After a year and a half of anonymity, it feels good and also a bit scary to emerge from the protection of a pen name.
I began publishing this blog in December 2019, seven years after I moved to the Ramallah area to live with my partner. As a Jewish woman married to a Palestinian, I live in two worlds, and I wanted to write about life on the other side of the separation barrier, from the point of view of a mixed family.
I wrote about how people in Ramallah respond when they hear me speaking Hebrew in the supermarket, at a child’s birthday party and also at home, when I lose patience and yell at my kids. I wrote about encounters with Israeli soldiers on morning runs with my toddler in the stroller, while trying to cross a flying checkpoint in order to get home and as part of my partner’s efforts to travel abroad and then come home. I wrote about our attempts to raise our children to oppose restrictive social norms such as disapproval of women wearing bathing suits or boys who like dresses. I also wrote about the closure of the Gaza Strip, where my in-laws live, which makes visiting a family member or getting to a hospital nearly impossible.
I chose the pen name “Umm Forat,” meaning “Forat’s mother”, to maintain privacy. I had professional and security reasons to remain anonymous but also personal and family reasons: I try to write about my personal life directly and honestly, and the pen name provided a measure of protection. More importantly, the pen name protected my family, who didn’t ask for me to write about them in a blog.
Despite all that, I have now published a book, Maqluba Upside-Down Love (Hebrew, Asia Publishing), under my own name: Sari Bashi. I also gave an interview (Hebrew) to Haaretz about the book.
So … it’s nice to meet you. I’m a 45-year old lawyer, human rights activist and runner, raising two wonderful children, Forat, 7, and Adam, 3, in the Ramallah area.
I began writing “Maqluba,” which means “upside-down” in Arabic, 11 years ago. I wrote it out of a sense of wonder at the world to which my relationship with Osama exposed me. I wrote it during difficult periods, when Osama and I struggled with external pressures – military prohibitions, travel restrictions and also the overwhelming, unwanted but also unavoidable difference in the power dynamics between us, because I belong to the occupying society, and Osama belongs to the occupied society. Sometimes I wrote in order to overcome the interpersonal, ordinary challenges that we, like every couple, experienced. There were times when I wrote the book to heal after a break-up with Osama or in order to find my way back to him.
The book is written in two voices, Osama’s and mine. It describes our attempts to allow Osama to remain in his house in Ramallah, despite opposition from the Israeli military authorities, and also the journey our connection took, from a lawyer-client relationship to a love relationship. We couldn’t find room for our love in Israel or in Palestine, so we built a space within the non-space, where the two of us could meet as human beings, as a woman and a man, and as Sari and Osama.
It’s easier for me to reveal my identity now, while we are on a sabbatical year in the United States, far from a place where the fact that I’m Israeli and Osama is Palestinian dictates whether he’ll join the children and me for a visit to the sea or a family dinner. But I’m also grateful for the opportunity to continue this dialogue with readers openly, without anonymity. Throughout the life of the blog, I have felt gratitude to readers who responded to its posts, including those who politely and respectfully disagreed with what I wrote.
I’ll continue writing the blog using the pen name, but now without hiding behind it. Although the blog is meant to be about raising our kids in Israel-Palestine, I’ll write occasionally from my current, temporary place of residence, in green and pretty Raleigh, North Carolina.
And I’ll continue to thank you for reading it.
This blog post was also published on haaretz.com on June 15, 2021:
Your spirit and compassion needs to be made into a vaccine to inoculate against hate and stupidity
🙂 Thanks.
Dear Umm Forat, Congratulations for writing such a book it is vey important. I wonder when an English translation will be available? Good. luck!With best wishes from Vera Weiss – Jerusalem, Israel
Thanks! I’m working on the English translation.
I’m looking forward to being able to read your book … when it’s translated into English. Thank you for having found a very personal way to inform about life in Palestine/Israel while chronicling your daily joys and struggles
Thank you! And thanks for your interest in the book.
את אדם ואשה מדהימה. מקווה, בשבילכם ובשביל כולנו, שתוכלו לחיות היכן שתרצו בלי מגבלות והגבלים.
תודה רבה, נורית. אלה איחולים נכונים וצודקים!
Dear Sari ~ Thank you so much for your inspiration, and for sharing your important story. I’d previously read your writing, and was very moved today to learn – as they say – “the rest of the story.” Yours should be a mundane daily life, but the reality is otherwise. I learned about those distinctions first-hand decades ago as a college student traveling with my roommate from our dorm room at Tel Aviv U to her home in Tira – which became my home-away-from-home during my year at TAU. The native would be asked for ID when boarding a bus, while the visitor was basically ignored. The pavement stopped at the entrance to what was then a village not on the route of the Saturday farmer’s market. I was introduced to the inequities, which were contrary to what I was taught growing up when my grandparents – immigrants to NY from Eastern Europe – emphasized that no one should be a second-class citizen, and no one should ever be treated with anything other than the utmost respect. These introductions were a bit overwhelming for an 18-year-old from NJ, but they have informed my life ever since. I, too, am a lawyer, though my focus has been on bringing about justice by defending shareholders’ rights to exercise their corporate franchise, and using capital mobilized in the form of responsible investing in order to harness corporate resources to bring about meaningful change. (I am also a candidate for membership in the Israel Bar Association as a “foreign lawyer”.)
I look forward to hearing more about your journey, and any insights you might be able to provide as to what others can do to help bring about change. From my perspective, over the past 40 years the separations have only gotten more pronounced. Fears have been stoked (which is unconscionable! What is there to fear from people?), and there are fewer opportunities to interact. That, of course, was by design, and is a big part of the problem. Frustrating to say the least. But I have worked where I can to help foster change, being the first pro bono legal counsel for the Alliance for Middle East Peace (allmep.org), being engaged in a initiative to foster entrepreneurship in the West Bank, and now a new endeavor among Palestinian tech professionals in the diaspora to bring opportunities to those “back home.” Thank you again for speaking up,!!
Thank you so much, Beth-Ann, and wishing you success with your important work.
Hello Sari,
I very much enjoy reading your blogs. Is an English translation of your book being published?
Congratulations on the publication of your book,
Mira
Thank you for your kind words, Mira. I’m working on an English translation. I’ll update if/when there will be an English book!
Sari,
I’m writing a novel about a young professional Palestinian-Israeli family in Jerusalem living as outsiders rejected by their families. Their love for each other is threatened by the inevitable intrusion of clashing cultural and national identities, ethnic hostilities , brute racism and inhuman bureaucratic restrictions.
I read with compassion your posts about your family’s daily life an d look forward to reading your book.
Jonathan
Thank you, Jonathan, and good luck with your book!
I always look forward to reading your pieces, in South Africa raising a multi cultural family, some 25 years after the end of apartheid. Feeling in solidarity with you and what your family has been through.
Congratulations on your book,
Gita
Salaams/Shaalom! I’ve followed you and your family’s courageous journey for a long time. Nice to “meet” you and see your beautiful face ?
Thank you- Nice to meet you!
🙂
Thank you for a moment of light and hope in all the darkness Sari. May the future belong to people like you, Osama and your children. Love from London from me and Indrajit
Thank you, Miri! Lots of love to you and Indrajit.
Dear Sari,
Your life and work have been an inspiration to me since taking one of your law subjects over 10 years ago at TAU. It’s been a privilege to watch your journey from afar and it’s great to hear all your varied news via this blog (which I have just discovered).
I continue to try to emulate your teaching abilities as well as the dedication of spirit you show in standing up for what is right.
Thank you for all your efforts, past and future.
Wow, Marika, thank you so much. And thank you for how you have dedicated your life to making this world better.
שרי היקרה
קראתי את הספר שלך בנשימה עצורה, הספר מרתק ופוקח עיניים, וסיפור האהבה שלכם מרגש מאוד.
את אישה מרשימה ומיוחדת מאוד.
אני מאחלת לכם את מיטב הברכות, ושתזכו לחיות באושר היכן שתבחרו.
כל טוב
שרית, תודה רבה, רבה על העידוד והמילים החמות! איזו ברכה יפה. עשית לי את היום!
שרי
הספר שלך ריגש אותי וגם העציב מאוד. העלה בי מחשבות רבות על האחריות שלי כיהודיה בארץ הזו. אני הולכת איתן. מחכה לקרוא עוד דברים שתפרסמי.
.אילת, תודה. מקרב לב. ותודה על לקיחת האחריות.
בשותפות,
שרי
Just learned about you from an Israeli friend. I live over in Chapel Hill. It would be great if we could meet. Your story is so important and inspiring.
Thank you, Richard!