The Three Decisions of Umm Bîjû: Walking in Suez and Seeing the Ghosts of 1967 War
Umm Bîjû was among the few people who decided not to leave Suez after the 1967 war when almost 70% of the inhabitants had to leave the city because of the war. During my fieldwork in November 2018, she decided to walk me around her neighborhood in Suez, al-Kassâra. This article follows three decisio...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ema, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
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Égypte/Monde arabe
2021
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| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | Umm Bîjû was among the few people who decided not to leave Suez after the 1967 war when almost 70% of the inhabitants had to leave the city because of the war. During my fieldwork in November 2018, she decided to walk me around her neighborhood in Suez, al-Kassâra. This article follows three decisions of Umm Bîjû. First, the decision of taking me on a tour comes as part of her interest in maintaining a personal archive of the period of the war and displacement in Suez and points to the centrality of space in the process of remembering. The second decision concerns how and why she chose the streets we walked. The tour reveals an intimate history of al-Kassâra interlaced with her personal life history and her present interaction with the neighborhood and its inhabitants. Suez opened after the end of 101-days siege in February 1974, and many of the original inhabitants managed to return. However, Suez never returned to how it was before the war. In light of the narrative of Umm Bîjû during this tour, her third decision, this article argues that the war years represent a ghost that still haunts the geography, memory, and everyday experience of the inhabitants of Suez. |
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