Erased, Not Forgotten, Part 2:
More Arab Women Writers Who Deserved Better
By ArabLit Staff
Earlier this year, we highlighted seven Arab women writers whose writings, and sometimes person, were erased, not forgotten. In response, we received many fantastic suggestions by ArabLit readers for other women who should be included in this list. We assemble here another five women writers who have been marginalized, erased, or whose life has been cut short by illness or suicide, but whose words live on.
We encourage you to add more suggestions in the comments.
Saniyah Saleh was born in Misyaf, in northern Syria. Her poetry appeared in the premier magazines of her time, particularly Shi’r and Mawaqif, but remained in the shadow of work by her husband, the poet Muhammad al-Maghout. Her later poems often address her relationship with her two daughters, and many were written during illness.
Saleh died from cancer of the blood in 1995, at just 56, leaving many unfinished poems and two collections, published in 1964 and 1970.
Saleh as yet has no collection translated into English, but several of her shorter poems have appeared in translation online. An excerpt of a poem dedicated to her daughters Sham and Sulafa “You Will Go Out of the Body’s Walls,” was translated by Issa Boullata, and her “Autumn of Freedom” was translated by Marilyn Hacker.
Also by Saniya Saleh:
“Cure Your Slavery with Patience,” tr. Marilyn Hacker
“The Condemned Lakes,” tr. Hacker
By Iman Mersal, on Saleh:
“One of us comes out from the other,” tr. Robin Moger
Lebanese-Palestinian writer and feminist activist Anbara Salam Khalidi suffered an erasure of a different manner: while her memoir survives, many of her personal and family papers were lost or destroyed in acts of both external and self-censorship under colonialism, as well as in the Nakba of 1948. As Sarah Irving writes in her review of Anbara Salam Khalidi’s Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist (translated by her son, Tarif Khalidi, and published in 2013 by Pluto Press):
Three different phases of occupation and colonialism, each of them robbing people not only of their land and liberty but also of their personal mementos and memories. Anbara Salam Khalidi lived through all three, to tell her story of struggle and change.
The iconic Syrian poet Da’ad Haddad (1937-1991) was known by fellow Syrian artists in her lifetime, but only gained more general recognition after her premature death, as Ibtihal Rida Mahmood wrote in a profile of the poet:
Although Da’ad Haddad published two poetry collections—Correcting Death’s Mistake and A Crumb of Bread is Enough For Me—in the 1980s, the Latakia native’s literary influence and renown were to be posthumous, ushered in by the publication of The Tree Leaning Towards the Ground and There is Light after her passing in 1991 in Damascus, where she died at the age of 54.
Read three of Haddad’s poems in Ibtihal’s translation: ‘The Silent Poets’: Three Poems by Da’ad Haddad.
Born in 1925, Souad Zuhair is today known best for being the mother of playwright Lenin El-Ramly, who passed away in 2020. Much more than a famous writer’s mother, Zuhair was also a writer, editor, and political activist in her own right, attending international feminist conferences, working as editor-in-chief for Doria Shafik’s Bint El-Nil magazine, and organising against the British occupation, for which she was arrested in 1948.
After her divorce from Lenin El-Ramly’s father, she became active in the Egyptian communist organization HADITU (the Democratic Movement for National Liberation), and began publishing a serial novel in Rose al-Youssef magazine, titled Confessions of a Masculine Woman. The novel was turned into a movie starring Nadia Lotfi, but has not yet been translated into English or other languages. Souad Zuhair was killed in a hit-and-run on the Alexandria Corniche in January 2000, and little of her or her writing is known today, with the most substantial information available online this lovely account by Lenin El-Ramly, originally published by al-Hilal magazine.
Born in Lebanon in 1942, Muna Jabbur was once regarded as among the forefront of the modern Lebanese novel. Her first novel, Fatah Tafiha (“Silly Girl”) appeared in 1962 and follows Nada, a young woman who struggles with depression and loneliness due to the emotional unavailability of her parents, and an aversion to sex and men. In her second novel, al-Ghirban wa-l-musub al-bayda’ (“The Ravens and the White Gowns”), Jabbur further explores—in a manner some critics have read as autobiographical—the psychological scars the deprivation of parental love causes a young woman.
For Muna Jabbur, the salvation her protagonists find in her novels remained out of reach. She committed suicide in 1964, aged just 22, and before her second novel had even been published. Neither work is yet available in translation, though a profile in Arabic appeared on al-Jarida in 2012.
Also read: Almost Erased and Almost Discovered: Finding Alifa Rifaat