wanted to harass me. So I brought the blacksmith and had this external door made, I also
16


raised the wall, it's really terrifying, and this wasn't the first time I face something like that, in
1989 there was a statement threatening death to a number of women including me, as we
were considered infidels. Also when my book "the city of roses and stones" I was also
badmouthed in mosques. Now I don't hide my thoughts about political Islam, I write them on
Facebook and in newspaper and whatnot... but now there is killing involved, it's no longer
intellectual conflict, and there are people who slaughter others in the name of God. If Salafist
would come here, the official number of Salafists fighting in Syria is 2000; let's say 500 of them
will come back, what would they do to Jordan? Like when the Arab Afghanis came back from
Afghanistan. I can't understand how one of my neighbors who is an engineer, the person who
built this building, he wears a dish-dash this long, and has a beard this long, he would be
walking like this looking at me disapprovingly, he's an engineer! A person of logic and whatnot.
When you say an engineer you're talking about a scientific mind, the logical structure of the
brain, how come he's like this? The results are very dangerous, they are scary. And the
alternative is a dictatorial regime like King Abdullah or Hafez Al-Assad or Al-Maliky or Sisi or
whatever, either that or these people, there isn't a third choice... I don't want either of them.
N.P: Who's better?
S.A: Both are worse than each other. I don't prefer any of them to the other because each one
kills me in a different way, in the end there's killing, be it killing your mind, your spirits, your
humanity... when a corrupted regime comes and puts so much restrictions on my daily life that I
can't get education, I can't take my chance at work, I can't express my opinion openly, or if
someone kills me or puts me in jail, and someone in the name of God and religion makes me
stay at home and doesn't allow me to go to school and treats me as a maidservant, the same
thing. Saying that a secular dictatorial regime is better than a religious dictatorial regime is a
stupid choice, the choice should not be like that, they are both two faces for the same coin.
Maybe you can say, as we once said in a discussion, that the semi-secular regimes that were in
power allowed some personal freedoms, but what can I do with my personal freedom if I'm not
able to practice it? Like, I feel like having a beer but I don't have the money to buy a beer,
because my income doesn't allow me that luxury, what did you do? You put me in a situation
where I could barely eat and drink and I can't practice my freedom, and a situation where I'm
not allowed to practice that freedom in the first place, that I'm not allowed to drink beer or to
wear whatever I like, I'm speaking on the social level. So, nobody is better than the other, they
are both two faces for the same coin... because, for me, I don't consider myself free after all,
they took everything away from me, whether through a regime that's "modern" in appearance
or one that is not "modern" in appearance... actually, sometimes I think that, not that one is
better or worse than the other, but there is clarity in backwardness, I really feel annoyed when I
see a young man or woman carrying a laptop and using a cellphone and writing on Facebook
but the content is very backward, worse than someone who tells me to stay home and not to
go to school, and not to set foot outside the house. Because the former is deceptive, you see a
nice look, a nice picture, but there is so much dirt inside... apparently in the past 60 years we
were enclosed with a shell of modernity while the dirt was there and was getting bigger inside
us while we were happy with the beautiful outer shell because we were moving with
modernity, we might have gotten educated but look at the outcomes of the educational
17


system, look at the outcomes of the professional economic structure with regards to women
and the society as a whole. Look at the outcomes of the daily urban life from construction to
the transportation and communication methods. There's an incredible transmission of dirt and
filth. So, we were deceived by those beautiful shells and pictures...
TAPE 4
Suhair Al Tai: And, it's even more than dirt, I feel like it's poison that's inside us, worms, sorry
for the expression, maybe I bothered you with this Nicole. So, this is how I see things. There's
something else when it comes to Arab Spring, the Jordanian society in particular was affected
by the events in Syria. How did it affect us? In terms of the natural unity between citizens,
perhaps I told you that my paternal grandmother was Syrian, it's rare that you would find a
pure Jordanian family, naturally this was one region but it was divided by the Sykes-Picot
agreement, courtesy of you and the French, especially in the North of Jordan as it's very close
to Syria, but in general the Jordanian society was very concerned with the Syrian events and it
was divided vertically between people with the regime and people against it, or with the
"revolution" between quotation marks. Now, when religious extremism emerged on the scene
people were confused, nobody wants religious extremism after all except for a few. S, where
would we go? It affected people on daily life basis, emotionally, forget about the fact that we
have 2 million Syrian refugees who compete for job opportunities and water and whatnot, and
the nature of the simple differences between people, there is fear. I ask ordinary people and
they express their fear, what will happen? If the regime stayed in power and the war raged on,
what will happen? And if the regime was toppled who will be in power and what will happen?
So, you can feel that it has more impact on us than Egypt and Iraq, relatively more than Iraq,
and Tunisia and Yemen and other. It created a huge state of fearfor people, so that's perhaps
one of the reasons for pessimism... I don't know if I said enough, is that enough for you or you
need to ask more questions?
Nicola Pratt: I don't have other questions... May I ask you one more question, how do you see
the situation of women, is it better?
S.A: Look, there are two factors for changing the situation of women, the factor of natural
transformation in society and the factor of working on women demands and societal demands
as a whole, which plays a humble role, everything I said means that the women movement, the
parties and the unionist work, their contribution to changing the situation of women is humble,
but there is contribution, we can't deny that. Now, if we don't face the religious wave in a
strong, firm and scientific way then there will be danger. I'm telling you, there will be danger.
The problem is that we still hear voices that coax the wave of Political Islamism, whether in the
Leftist Movement or the moderates, so there is fear. You might meet or maybe you already met
Hanan Al-Allam who is in charge of the women's confederation in the Popular Unity Party,
which is affiliated with George Habash, she wears the hijab and she talks about Islam and
religion, and she says there is no contradiction, how is that so? So, I feel that we need to be
18


clear and decisive, there is no room for tactics and temporary political games, there's no room
for that, you need to be clear and decisive, you are against the interest of women and the
society in general, you want to reach people in any way possible and carry out your agenda,
and your agenda is backward, on the social level at least, it's a backward agenda that doesn't
serve me, so I have to confront it. Now, I don't know how much I can confront, how much
oppressed I would be, it's a battle in the end. Like when someone comes and says that Israel
killed people, of course Israel will kill people, it's our enemy and this is a battle, you think it will
shower us with chocolate and roses? That's the logic of the conflict. Besides, the conflict with
political Islamism is a battle of existence. And trying to sugarcoat the texts like what the
"Islamic feminists" do, and I'm against that term by the way and I wrote about it, they dig up to
find Verses or Prophetic sayings or interpretations in favor of women, that's nonsense, it's
concoction. Islam is against equality, it doesn't acknowledge it, that's it... that's it, perhaps at
some point of history it transformed the situation of women in the pre-lslamic period to a
better situation in Islam, that may be true, but it doesn't suit me now, it doesn't suit me now,
and no sacred text suits me because what's sacred is constant. It doesn't change, while social
life changes on daily basis. How would the constant adapt to the changing? I won't go into the
details of the Verses and Prophetic sayings, I'm talking about sacred texts in general, be that
Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Islamic, what's sacred is constant and the life of the society is
variable, the variable doesn't agree with the constant. So, I want changing issues that change
with me and I can't get that from sacred texts, in a nutshell... if I would say that the Buddhist
culture at a certain point of history would help the situation of women, that is intellectual
luxury if you ask me, and it's fad, okay maybe the local culture as a comprehensive composition
including religions could give me something but I can't say that religion as a set of fixed texts
could give me the answer... and it gets worse when the conflict for power gets involved and
violence in the political sense of the word, which leads to social violence. We hear about sexual
Jihad and bush wives and the virgins of Heaven, you must have read or heard about that, why?
Do men go to Heaven in Islam only to have virgins? I once asked a Mufti, the Quran says that
there is so and so in Heaven, but what's there for women when they go to Heaven? He said the
women are the Virgins of Heaven. I said promptly, so you're following us in this life and in the
other life too? So, there is, how can I say it? There is delusion, if I won't assume bad intentions,
and I'm sure there are no bad intentions when decent researchers work through a scientific
approach, there are no bad intentions for sure, but the results are misleading. Either a sacred
text which you have to follow because it becomes matter of faith, not a conviction or logical
mathematical equations, or it's using mind and logic which forces change every once in a while.
So that doesn't suit us, times have changes, facts have changes, causes have changed, and the
results will be different and so on... I'm talking philosophy now.
N.P: Did you include those ideas in your book?
S.A: I have an article about Islamic feminism, the concept of equality and feminism in Islam.
And all hell broke loose.
N.P: Was it published?
19


S.A: No, it was published on the internet, perhaps... No, it was part of my participation in a
conference. It wasn't published... I don't know, maybe in the magazine of the Women's
Federation, what did I publish? No, that was a different article, about the concept of the
Feminist school of thought.
N.P: So, you don't have a problem in writing about Islam and saying that it's against equality?
S.A: I have no problem, I'm not afraid. I have no problem, I feel that now I'm done being afraid.
Sometimes when I'm preparing for a conference I call my mother and I call her, we are good
friends but she's a little sick so she stays in bed, she tells me that I would be killed, so I say to
her: "That's it, mother, there's no room for fear". All my life I have never coaxed anyone, I've
never done that, but we didn't address the subject because we didn't face it, not at this level,
maybe we faced it slightly but never at this level. But I have no problem writing about it and if
nobody would publish it I would publish it online on Facebook, I don't care. And somebody
must speak out, because as I told you Nicole, it becomes a fad, like talking about Islamic
feminism and that Islam revered women, okay it was good at a certain point in history but this
is not enough. It is not enough, and in the end there is no equality, so in the end you either
want equality and Islam won't give you that, or you don't want equality, you're free to address
whatever issue you want, I accept you and discuss it with you, but don't mislead people and
sugarcoat things. That's Islam, Islam is responsible for what it says, you would find a Verse in
the Quran with a positive vibe but you would find 10 Verses against it. Which one would I
choose? If I don't have one united harmonized system then it won't work. And we don't have
that. It's enough that it says: "and beat them" that's a sacred text, however you interpret it, it
says "and beat them", it has no other meaning. (Note: the word was translated literally as
intended by the speaker but in the interpretation of Quran it is translated: abandon or leave
them) and it says that the son inherits twice as the daughter, how would you interpret that? No
matter how you interpret it, the woman gets half what the man gets, "men are the protectors
and maintainers of women", many intellectuals like Aisha Abdul Rahman tried to interpret it,
but the interpretation was funny. Like the other day there was a discussion and a female
professor in Al-Azhar University said that this text reveres women. How does it revere women
when it says "men are the protectors and maintainers of women"? One is higher than the
other, how does it revere women? They play with the language. So, I feel that sometimes there
is elusiveness. That's it. At a certain historical era it did good things, in a certain culture it was
good, but after that I can't take it, I don't want it, my relationship with God is something
private, I'm free to do whatever I want about it, whether I want to go to a church or a mosque,
whether I want to pray or not, my relation to God is my business alone, but as a society, no. I
remember I was in America once giving a lecture in Cincinnati University, the Indians and
Pakistanis started arguing with me, I said: "I want to know one thing, we are a pluralistic
society, there Christians and Jews and whatnot, the texts on the prescribes punishments, the
Quran is constant, the thief's hand is cut off, so what if a Christian stole... aren't you talking
about a society of justice and equality? Why would an Islamic text be applied to a Christian? He
doesn't believe in Islam, why would you cut his hand off? Let's say you don't cut his hand off
because he's Christian, and then you cut off a Muslim's hand, then there won't be equality
between these two citizens in the punishment for the same crime. One of them was given a
20


life-long impediment while the other went to jail for two months, so where is the concept of
equality in citizenship and social justice? That means that religion doesn't work as a social
system, religion works as a set of morals to guide me as an individual, nothing more, I talked
about this the other day in the conference and all hell broke loose, about religion and
extremism, I talked about this in the presence of Islamic clerics and Christian men of the cloth,
that's my opinion, if they want to kill me then so be it, I don't care anymore... those are my
thoughts on the issue.
N.P: That's it?
S.A: Yes, that's it, we talked a lot, do you want more than that?
21

Interview with Suhayr Salá¹­Ä« al-Tall
2014

TAPE 1
Nicola Pratt: Okay… go ahead.
Suheir Al Tal: Okay. I was born in the city of Irbid in the north of Jordan in 1952, to a cultured family, relatively educated, my father had graduated from the American University of Cairo in 1951, he studied political economy, he was a communist, a member of the "communist party", and a poet, he wrote poetry, my uncle was a famous poet in Jordan and he opposed the regime too, he was Mustafa Wahbi Al-Tal AKA Arar. My mother is cultured too, she has a high school certificate, she didn't go to university because back then it was difficult for girls to go to university, but she finished high school and worked on herself, she reads, she follows political events, she reads political and cultural magazines, and since she married my father she became closer to the communist party and to the Marxist school of thought in general. I was raised in that environment. The main point in my life was that in 1958 when the coup happened against the national movement, my father was threatened with jail and he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in jail, because he was a member of the communist party, so we went to Syria as political refugees. My childhood in Syria was spent among communist, Ba'tahi and Nationalist and Nasserist circles, because we all fled Jordan as entire families, because we were all being hunted down in Jordan, so it's natural that in such environment I would care about the political issues and the general issues as well as the Palestinian Cause because there's something here, the word "refugee" used to give me a shock when they asked me at school, in kindergarten and elementary school where I was from and I would say I was a refugee, and what does refugee mean? So I connected the dots in my mind, I was a refugee and the Palestinians were refugees too, hence my interest in the issue of refugees and human rights, whose lands or houses were stolen, and those who could be jailed or assassinated if they returned to their country… we spent around 10 years in Syria until King Hussein issued a general decree. So we went back but still my father was arrested, there was a chance that he wouldn't get arrested but he did, and my cousin Wasfi Al-Tal was the Prime Minister at the time… so, in a way he was saying that even if my uncle was opposing the regime I could take a decision to arrest him, although there was a decree, he shouldn't have been arrested, he spent almost a year in jail. From there I built my relationship with prison as I used to visit my father, and you know we are a tribal society and everyone knows everyone so the jail officers let me go inside the cell to see my father, so "cell 303" became an icon in my life, my father was detained in that cell and before him my uncle and before him my maternal grandfather because he was in the opposition too. Later on my communist friends were detained there in the 1960s and 1970s, and then the father of my daughter was detained there, the same cell, cell 303. Even my daughter's first birthday was celebrated there because her father was in jail. So you can imagine how connected I was to the world of prisons, so all that had an influence on me, the turning point was the 1967 war, we were very optimistic about the 1967 war, with the Arab propaganda and Abdul Nasser and the prepared Arab armies, so the defeat was a catastrophe, a real catastrophe, I don't know how, I was young, 13 years old, I was born in 1952 so in 1967 I would be 12 or 13 years old, but that was a huge shock and the first step that I used to go out with my father to help the retreating soldiers, we were in the North and if you're familiar with the map you'd know that Irbid is close to the Palestinian borders and the Syrian borders with Golan Heights, so the soldiers of the Syrian army would go down to Al-Yarmouk Valley and from there they would continue to Jordan because it was difficult to retreat, they were surrounded, so I would go out with my father to do civil defense work, we would help soldiers with food and tending to the wounded and taking them to hospitals and whatnot, so it was very hard, and it was then that I decided to reconsider everything I knew, I was still young. That was associated with European movements. If you remember, the students' movement in France, there was the Hippie and civil rights movement in America, so I started to read, since my father was an erudite man, he used to bring magazines and translate articles from English into Arabic, so we started to think and the New Left was bor. I became convinced that the Communist Party with the ideas it held back then was not enough, although I was too young to think like that, it amazes me now, but I thought that we should reconsider all our ideas as the Communist Part, Ba'ath Party, Jamal Abdul Nasser himself, he was a leader and we liked him but there was something wrong, so I became closer to the New Left movement. And that eventually led me to the Palestinian Resistance Movement. I didn't join the Communist Party but I was close to the communists. I joined one of the leftist confederations of the Palestinian Resistance which was the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine for two years, in those two years I discovered that nothing was serious, it's true that we had the Fidayees and the image of Guevara, the Oriental man who had a long beard and held a machine gun and whatnot, that was just an image but there wasn't real action on the ground, especially that I started to grow p and I noticed their behavior towards women, I expected that these people would be the most progressive in dealing with women, but I found that they were progressive in their political ideas, but when it came to dealing with women there were two types of dealing with women: Either as a friend, which means an open relationship with no limits and where there would be taking advantage of her under the motto of freedom, or to make her stay at home, if it was his sister he would make her stay home, if she was a comrade in the Party then he would say you're free and you can sleep with me and whatnot. You see? So that made me pull away from them, I believed that you wither be progressive in all aspects, applying progressive measures to yourself first of all, and then you move it to society. What helped in that was my father too, since my father was a communist, it's true that he left the Party back then as he had intellectual disagreements with the Party, so he left it quietly, there was no bad publicity or public criticism, just discussions with his comrades so he pulled out, he resigned and stayed home, and he wrote independently. My father was a real Marxist, he used to deal with us as a Marxist, I was his eldest of three daughters, and he has practiced any kind of discrimination between boys and girls, so I found it strange that when I went out with my father's comrades or my comrades in the Party, they were much different. My father used to support me, we had our disagreements, I was a teenager and we would disagree on many intellectual and political issues, but he has never used his authority as a father to impose anything on me, he highly respected my privacy and my opinions, he would advise me, because I was young, so he tried to pass his experience on to me but I was in the stage of teenage and rebellion and revolting against all the prevailing concepts including the image of the father, I wouldn't listen to him, but later on I discovered that he was right. So, that was the first thing that led me to resistance and to the idea of reconsidering the old partisan ideals, the sayings, the issue of women, and to ask where do they stand on that? And I started to build myself because my resources were limited to the Party, the press, and all of them didn't walk the talk, there was a duality between the proclaimed ideals and what's practiced on the ground, so I wanted to kick the idea around, I couldn't practice it alone and have fingers pointed at me, you can't be free alone. The society is not free, women are not free. So, I started to work on myself, I wanted to read and write, and hence was my choice to be a journalist and scientific research later on. That was the main determining factor, the duality between theory and practice… now stop recording and I'll go make…
N.P: Okay. May I ask you, when you were a child and your family was in prison, weren't you upset?
S.A: Of course, I used to ask why all the time. I felt bad that… you see, sometimes I think of writing an open text, I don't know whether it would be a novel or what, bout the moment we crossed the borders to Jordan. We were in a car, my mother, father, my younger sister and I. they took our passports and went to stamp them and my father was gone. A while later I looked over and saw my father in handcuffs, and then they took him and put him in the prisoner transport vehicle. This is a sight I'll never forget. I was a child, happy that we were back in our country with my grandmother and my uncles and all that, and then suddenly my father was taken away in this scene which was completely incomprehensible for me. I couldn't visit him in prison before 3 months. So there was also the image of prison bars behind which my father was and I couldn't reach him, and then later on, you know he was the PM's uncle and a well-known figure as an intellectual and a political figure, so he wasn't treated in prison like any other ordinary prisoner, so he received special treatment. As I told you, it's a tribal society and people respect each other, besides, he was an intellectual, so even the jailer looked at him differently that he wasn't a thief or a n ordinary criminal, so that always made me think, that if I closed my eyes and remember my father these are the first images that would come to my mind, my father in handcuffs and getting into the prisoner transport vehicle, with my father's face divided by the bars. So, of course there was sadness and that what made me so interested in the issue of freedom and human rights, you can't work on one political cause alone, the issue of freedoms comes with it naturally, freedom of thought, of belief, of forming parties and others. You also can't work on women issues without dealing with the issue of freedoms, so everything is connected. Actually freedom is the core issue and other things branch our from it, you would become active in the field of human rights or in the field of environment, in political activities, students' activities and whatnot. The "main point" is freedom, when my father was walking towards the prisoner transport car, I asked why? Okay, we had the issue of refugees before that and why we were in Syria and not in our country, especially that sometimes they would sent me alone in the summer, they would put me in a car with driver they knew and send me to Irbid, because there's only 200 km between Damascus and Irbid, they are very close, so I would always ask myself why couldn't my mother or father come to Jordan? I lied being with my uncles especially that my grandfather who was also in the opposition since the days of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, his house had an orchard, he was a "landlord" and there were trees and horses and whatnot, so that was a fun world for me and I wanted to stay there, but there was always a barrier which is that my father or mother could be imprisoned, especially that my mom was being wanted too for a while, and one of very few women who were wanted in the 1950s. So, that led me to realize the importance of freedom, and things would diverge, all kinds of freedoms become laid on the table in front of you, hence you would have strange feelings, a mix of sadness, challenge, stress and worry. But the challenge was bigger than the sadness, the stress and the worry, that I wanted to challenge that which had changed the course of my childhood. And hence came my interest in women issues and my boldness in writing, I don't know, maybe you heard or read about this, that I am one of the boldest writers compared to other writers. So, that was the biggest challenge element. There was sadness, there was worry, there was anger but the challenge was the biggest of all, that I wanted to break all these taboos, be them about religion, politics, sex, everything. I wanted to break them all.
N.P: So… you were talking about the 1970s
S.A: Yes, as I told you in the 1970s we were opened to the ideas of others, there was a transition from being a child with the families from my father’s circles who were Ba'athis, the political refugees, Ba'athis, Nasserists and Communists in Syria, and moving to the New Left, because these Parties failed in the 1967 war and led us to defeat. So, there must be another intellectual solution. I wasn't old or educated enough to find my own solution, the solution came ready from Europe, the civil rights, the New Left and the students' movement in France, so we adopted that with its negatives and positives in a naïve way, we didn't fully comprehend it. Now, 40 or 50 years later when I write I tell myself that I should be aware about the ideas being circulated in the West and I know there are very important ideas which can be adopted, but I have to be aware of how much I can fit them into a local frame, how suitable are they for this socio-economic development because my society is not developed yet. We didn't understand that, even the people older than me and the leaderships, that what Europe has reached today is the accumulated result of 200 years of revolutions, civil wars and the industrial revolution and whatnot. I can't just take it as a ready-made product and apply it to this pre-state society, a primitive society with its own economic and social relations. We didn't pay attention to that, in all the stages you mentioned, in 1967, in September 1970, the Palestinian Resistance, Beirut war, the invasion of Iraq, all these political blows were directed at a society dealing with a mindset that's way ahead of its development; that's why it was unacceptable, how else would you explain this huge comeback of religious extremism? The people… no matter how much we say it was a conspiracy and that Al-Qaeda was backed by the USA, but there is suitable environment for that whether we like it or not. Why is that environment suitable for that? Right? This is what nobody thinks about, we always want to blame the West and the conspiracy theory, like blaming the defeat on the Balfour Declaration and England, okay, but what did we do? This is for the Palestinian Cause. The 1970 events were an American conspiracy against the idea of resistance, okay, but what did we do? The beginning of religious expansion which also started in 1970, it was in 1970 that the religious expansion started to spread in that way with political Islamism and whatnot, and how it spread and prevailed over all the other liberal thoughts, be it the pure liberal school of thought, the Leftist Marxist school of thought, the socialist or nationalist and others. Okay, we know that historically the Muslim Brotherhood movement was established with the support of the British intelligence, be that as it may, but there is a suitable environment for that. Okay. That's what we're not thinking about as a society, our composition, our culture, our economic and social relationship, how are we developing to embrace these things that are happening, adopting them, processing them and reproducing them. Every stage is a stage of defeat; we are processing the previous defeat and reproducing it in the form of a new defeat, from 1967 and on. We are not thinking about it on the level, not that of the elite because the elite probably think about it, but on a popular level, how to deal with women, how to deal with women movement and women organizations, how to deal with the human rights movement, we don't think about that, this is the fertile ground for all these defeats which are producing a negative mindset if I may call it so, or a negative behavior in my opinion. What's forming that? What are the factors? What role does the elite play in encouraging it or reducing its impact, I don't think we're thinking about that, we're still working from ivory towers, and we are so proud of ourselves, we lie to ourselves and we believe it, and things are going from bad to worse. I can't imagine Syria, let's go back to the issue of Syria, which I knew from 1958 to 1968, home of Damascus International Exhibition, where I attended my first theatrical play, both children and adult theater, where I watched the first serious motion picture, listened to my first serious song, this is the same Syria where there is now ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, where they slaughter people in the name of God. You may say there is a conspiracy and militants were sent from the outside and that would be fine but there was a suitable environment for that. Am I right? No matter how many people came from the outside, except if the NATO came in with its weapons and soldiers, other than that there is an environments that nurtures those fighters and these ideas and whatnot. So, this is our original problem. I talked a lot. I talked about all the stages at once… I talked about everything at once.
N.P: May I ask you about the details… when did you come back from Syria and did you go to university and what did you study?
S.A: I came back from Syria in 1966, I pursued my studies here until shortly before September 1970, I left Jordan again in early 1970 before the battles of September ensued. I went to Yugoslavia to continue my education, and the crisis had started between the Jordanian regime and Palestinian resistance, you can say that at the time of the 1967 the situation was calm but there was internal rage, not for me as a person but in the society as a whole. In 1968 there was the battle of Karama and we felt some hope that we could do something, with the beginning of the resistance movement, we started to see armed fighters and hearing about fidayee operations. In 1969 the crisis started between the regime and the resistance, during that time I was closer to the resistance and we would hear, read and follow the news about what was happening and criticizing the previous experiences and whatnot. That affected my study, I was in high school and about to take the general secondary certificate exam... at the same time Israel used to bomb Irbid every day because the Fidayees used to go out through the North and carry out operations at the borders inside Palestine, so they responded by bombing the civilian areas in side Irbid, and that affected us greatly. I remember once while I was taking one of the exams there was a bombing while we were in the exam room, and the principal in charge wasn't smart so she let us out, the exam room was close to my grandfather's house while I was leaving with my friend I told her we should go to my grandfather's house as they had an underground shelter in case of bombing and whatnot, we were talking and suddenly she fell down and I fell down too, turned out she was killed by a shrapnel to her chest. They took us both to the hospital, when she was killed she felled upon me and we both fell down and I was covered with her blood, so they carried us both thinking I was injured too, so that was another shock, she was my friend and classmate, so that affected my academic results, and the exams in Irbid were stopped for a week while the rest of the country continued to do the exams, they changed the questions and they moved the exam rooms to villages in places father away from the range of Israeli artillery at the time. So that created a big shock for me which affected my results and I didn't score high grades, I was supposed to be one fo the tope students, I was a very smart student and I was expected to score high results and I wanted to study engineering. So my father felt that I would face lots of problems if I stayed in Jordan so he sent me to Yugoslavia to pursue my education in Bulgaria, as you know the socialist camp was there but my papers weren't ready yet so I went to Yugoslavia until my admission papers in Bulgaria were ready. And then Black September happened, and that the second catastrophe, we didn't expect at all that this would be the end of the resistance in Jordan. Imagine that I way away, I didn't speak the language of that country yet, my English wasn't very good yet, and anyway in socialist countries you rarely found someone who spoke English. I was learning the Serbian language. I would watch TV and see Irbid and Amman and explosions and bombs but I couldn't understand anything, I would just cry, until I went out the next day and saw one of the Arab students, they were mostly from the confederation, and they would explain to me what was happening, and it was a disaster. I was an expat at the age of… I was born in 1952 so in September 1970 I was 18. Perhaps I was the first "pure Jordanian" girl, not one from Palestinian origins, who went to study abroad, and from Irbid not from Amman, from a small city which was supposed to be more traditional… so I couldn't continue, I finished my first year of the language course and I felt that my academic future wasn't there, especially that Yugoslavia was in between, it wasn't a socialist society nor a capitalist one, in the days of Tito and whatnot… what also helped in taking that decision was that there were lots of disagreements between us students after September 1970, we asked why did that happened and there were speculation and discussions and conversation and I was in between the Democratic Front as a leftist movement and the communist party, as an organization that had friendly ties with my family, so each pulled in an opposite direction so I was very tired and I returned to Jordan. I returned but before…

TAPE 2

Suhair Al Tal: Before I entered Jordan I called my parents and they told me not to come because I was wanted; as the resistance had fallen down and anyone connected to the resistance in any way was summoned by the Intelligence apparatus, some people went to jail and some were tortured, some of them were dear friends and relatives of mine. So, my family came to Damascus and decided that I would go to Beirut to pursue my education there, and that's what happened. The situation in Beirut was disastrous because the resistance went to Beirut, all the comrades who withdrew from Irbid and Amman; everyone was shocked, wondering what happened. I remember 3 of my friends, one killed himself, another one withdrew from public life completely and started a chicken farm, and a third one who was the closest to me went to London, he took courses and things like that so I was left alone. But of course that took a year, I have even wrote a story in my first short story collection about that situation we lived in that stage… so, in Beirut I studied accounting, I didn't have much choice, my GPA didn't allow me to be accepted in a different faculty, but I wasn't very serious about studying as a whole, I was in a very difficult psychological state, and an intellectual conflict with my surroundings, the idea that we withdrew from Jordan and the resistance received a harsh blow, the idea of the behavior of the resistance in Beirut itself, and here the issue of women poses itself bluntly. In Jordan things were a little better but in Beirut it was too blunt, the issue of female comrades and girls in the parties was posed in a very hard way, and we hadn't gotten yet into the civil war. So, studying was something marginal for me, but I used to study, I attended classes and took exams and whatnot, and it was then that I got into journalism, it was a coincidence, a colleague of mine said to me: "You write in the University magazine and you read and go into discussions, why don't you come and train in our magazine?" It was called "Addustor" magazine owned by Ali Ballout. I went there and I got hooked, I was trained and then hired in the magazine, and there I met the man I married later on, and I continued to work in journalism, I finished my university education, I obtained a B.A in accounting, but the main thing for me was working in journalism, and I pulled away from the resistance a little bit, I was more involved in cultural work, given that I was training to be a journalist, and Beirut back then was living its golden age, all the intellectuals of the Arab World were there as well as the poets and authors of the Arab World. So it was a chance for me to learn as much as I could, I would leave the newspaper to go to Mara street, to the cafes were intellectuals gathered like [inaudible:03:56], there were names like that, you see? Where else would you see such prominent intellectual figures of poets, authors and intellectuals, and of course I used to read. So that's how the second transformation happened, I went towards literature and intellect and I pulled away from the daily work, until the war broke out; since I was living in a camp, when I married my first husband he was from Burj Al-Barajneh camp in the Southern Suburb, we lived at the edge of the camp between the Christian and the Muslim areas, so I had to do something because people were dying… I couldn't go to the newspaper or write every day… I get nervous when I remember that phase… so I went back to daily tasks which weren't basic tasks in my life, but I dedicated my time for political and union work when I came back to Jordan. I worked as a journalist from 1976 to 1984, but my writings touched upon the issues I was interested in like the issues of human rights, the Palestinian Cause, the political developments in the region, women issues, but from my position as a journalist not as an activist. When I came back to Jordan in 1983 I was back to my position as an activist. During that time from 1976 to 1983 I used to go back and forth to Jordan, I wasn't settled down in Jordan or anywhere abroad, I spent some time in Beirut, sometime in Kuwait, sometime in Rome, sometime in France, I wasn't settled down in one place, but when I came back to Jordan I would become active right away whether in the Women's Federation, the Press Association, the Writers Union, I was active, sometimes I even came to Jordan to work on a certain issue, to be part of it, I would leave my work and come to Jordan. Until I finally settled down in Jordan in 1983, in 1983 I became a full-time activist, I was still a journalist and working in journalism but I was an activist along with my work in journalism, my whole day would be divided between the newspaper, the association, the union and the federation, and then naturally there were political developments after that, the First Gulf War, the Second Gulf War… the picture is clear?
Nicola Pratt: You were in Beirut during the civil war for 2 years only?
S.A: No, more than that.
N.P: More?
S.A: I don't know exactly, the war started in 1975, I stayed there without leaving until 1976, in 1976 I came here, I couldn't stay so I came back, and then I went to Rome, and then I went back to Beirut, then I came here, then I went to Kuwait, and then I went back to Beirut, so I was there during the invasion of and the siege on Beirut… but I would stay for 3 months in Beirut then spend a month in Amman, or a month in Rome or 2 months in Kuwait and then I would go back to Beirut and stay there for 3 months, something like that… For example, my official place of residence would be Kuwait but I didn't stay in Kuwait, I was going back and forth between Amman, Beirut and Kuwait, Beirut, Amman and Rome, Beirut, Amman and Kuwait and so on.
N.P: In Beirut you only worked with…
S.A: Yes, I pulled away from the nationalist circles in terms of direct political work, but I was close to the Palestinian Writers Union, they were my friends and I got involved in their activities and whatnot, but I was concerned with gaining the biggest amount of knowledge possible. I felt that the resistance movement, the beacon of resistance and the conflict with Israel pushed many generations to be shallow, to take things at face value, there wasn't in-depth understanding of the situation. You need tools to understand, you need knowledge and methodology. So, I paid attention to that point, I wanted to know through a firm scientific methodology, I wanted to build myself with that methodology, I don't know if I was right or wrong but I used to think that if I kept involved in activism I wouldn't be the person I am today, I would've been like anyone who repeats the same speeches and holds meetings and whatnot, I'm not like that. Of course that doesn't undermine the value of those who fought and who led the political work, but that wasn't me. Some women struggled a lot and paid steep prices, and men as well, some people lost their lives, some were crippled, and there were others who became rich by selling us out… but for me the intellectual issue was the basic things because I thought that through it we could understand reality and lay foundations for change, but to keep repeating the same slogans since the days of Abdul Nasser and in each of the catastrophes that befell us, the stages which you've written down, that's merely an act of yelling slogans, and until this day. So, that took me away from the daily life and daily activities, but I felt that at least someone should stop and think, so I stopped and thought, I don't know how influential I was later on.
N.P: How was Jordan when you came back?
S.A: It was a disaster, a disaster! It was worse than when I had left. I'll give you a picture of the situation: we were in Irbid, which is the second important city, I don't want to give you a shallow analogy, I'll try to give you a deeper dimension for the picture, we as girls had male friends, there was no social problem with that, we used to wear short skirts, we would sit together, hold discussions, listen to music. When I came back I found that people started to point at girls and say: "this girl did so and so", this wasn't something we were used to. The relationship, instead of evolving, they became more reserved, I started to hear about distinction between Palestinians and Jordanians, I started to hear more things like: "You're a girl, you can't do this". But we used to work on that 10 or 15 years ago, we were still talking about that. The more difficult part was that the leaders of the feminist and unionist movements were more backward. More backward. And at that point a very important issue was posed on the intellectual level: How much could we balance between politics and feminism? I have the issue of women which is a socio-political issue, okay, and I have the national issue, be it the Palestinian Cause or the issue of democracy in Jordan, that's a political issue. Now, as a woman in this society and as a women confederation, how much can I discuss the socio-political issue which is the women cause and the political issue? That balance was absent as the scales were tipped in favor of the political movement and that was what made me undergo intellectual and political conflicts with my colleagues in the Women's Federation and in the Feminist movement as a whole, and with the state of course. The political issue was overriding the work on women issues, I felt like we were no more than a flock, I was a member of the administrative committee in the Women's Federation, but as an independent member, not affiliated with any entity. The leadership of the Federation was divided between FATAH, the Democratic Front, the Communist Party, the Popular Front and Al-Ba'ath Party. Each one of them would come carrying the instructions of her respective party in the issue at hand, there would be a decision to hold a sit-in or a demonstration or a strike, a partisan decision, we didn't have a say in it. Then I would interfere and say that we want to hold a demonstration or a sit-in but why are women absent from our agenda? You can see that in my book because when I wrote the history of the feminist movement I mentioned the activities in detail, how many activities we held for the benefit of women, how many activities we held for the benefit of the political movement, so there was a big difference, so I felt that we were practicing the patriarchal partisan mentality through women, instead of men penetrating the circles of women because they couldn't do that they would send the female members in the parties to operate within the circles of women in favor of the political movement, on one hand that is not wrong, but not when it's done at the expense of the women's cause, starting from the issue of violence, divorce, early marriage, the poverty and unemployment of women, the difference and wages and things like that. These issues were not addressed at all except on the International Day of Women and such occasions. When we discussed them with the parties they would say we should focus on the national cause, so the parties became like the ruling regimes, the regimes would use the Palestinian Cause as an excuse to impose martial laws and restrict freedoms on the pretext of the conflict with Israel, and those parties were disregarding the issues of women and the social issues on the pretext of the political conflict whether it was related to the Palestinian Cause or the regime. What's the point? So, in the end I was tired of that, the last stroke was in 1990 during the Gulf war, it's a little funny story, we were gathered and I was representing the Women's Federation in the Associations Complex, I was the only woman in the meeting, there were all representing parties and associations, it was 10 pm, my parents' house was very close by, 3 minutes on foot, it was 10 pm and I was living with my parents, I had my daughter with me after divorcing her father and I was living with my parents. 10 pm wasn't very late and I was a fighter. So then one of the participants came up to me and said: "Comrade, why don't you go home and in the morning we will tell you about the decisions we reached?" what? ... I was representing a whole organization of several thousand women and we worked more than they did, whether by collecting donations for Iraq, mobilization through the media, in the protests and demonstrations against the war and whatnot, how could you tell me your decisions later as an organization called the Women's Federation or the women's sector in general? I lost my mind. I went to the federation and told them what happened and that it was wrong but they said: "Don't put us in an embarrassing situation, Suhair. You know the society and so and so…" I said okay, farewell that was it. I'd rather stay at home to read and write; it was very hard. There was also another issue that had an impact on me… in the period of secret work when the Women's Federation was shut down, although we won the lawsuit in court and we were supposed to come back, perhaps Amy Naffa'a told you, we and the Arab Women Organization, we both filed a lawsuit against the state and we both won. Now, the organization went to work, as for the Women's Federation, the dissent of the Communist Party happened, and since there was a defense they were worried about who will be the majority there so the Federation was put on hold. But we won a lawsuit and it's very important to resume work after being shut down by a martial law… the political disagreements between the Democratic Front and the Popular Front in addition to the dissent of the Party froze the Federation and remained frozen for 8 years, or maybe less than that, I'm not sure about the time period, form 1982 to 1990, 9 or 8 years. So, during that time we formed something called The Popular Committee of Women. We were representative of parties as well as independent women, national figures, and we held secret meetings and we were being hunted down, our situation was very difficult, we didn't know where to meet so we mostly met at my father's house. At that time I was being sued for the story, I told you about that if you remember, it was basically a political issue but they invented a whole new reason for it. So Mrs. Asma Khader who was my lawyer and a member of the committee, she was then still in the National Movement, before she became a minister, she addressed my issue and said: let's do something in solidarity with Suhair, Suhair is a comrade of ours and she's being sued." They refused, and they were meeting in my house. You know Nicole, you might have experienced this in the beginning of the century but not now, it's so hard to open your door for a meeting of a secret organization in Jordan at that time under the martial laws, ad my father had grown so old, he didn't have the strength to be summoned for interrogation or something like that, and yet I would let them meet in my house, imagine that, they were in my house and I was with them in the meeting and they refused, why? They said it wasn't a good time and that I didn't have to write something like that. I told them it was a political issue not a moral issue, but they wouldn't listen. So, I wondered how would you work on women issues if you were too short-sighted to realize the dimensions of that trial, and to take action regarding it, it was a writer, a colleague of yours who was being sued. They all refused, the Communist, the ones from the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, the Ba'ath Party, and one of the independent members [inaudible:21:38], of course I didn't say anything since it was my problem, only Asma Khader suggested the issue. So I felt it was in vain, as long as these organizations were dominated by political work or rather the political organization in that way, and those political work cannot reconsider and renovate their ideas and they still look at the issues of women, environment, youth, students merely as sectors they could use for mobilization then it is in vain, the work would be a waste of time and would be to no avail, and it was then that I quit everything, I handed over my resignation from the Federation, I was expelled from the Press Association because I changed my occupation and I didn't go to the writers' union often, so I dedicated my time for writing and studying, I obtained my Master's degree and then my PhD, and for journalistic work. That's it. So what I'm trying to say here Nicole is that you pay for these failures from your own expense, there is no distinction here between a private and a public issue, your private issues are part of the public issues, and how the public I dealing with the private? It's dealing with it from its very narrow perspective of private issues. They still said to me there were issues bigger than your private issue, I even remember in one of my lectures, after I have published my book "the city of roses and stones" which had sparked a huge controversy and people were angry about it, that it wasn't a good time to publish it and why did I write such a thing. I got irritated and responded to someone angrily, I said: "You want to free Palestine with a people half of which are pimps and the other half are prostitutes?" So, when they keep saying it is not a good time, when is a good time?... and I discovered I wasn't alone, there were also the wives, daughters, girl friends of the comrades, they were all suffering the same things. The simple woman in the village or the camp who is abused by her traditional father or brother is just like the wife of the comrade who is abused because she didn't cook. But the difference is that the latter didn't cook because she was in a partisan meeting while the former didn't cook because she was having coffee with her neighbor, but the result is the same, you're a woman who has to cook and you'll be abused if you don't cook. So, that's the mentality that brought us to this. Excuse me, I need to get some water… when we went for a meeting somewhere I would fill my car with fuel and take the women with me at my own expense, nobody thought of demanding compensation for transportation costs, and we were excited to work, but now they are comfortable, being paid in elegant offices, and here are the results. So, I feel sad because so much effort was wasted because we didn't strike a balance or pay attention to ourselves, I think this is just like a woman who studies and pursues her education and then she gets married and stays home to raise her children, she raises her children and marries them off and then she sits alone with herself and thinks: "Where am I? What did I do for myself as a person? Nothing, I served a man, raised children and gave up all the advantages I could've gained through knowledge and a career, and in the end everyone went their separate ways, okay, they might say "thank you" but "so what"? What would I do with this "thank you" when I'm alone?" that's exactly how we are, we worked and made sacrifices and paid money so that in the end the Islamist movement would take over and we try to coax it, the problem for me now Nicole is that there is Leftist and Partisan movement that is coaxing the Islamists. There are fundamental contradictions between you two, how could you coax them? Do you consider them a national movement? No, they are not a national movement, any religious mentality means dividing the society, and it’s no longer national. We started with Islam and Christianity, then there was division in Islam itself with Sunnah and Shiites and I don't know how far it will go. So, they coax them and form alliances with them, how? That's an issue which shocks me a lot, that in the end I would sit with an Islamist, not a Muslim, a political Islamist, everyone is free to choose their religion, and form alliance with him and adopt his agenda, and in the end he would take over things and all the rights I gained even those in the course of the natural evolution of society, not only the ones I fought for, would regress and given up…
N.P: After you left the union and the federation, did you do any other public work?
S.A: I used to work in the Jordanian Association for Human Rights, most of my work was done there, I was an advisor for the Arab Magazine of Human Rights, I only focused on the issues of Human Rights and specifically the intellectual aspects of the issues, I wasn't an activist in the common sense, we would write, hold training workshops, [inaudible:28:22], my work was mostly in the field of training and writing, the issues of freedom and human rights which we started from remained the main points. And until now, one way or another, if I don't have research work I work in that field. That's it.
N.P: Do you like that work? Are you happy?
S.A: We're suffering the same problem, especially when the funding factor came into play and it became a profession. Now you see among the circles of human rights activists people who have nothing to do with human rights except that they memorized national conventions and whatnot, they know how to repeat slogans, but in their daily lives they couldn't be farther away from the idea of human rights, and they practice persecution against workers more than the capitalists themselves. So, I'm not very comfortable with it, I'm even doing so little work, even when I'm asked to do a training course or a lecture or something I like to go to the "pure" places, the camp, the villages, where people are still natural and unaffected. So, it really bothers me, even conferences and workshops, I don't participate unless it's something that would really add a value to me and where I could add value to it, I receive many invitations to workshops for women and reports and things like that but I send my regrets, because I go away for a year and when I come back I hear the same things, I don't see much added value. Few days ago I was in a conference held by the Royal Society for Religious Studies, about extremism, the causes and the solutions, religious extremism, so people are starting to talk about it, but a few months later we will hear the same things. Besides, it's becoming sort of a fad, for example, when violence is the hot topic…

TAPE 3

Suhair Al Tal: or when CIDAW is the hot topic, or religious extremism, or Islamic Feminism, and so on. So, how could you decide? It depends on the agenda of the funding, so it's disgusted, I really feel disgusted sometimes, especially that I know everyone, I know them since their beginnings until now, so when I know someone who used to hurl insults at me and others because we talked about women issues and feminist issues like early marriage and violence and whatnot, and now they speak about violence and challenge me… I wonder what happened, and then I discover it's all about funding, they want money, and then I discover how much corruption there is in this field, Nicole. The other day I was telling Ahmad, since they provide funding for NBI, I told him: "do you know how much corruption there is?" When I worked on camps, on the situation of women in camps I was a trainer for a while, so the director of one of the centers said to me: "Why are you taking the training so seriously as if they will graduate from university tomorrow?"… then she said to me that this is how it goes in their organizations which are concerned with training, the trainers comes and takes the name sheets for any course, she copies it, and then she writes a report that she trained those people, and then they split the money… I was taken aback, how could that be possible? How could you approve that? As a director of a center you're responsible for training people and those trainers are being paid to train others, so you're not losing anything. She made a gesture like this… and then you get frustrated. I used to go into the training room, I was supposed to finish at 4 but I would stay until 8 in the camp, I wanted to give more, and if they asked about something I didn't know I would go home to search for it on the internet. And I had friends and everything, and they she simply comes to me and says: "why are you taking the training so seriously?" But you have this and that woman, who are well-known figures [inaudible:2:50] so Ahmad tells me that many donor organization know about that. Why don't they say anything then? We write reports about the people we trained, but did you see that on real ground? If you're to conduct a survey for the number of courses that were given in one camp, just one area, take one area as a sample, a village or a camp, or a neighborhood in a city, the Women's Federation itself, when I go there I tell them: "where am I? In the Islamic Labor Front?" in the Women's Federation everyone looks like this… is that privacy and personal freedom? No, it's not personal freedom. Okay, we have different ideologies, I respect your right to wear whatever you want and adopt the ideas you want but your place is not here… like that woman who wears a hijab and who used to be a Marxist, and then she wore the hijab, and she still talks in the name of Marxism, how is that possible? And she's in charge of the women's sector in a Leftist organization. The other day she appeared on TV on Al-Mayadeen channel saying that there is no contradiction between Marxism and Islam, and that a Marxist woman could wear hijab. I couldn't wrap my mind around that, I studied philosophy. Not only I have a Marxist background, while I did my Master's degree and my PhD I went deep into this so I have deep knowledge about it, how did she find it possible? I don't understand… I don't know if you heard this from someone else.
N.P: Do you still go to camps?
S.A: No, I don't have work in camps. I haven't gone there in a long while, but I call them and they call me and they visit me, all the girls I trained are all my friends, most of them formed organizations and started small businesses, they ask me about things and I help them, sometimes I go as a volunteer to train there or give a lecture or something, but not that often, not frequently... I'm more into writing now, I published "the history of the feminist movement", and now I'm gathering the small studies I did and I will publish them in a book, I'm working on something for my father too, I gathered all his articles and poems and all his papers after he passed away, I couldn't bring myself to do that for a while but then I pushed myself to do it, I also want to publish a book. There's a project now, I forgot to talk to my daughter, do you know Dr. Rula Qawwas? They are doing a book in America about the term "Bad Care" so I wasn’t to contribute something to it, so few things here and there… look, I'll tell you something, I'm moody, and emotional. Political work needs more toughness or cruelty, I don't call it toughness, I am tough, it needs cruelty, and to be flexible with your principles, and that doesn't work for me. Yesterday I was talking to my mother and said: "I want to understand something, Saudi Arabia supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and fights them in Egypt. Iran supports the MB in Egypt and fights them in Syria. How is that possible?" It's more than surreal, it's ridiculous. So, I can't work in such environment, I can't sympathize and form alliances, they call it "lobbying" or whatever, but I feel it's sheer immorality, I can't do it. If I have a cause then I should cling to its fundamentals, you could call me backward or dogmatic or whatever, but there are basics I can't play with. I could play with marginal things, but not at the expense of the basics. Now they are playing with the basics and leaving the marginal alone.
N.P: May I ask you about the Arab revolutions or…
S.A: The Arab Spring?
N.P: The Arab Spring. Did you join any protests here in Jordan?
S.A: No, I just followed the news. I followed the events very closely and what was written about Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen. Syria is a different case, let's put it aside, it's a completely different case, and Jordan is a different case too. Generally each country is different; the Arab Spring is different in each region. Now, there are two theories when it comes to Arab Spring: the conspiracy theory, which I don't acknowledge, and there's the theory of accumulation and overlapping […] so there's the theory that says it's a conspiracy and whatnot, that is nonsense, I don't respect it. […] there's accumulated pressure on the peoples. Now, everything I talked about is what led us to this point, that everything that's "revolutionary", between quotation marks, I don't know how you'll interpret it, from traditional parties, traditional powers and traditional unions, that all caused accumulated pressure and that accumulated pressure made them revolt like this. Now, people revolted, the people lost faith in the traditional leaderships. When you say revolution you need a mindset to govern this revolution, and you need a leaderships, not in the sense of an inspirational leader, but there must be a leadership, someone to move these groups. Now, people revolted without these two factors. The mindset that would govern the change that would happen after toppling the regimes, and the leadership that would take over these masses. Missing these factors gave way to the Islamists to take over. Islamists from my point of view which might be wrong but I have read a lot about them and I have experiences with them, they are committed to certain agendas. Since they came into being, since 1932 their main mission was to divide national movements, since 1932 in Egypt to Hamas in the First Intifada (Uprising) in Palestine, to Iran, the Iranian revolution, I don't put them above the issue of dividing the society, and to Syria. Now, they don't have a socio-economic agenda, they only say: Islam is the answer. That's it. They work on hypnotizing the masses and the Rentier state, I talked about this in the conference the other day, that instead of carrying out development projects they give you your daily bread so that you stay dependent on them, and so they could make you vote for a certain candidate or support a certain decision in change for the food they give you. That's what happened. The main responsibility… I don't want to blame it all on the failure of the parties, the parties were suffering too, for example, in Jordan in particular, for 40 years the Islamists have been allies with the regime and helping it to oppress national movements, be them communists or others, that's why I told you earlier that I couldn't understand an alliance between the Leftists and the Islamists, up until recently they had been the allies of the regime, and they had a role in oppressing you, okay? So, as for the Arab Spring, the people needed to move and they did move because of the pressure they were under, with the accumulation of small activities demanding the rights of people, like in Egypt for example, how many labor strikes and sit-ins happened prior to January 25th? Same thing in Tunisia, even here in Jordan, there were activities demanding a teachers association, activities against violence against women, equality in wages and other things, students activities in universities, all that accumulated until it reached a certain point, but in Jordan, since the society is very fragmented, we're not in the pre-state phase, we're in the pre-pre-state phase, how does that manifest, Nicole? You go to a city like Irbid and you find several youth movement, why? You're a small city and you have the same demands, you demand reform, eradication of corruption, democracy, why would you be divided into 4 or 5 youth movements or organizations? That indicates that the primitive tribal mentality, which we said earlier that it was present in parties, it moved from the structure of the tribe to the structure of the party and to the structure of the youth movement and so on. That's why I didn't join the protests; first because I would not participate under the flag of the Muslim Brotherhood, I would join under the Jordanian flag or the Arab flag, under a national flag. I wrote a lot about how I don't understand why a protest would have several flags in it, we are one country. You see a flag for the Popular Front, a flag for the Communist Party, a flag for the Democratic Front, a flag for the MB, a flag for the Liberation Party, a flag for the Salafists and a flag for Al-Qaeda, wow! Seriously, look at a picture from any popular demonstration and you will see a hundred flags. That's why the Egyptian revolution was beautiful in its beginnings in January 25th; there was only the Egyptian flag. Here in Jordan they didn't learn their lesson, you see a hundred flags, that's why I didn't participate. Now, when the events unfolded in Syria the people got scared, they didn't want to form any movements, they saw king Abdullah, despite his corruption and the corruption of the regime, as a blessing compared to the killing and destruction taking place in Syria and Iraq, the closest countries to us… so, it was a great popular movement which was derailed for reasons that had to do with the movement itself, as we said, the absence of a leadership, a mindset and an agenda for after toppling or changing the regime, as well as the other interventions which wanted to lead people to a certain place, because, to be fair, I can't be convinced that America, or the West in general not only America, care about having democracy in the region, I don't buy that, because we're talking her about a 60 years journey of experiences, it's quite the opposite, so if you told me that America or the West want to change the regimes so that we would have better regimes, democratic and what not, that would not be convincing. They want to keep their grip on the region and the issue of Israel's security is very important for the Western World, so they have to do whatever they could to push the cause off-course, and they succeeded in that, but why did they succeed? That takes me back to the first point I made, they succeeded because we have an environment that is suitable for their success factors, we are prepared to accept the conspiracy and go with it, not in a crude treacherous sense, but in the sense of immaturity, I'm not pointing fingers or accusing anyone of treachery, but we are not ready or mature yet, and the proof is that all of us, starting from Libya to Jordan and Syria, we went back to sectarian conflicts, regional conflicts and tribal conflicts. We haven't matured yet. 60 years of struggle and political, partisan, unionist and social experiences and we still haven't matured, we are still tribes… I feel like wailing. So, that's my opinion in the Arab Spring, it's sad. We were so happy, I'm talking as a follower of the events in Tunisia and Egypt, I have Egyptian friends who came here and spoke about their experience in Tahrir Square. There was a lot of interaction, and even when we saw the results… but that doesn't mean accepting silence. I always use the French revolution as an example, and the movement in entire Europe, that despite all the religious wars and after all the fighting and killing that took place between people after the French revolution, it took some time until things got settled. And since we've been in this era of backwardness for so long, it goes back to 1400 years ago, it's true that there were scientific and intellectual breakthroughs during the Abbasid period, but after that, since Al-Ghazali, in the middle of the Abbasid period until today we've been deteriorating. So, to eliminate all that lots of things would happen, there would be civil wars, bloody conflicts and whatnot, until people mature and the experience ripens. I don't think there is any other way. Be that as it may. There's an Arabic saying that says: If it is not destroyed, it will not be rebuilt. If you don't destroy everything you won't be able to rebuild it. And it appears that this is what will happen, let everything be destroyed until we have a generation that will build again… incomplete things won't work. We have incomplete democracy, incomplete freedom, incomplete state and incomplete family; all of these are illusions… I like the elections in Iraq or Egypt; I even feel bad and wonder why do they spend money? It costs the state and the society lots of money… our mentality is not democratic, even at home, if I couldn't argue with my father, how would I argue with party leaders or politicians or my boss at work or… and the West take us for fools, they fund NGOs and we keep talking about democracy and spend money… but we can't only blame the West, we have our share of the blame.
N.P: Is there anything else you want to say? Anything I didn't ask about?
S.A: In general, we didn't address each of the topics you specified in details but they overlapped… there's nothing much else, only September 11 and its ramifications, we addressed it indirectly in the end… the West needs an enemy, America must have an enemy to busy itself with, so first it was the Socialist bloc and then they invented this. Sometimes I feel like, you know Nicole, I'll turn 63 in June, and I feel like I'm in a surreal play, like one of Brecht's absurd theatre plays, with the events that took place, you would be an active ad enthusiastic member and then you discover that you're a small cog in a big wheel, you think that you are moving things but the fact is you are being moved, you are moving and being moved at the same time, and the result is not in your favor at all… who's to blame now, the cog or the wheel? I don't know… the thing that bothers me the most now, Nicole, is feeling this dangerous radical religious wave, here in the building there are people with long beards, they are doctors, engineers and lawyers, all of them are "well-educated", their women wear the niqab, they don't talk to me since I sing a different tune, of course it doesn't bother me that they don't talk to me, what worried me is, where are we headed to? This society, these buildings, cars, laptops, ipads, all this huge technology we're using, how did it affect us? Where are we going? How will the society look like? It's terrifying. When I go back in time, let's go back to the fifties, from my father's sacrifices, becoming a political refugee, our hard life in asylum, the poverty, the jail, that's why… we were talking about democracy and socialism and whatnot…that's why I feel very frustrated. Did you notice my door? Because a couple of days ago, a week ago, there were people who tried to break in at midnight, they were on the porch, the police came and even the police told me it could be someone from the surrounding area, since I lived alone ad had a dog, they wanted to harass me. So I brought the blacksmith and had this external door made, I also raised the wall, it's really terrifying, and this wasn't the first time I face something like that, in 1989 there was a statement threatening death to a number of women including me, as we were considered infidels. Also when my book "the city of roses and stones" I was also badmouthed in mosques. Now I don't hide my thoughts about political Islam, I write them on Facebook and in newspaper and whatnot… but now there is killing involved, it's no longer intellectual conflict, and there are people who slaughter others in the name of God. If Salafist would come here, the official number of Salafists fighting in Syria is 2000; let's say 500 of them will come back, what would they do to Jordan? Like when the Arab Afghanis came back from Afghanistan. I can't understand how one of my neighbors who is an engineer, the person who built this building, he wears a dish-dash this long, and has a beard this long, he would be walking like this looking at me disapprovingly, he's an engineer! A person of logic and whatnot. When you say an engineer you're talking about a scientific mind, the logical structure of the brain, how come he's like this? The results are very dangerous, they are scary. And the alternative is a dictatorial regime like King Abdullah or Hafez Al-Assad or Al-Maliky or Sisi or whatever, either that or these people, there isn't a third choice… I don't want either of them.
N.P: Who's better?
S.A: Both are worse than each other. I don't prefer any of them to the other because each one kills me in a different way, in the end there's killing, be it killing your mind, your spirits, your humanity… when a corrupted regime comes and puts so much restrictions on my daily life that I can't get education, I can't take my chance at work, I can't express my opinion openly, or if someone kills me or puts me in jail, and someone in the name of God and religion makes me stay at home and doesn't allow me to go to school and treats me as a maidservant, the same thing. Saying that a secular dictatorial regime is better than a religious dictatorial regime is a stupid choice, the choice should not be like that, they are both two faces for the same coin. Maybe you can say, as we once said in a discussion, that the semi-secular regimes that were in power allowed some personal freedoms, but what can I do with my personal freedom if I'm not able to practice it? Like, I feel like having a beer but I don't have the money to buy a beer, because my income doesn't allow me that luxury, what did you do? You put me in a situation where I could barely eat and drink and I can't practice my freedom, and a situation where I'm not allowed to practice that freedom in the first place, that I'm not allowed to drink beer or to wear whatever I like, I'm speaking on the social level. So, nobody is better than the other, they are both two faces for the same coin… because, for me, I don't consider myself free after all, they took everything away from me, whether through a regime that's "modern" in appearance or one that is not "modern" in appearance… actually, sometimes I think that, not that one is better or worse than the other, but there is clarity in backwardness, I really feel annoyed when I see a young man or woman carrying a laptop and using a cellphone and writing on Facebook but the content is very backward, worse than someone who tells me to stay home and not to go to school, and not to set foot outside the house. Because the former is deceptive, you see a nice look, a nice picture, but there is so much dirt inside… apparently in the past 60 years we were enclosed with a shell of modernity while the dirt was there and was getting bigger inside us while we were happy with the beautiful outer shell because we were moving with modernity, we might have gotten educated but look at the outcomes of the educational system, look at the outcomes of the professional economic structure with regards to women and the society as a whole. Look at the outcomes of the daily urban life from construction to the transportation and communication methods. There's an incredible transmission of dirt and filth. So, we were deceived by those beautiful shells and pictures…

TAPE 4

Suhair Al Tal: And, it's even more than dirt, I feel like it's poison that's inside us, worms, sorry for the expression, maybe I bothered you with this Nicole. So, this is how I see things. There's something else when it comes to Arab Spring, the Jordanian society in particular was affected by the events in Syria. How did it affect us? In terms of the natural unity between citizens, perhaps I told you that my paternal grandmother was Syrian, it's rare that you would find a pure Jordanian family, naturally this was one region but it was divided by the Sykes-Picot agreement, courtesy of you and the French, especially in the North of Jordan as it's very close to Syria, but in general the Jordanian society was very concerned with the Syrian events and it was divided vertically between people with the regime and people against it, or with the "revolution" between quotation marks. Now, when religious extremism emerged on the scene people were confused, nobody wants religious extremism after all except for a few. S, where would we go? It affected people on daily life basis, emotionally, forget about the fact that we have 2 million Syrian refugees who compete for job opportunities and water and whatnot, and the nature of the simple differences between people, there is fear. I ask ordinary people and they express their fear, what will happen? If the regime stayed in power and the war raged on, what will happen? And if the regime was toppled who will be in power and what will happen? So, you can feel that it has more impact on us than Egypt and Iraq, relatively more than Iraq, and Tunisia and Yemen and other. It created a huge state of fear for people, so that's perhaps one of the reasons for pessimism… I don't know if I said enough, is that enough for you or you need to ask more questions?
Nicola Pratt: I don't have other questions… May I ask you one more question, how do you see the situation of women, is it better?
S.A: Look, there are two factors for changing the situation of women, the factor of natural transformation in society and the factor of working on women demands and societal demands as a whole, which plays a humble role, everything I said means that the women movement, the parties and the unionist work, their contribution to changing the situation of women is humble, but there is contribution, we can't deny that. Now, if we don't face the religious wave in a strong, firm and scientific way then there will be danger. I'm telling you, there will be danger. The problem is that we still hear voices that coax the wave of Political Islamism, whether in the Leftist Movement or the moderates, so there is fear. You might meet or maybe you already met Hanan Al-Allam who is in charge of the women's confederation in the Popular Unity Party, which is affiliated with George Habash, she wears the hijab and she talks about Islam and religion, and she says there is no contradiction, how is that so? So, I feel that we need to be clear and decisive, there is no room for tactics and temporary political games, there's no room for that, you need to be clear and decisive, you are against the interest of women and the society in general, you want to reach people in any way possible and carry out your agenda, and your agenda is backward, on the social level at least, it's a backward agenda that doesn't serve me, so I have to confront it. Now, I don't know how much I can confront, how much oppressed I would be, it's a battle in the end. Like when someone comes and says that Israel killed people, of course Israel will kill people, it's our enemy and this is a battle, you think it will shower us with chocolate and roses? That's the logic of the conflict. Besides, the conflict with political Islamism is a battle of existence. And trying to sugarcoat the texts like what the "Islamic feminists" do, and I'm against that term by the way and I wrote about it, they dig up to find Verses or Prophetic sayings or interpretations in favor of women, that's nonsense, it's concoction. Islam is against equality, it doesn't acknowledge it, that's it… that's it, perhaps at some point of history it transformed the situation of women in the pre-Islamic period to a better situation in Islam, that may be true, but it doesn't suit me now, it doesn't suit me now, and no sacred text suits me because what's sacred is constant. It doesn't change, while social life changes on daily basis. How would the constant adapt to the changing? I won't go into the details of the Verses and Prophetic sayings, I'm talking about sacred texts in general, be that Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Islamic, what's sacred is constant and the life of the society is variable, the variable doesn't agree with the constant. So, I want changing issues that change with me and I can't get that from sacred texts, in a nutshell… if I would say that the Buddhist culture at a certain point of history would help the situation of women, that is intellectual luxury if you ask me, and it's fad, okay maybe the local culture as a comprehensive composition including religions could give me something but I can't say that religion as a set of fixed texts could give me the answer… and it gets worse when the conflict for power gets involved and violence in the political sense of the word, which leads to social violence. We hear about sexual Jihad and bush wives and the virgins of Heaven, you must have read or heard about that, why? Do men go to Heaven in Islam only to have virgins? I once asked a Mufti, the Quran says that there is so and so in Heaven, but what's there for women when they go to Heaven? He said the women are the Virgins of Heaven. I said promptly, so you're following us in this life and in the other life too? So, there is, how can I say it? There is delusion, if I won’t assume bad intentions, and I'm sure there are no bad intentions when decent researchers work through a scientific approach, there are no bad intentions for sure, but the results are misleading. Either a sacred text which you have to follow because it becomes matter of faith, not a conviction or logical mathematical equations, or it's using mind and logic which forces change every once in a while. So that doesn't suit us, times have changes, facts have changes, causes have changed, and the results will be different and so on… I'm talking philosophy now.
N.P: Did you include those ideas in your book?
S.A: I have an article about Islamic feminism, the concept of equality and feminism in Islam. And all hell broke loose.
N.P: Was it published?
S.A: No, it was published on the internet, perhaps… No, it was part of my participation in a conference. It wasn't published… I don't know, maybe in the magazine of the Women's Federation, what did I publish? No, that was a different article, about the concept of the Feminist school of thought.
N.P: So, you don’t have a problem in writing about Islam and saying that it's against equality?
S.A: I have no problem, I'm not afraid. I have no problem, I feel that now I'm done being afraid. Sometimes when I'm preparing for a conference I call my mother and I call her, we are good friends but she's a little sick so she stays in bed, she tells me that I would be killed, so I say to her: "That's it, mother, there's no room for fear". All my life I have never coaxed anyone, I've never done that, but we didn't address the subject because we didn't face it, not at this level, maybe we faced it slightly but never at this level. But I have no problem writing about it and if nobody would publish it I would publish it online on Facebook, I don't care. And somebody must speak out, because as I told you Nicole, it becomes a fad, like talking about Islamic feminism and that Islam revered women, okay it was good at a certain point in history but this is not enough. It is not enough, and in the end there is no equality, so in the end you either want equality and Islam won't give you that, or you don't want equality, you're free to address whatever issue you want, I accept you and discuss it with you, but don't mislead people and sugarcoat things. That's Islam, Islam is responsible for what it says, you would find a Verse in the Quran with a positive vibe but you would find 10 Verses against it. Which one would I choose? If I don't have one united harmonized system then it won't work. And we don't have that. It's enough that it says: "and beat them" that's a sacred text, however you interpret it, it says "and beat them", it has no other meaning. (Note: the word was translated literally as intended by the speaker but in the interpretation of Quran it is translated: abandon or leave them) and it says that the son inherits twice as the daughter, how would you interpret that? No matter how you interpret it, the woman gets half what the man gets, "men are the protectors and maintainers of women", many intellectuals like Aisha Abdul Rahman tried to interpret it, but the interpretation was funny. Like the other day there was a discussion and a female professor in Al-Azhar University said that this text reveres women. How does it revere women when it says "men are the protectors and maintainers of women"? One is higher than the other, how does it revere women? They play with the language. So, I feel that sometimes there is elusiveness. That's it. At a certain historical era it did good things, in a certain culture it was good, but after that I can't take it, I don't want it, my relationship with God is something private, I'm free to do whatever I want about it, whether I want to go to a church or a mosque, whether I want to pray or not, my relation to God is my business alone, but as a society, no. I remember I was in America once giving a lecture in Cincinnati University, the Indians and Pakistanis started arguing with me, I said: "I want to know one thing, we are a pluralistic society, there Christians and Jews and whatnot, the texts on the prescribes punishments, the Quran is constant, the thief's hand is cut off, so what if a Christian stole… aren't you talking about a society of justice and equality? Why would an Islamic text be applied to a Christian? He doesn't believe in Islam, why would you cut his hand off? Let's say you don't cut his hand off because he's Christian, and then you cut off a Muslim's hand, then there won't be equality between these two citizens in the punishment for the same crime. One of them was given a life-long impediment while the other went to jail for two months, so where is the concept of equality in citizenship and social justice? That means that religion doesn't work as a social system, religion works as a set of morals to guide me as an individual, nothing more, I talked about this the other day in the conference and all hell broke loose, about religion and extremism, I talked about this in the presence of Islamic clerics and Christian men of the cloth, that's my opinion, if they want to kill me then so be it, I don't care anymore… those are my thoughts on the issue.
N.P: That's it?
S.A: Yes, that's it, we talked a lot, do you want more than that?

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