Mizrahi memoirs constitute the collective memory of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish life pre- and post-displacement. United by remembrance of this shared history, yet revealing great diversity of personal experiences, Mizrahi memoirs betray a subtle power that lies in the sheer humanity of their stories and their potential to intervene directly across perceived divides. Their existence and the multidirectionality of the memories they represent are important for the process of developing greater historical truthfulness. The “ongoing dialogue” between multiple perspectives enables redefinition in the present to occur, even as a greater understanding of the past is reached through the emergence of more voices.289 These memoirs, therefore, have the potential to act as “soft weapons” that
could shift audience assumptions about histories and identities while at the same time enabling Mizrahi authors to articulate identities of their own.290 Whitlock argues that as
“soft weapons” autobiography, and in this case memoir, can enable dialogue and cross- cultural empathy by humanising ‘others’, thereby making “powerful interventions in debates about social justice, sovereignty, and human rights”.291 Additionally, Morris-Suzuki
argues that:
our relationship with the past is not simply forged through factual knowledge or an intellectual understanding of cause and effect. It also involves imagination and empathy . . . this identification with others in the past in turn becomes the basis for rethinking or reaffirming our own identity in the present. By remembering a particular piece of the past, by making it own our, we create our sense of belonging to a certain group of people – whether a nation, local society, ethnic minority, or religious group. In this way we also define our place in a complicated and changing world.292
288 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 17.
289 Morris-Suzuki, Past Within Us, 28; Ashworth, Graham, & Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts, 3. 290 Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 3; Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us, 22-25.
291 Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 3;
98 Whitlock’s views compliment those of Morris-Suzuki, and just like the Middle Eastern Muslim autobiographies that Whitlock analyses, Mizrahi memoirs also are “life narratives in English that trigger conversations and interactions across cultures in conflict”.293
Collectively, Mizrahi memoirs challenge a monolithic understanding of what it means to be Jewish, opening up greater awareness of the diversity present within Judaism itself. They also break down the artificially imposed duality of a perpetual division between East and West, and Muslims and Jews, and prompt questioning of dominant discourses relating to the State of Israel, Palestinians, and other Middle Eastern nations.294 They do so as
narratives that assist in revealing the genuine connections and entanglements that occur within a relational approach to, and understanding of, identities. It should be noted that some Mizrahi narratives do follow dominant discourses, for example, Zionist perspectives.295 Nevertheless, the sharing of their experiences still acts as a call for the need
for greater inclusion within national histories.
Mizrahi memoirs provide a valuable reminder of a time of interlinked coexistence but also a warning about the presence of continued but little recognised trauma. Injustices suffered have resulted in further divisions where possible bridges could have been built (for example, between Palestinians and Mizrahim).296 Although both Palestinians and Mizrahim
experienced displacement, international recognition has focused on the ongoing suffering of displaced Palestinians while Mizrahi experiences have been virtually ignored within discussions on Middle Eastern politics. It is only relatively recently that Mizrahim have been able to speak about their experiences at the United Nations.297 This exclusion in itself
has, on the part of some Mizrahim, caused a rift and resentment towards Palestinians. For example, Kazzaz’ wife Louise was a board member of the lobby group called the ‘World Organisation of Jews from Arab Countries’ (WOJAC) who call for greater recognition for Mizrahim.298 Kazzaz explains that:
one of WOJAC’s special projects was called ‘The Forgotten Million’, referencing the one million Jews who had left their homes in Arab countries due to discriminatory policies and relocated to Israel. They exceeded the displaced Palestinians in number and left behind properties with double or triple the value of all that the Palestinians had left in Israel. In short, WOJAC felt that there was an
293 Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 3;
294 Shohat, ‘Rupture and Return’, 330-354; Shohat, ‘Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions’, 213-229. 295 For example: Kazzaz, Mother of the Pound; Fathi, Full Circle.
296 Kazzaz, Mother of the Pound, 442-443; Shabi, Not the Enemy, 220.
297 Prince, ‘Jewish refugees from Arab lands seek justice at United Nations’. 298 Kazzaz, Mother of the Pound.
99 exchange of people and wealth that the international community should acknowledge.299
Here there is an entanglement, but within this rhetoric suffering appears to be viewed in comparative terms rather than perceived as a potential foundation upon which to build commonality. Shabi observes that many of the left-wing in the State of Israel perceive Mizrahim as stalling the peace-process because of resentment over the losses of displacement.300 She explains that:
in all the political polls, the Mizrahis are shown to be more prone to solutions that use force against Palestinians; more reluctant to let go of Jewish settlements in the West Bank . . . There are countless exceptions to that statement, but the fierce animosity voiced by Mizrahis is visceral.301
Mizrahi memoirs, which enable their voices to come forth, therefore have a strong potential to function at both the personal and collective level, and also in a national, transnational and universal sense – depending, of course, on how they are read and received.302 As Morris-Suzuki has observed, the creation, communication, and reception of
representations of the past does not have a predetermined outcome but creates:
chains of relationships [that may] create obscurity as well as clarity, incomprehension as well as understanding, indifference as well as empathy. Almost inevitably, [however] they create diversity: a multitude of differing accounts and images of the past.303
A diversity of perspectives is important because the presence of these memoirs prompts and promotes the need for dialogue, questioning, and a recognition of the strengths of diversity and multiple perspectives at a time when uniformity and divisive hostility are becoming too far ingrained.
Multidirectional memory offers a nuanced understanding of the complex interconnections and fluid dynamics between different collective memories and their impact upon group identities.304 Individuals are enmeshed within entanglements and overlaps of the past and
present, through the entwining of personal and collective memories that affect past,
299 Kazzaz, Mother of the Pound, 443. 300 Shabi, Not the Enemy, 220. 301 Shabi, Not the Enemy, 220.
302 Morris-Suzuki, Past Within Us, 28; Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 10. 303 Morris-Suzuki, Past Within Us, 28;
100 present and future.305 Mizrahi memoirs testify to the inherently multidirectional and
inseparably multidimensional interplay of human history, memory, representation, and life, which Rothberg succinctly describes:
Not strictly separable from either history or representation, memory nonetheless captures simultaneously the individual, embodied, and lived side and the collective, social, and constructed side of our relations to the past.306
This relationship constitutes lived experience and remembrance in visceral and active terms. It has sensory, emotional, and embodied components down to the level of psyche and dream that cannot be ignored. These affective qualities form the basis of identity in the actively lived and internalised sense – in the way that past histories and present affiliations operate deeply and unconsciously as part of assumptions made about the self and others.307
Within this dissertation I explore these aspects as an extension of memory’s multidirectionality. Mizrahi memoirs as both life writing and historical accounts are representations. But they are also sites of personal and collective memory, and acts of return. Furthermore, they provide a possible platform to create narratives that reconnect and re-knit a self that has been epistemologically shattered through the trauma of displacement, or alternatively, for those for whom dispersal was liberating, a means to celebrate their preferred circumstance.308 I agree with Whitlock’s argument that:
Life narrative plays a vital role in the public sphere as it deals in and through private lives. It renegotiates and redefines how we imagine and rehearse cross-cultural encounters and how we know and identify ourselves in relation to others . . . Contemporary life narrative touches the secret life of us; indeed it is how we come to imagine ‘us’.309
Mizrahi memoirs are life stories that share the experience of displacement but also emplacement, that is, how people try to reconstitute themselves, their families, groups, and a feeling of home following dispersal. In light of this disruption, Mizrahi memoirs contain a strong yearning for closure, recognition, and remembrance. My dissertation thematically examines these core narrative threads in relation to multidirectional memory and the multidimensional entanglements of person and place, past and present, within the turbulence of displacement and emplacement. Transnational journeys of remembrance and
305 Morris-Suzuki, Past Within Us, 24; Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts, 3: Paris, Long
Shadows, 450.
306 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 4. 307 Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 11-12. 308 Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 10. 309 Whitlock, Soft Weapons, 11-12.
101 attempted return, conducted through the mind, body, and the senses, be they through narrative or physical travel itself, form a major part of my exploration. Journeys of remembrance carry implications for how Mizrahim have come to terms, or not, with their past experiences and present identities and to what extent memory can both wound and heal. In the context of sudden disruption and highly transnational movements, sensory and portable means of remembrance take on a heightened importance. Finally, when those returning encounter those remaining, the implication of divergent experiences upon identities, memories, and histories further highlight the complex multidirectional entanglements that occur when pasts and presents collide. These threads of complexity are taken up in the next chapter, Chapter Three: Routes, Roots, and Trees, which explores the use of tree metaphors in Mizrahi memoirs as a way of understanding origins and the experiences of displacement and resettlement.