Equality in Death

When Wafa Idris blew herself up in Jerusalem two years ago, she immediately gained iconic status as the intifada's first female martyr. But Palestine's shahidas are often victims of their own society. Barbara Victor lifts the veil on the world of the women suicide bombers.

There are certain monumental events in life that mark us forever, when we remember time, place and person so vividly that our own actions or thoughts at that moment replace the enormity of the event itself. For each generation the references are different: the attack on Pearl Harbour, the assassination of John F Kennedy, and, of course, 11 September 2001.

Then there are other events that, because we happen to find ourselves in the middle of the fray, touch us more personally; pivotal moments that take a permanent place in our memories.

Many of these moments happened for me while I was working as a journalist in the Middle East. The first was in 1982, during the war in Lebanon, when I arrived in Beirut just in time to witness the massacre (by the Israeli army) at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. When the press was finally allowed into the camps to record the horrors there, and after we had digested the visual shock of bloated bodies and houses reduced to rubble intermingled with an occasional sign of life - a twisted plastic doll, or a broken plate - an incident transpired that has remained with me throughout the years.

A Palestinian woman was sitting on the ground, cradling a lifeless child in her arms, while all around her was the stench of death that lingered after two days of unrelenting carnage. Kneeling down next to her, I asked her the prerequisite media questions: how she felt when she found herself the sole survivor in her family and, more crucial, how she would manage to live the rest of her life with those memories constantly there to torture her. She knew immediately that I was an American, and without any hesitation she looked up at me and said, in surprisingly good English, "You American women talk constantly of equality. Well, you can take a lesson from us Palestinian women. We die in equal numbers to the men." This tragic concept of women's liberation stayed with me.

In one of those horrific ironies that occur more frequently than anyone could imagine unless one is familiar with that part of the world, the other moment that has remained with me forever happened while I was in Ramallah in November 2001, accompanying a French journalist who was filming a report about the Palestine Red Crescent Society. My friend was doing a story on these young volunteers as they rode in ambulances, tending to the people left dead and dying after violent clashes with Israeli soldiers.

The Red Crescent office in Ramallah is housed in a three-storey white building with a red-tile roof, not far from the town's main square. On the first floor of the headquarters, the room where the staff gathered in between emergency calls was furnished sparsely with a wrought iron sofa and kitchen chairs grouped around a low blond-wood table. In one corner of the room, perched high on a wall, a television set tuned to the Palestinian Authority station monitored all events throughout the West Bank and Gaza and gave hourly news reports.

Waiting for the inevitable call that day were five Red Crescent workers, three men and two women who obviously knew each other well. There was casual banter and a lot of joking, although what struck me was how they each rocked back and forth in their chairs, arms clasped tightly around their chests. Their body language was a sign of the extreme stress that each of them undoubtedly felt, given the daily reality of closures, the possibility of a suicide attack within Israel that would bring military reprisals, and knowledge that at any minute they could be called out to the middle of a confrontation. As my friend's camera panned the group, each one gave his or her name and age, beginning with Tared Abed, 27 years old; Ahlam Nasser, 23; Nassam al-Battouni, 22; Bilal Saleh, 23; and Wafa Idris, who said she was 25. Almost immediately the others teased her, since she had apparently lied about her age, making herself younger than she actually was.

As I was observing the volunteers, there was a moment when the image on the television showed a man, his head and face wrapped in a chequered red and white keffiyeh to conceal his features, speaking in Arabic, holding a Kalashnikov rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other. While the others continued laughing and talking, I saw Wafa's expression turn suddenly serious as she watched the man on the screen make what was his last speech before he set off to blow himself up in a suicide attack somewhere in Israel. Concentrating on the "martyr's" every word, she sat forward in her chair, her jaw set, her demeanour intense, silent and unmoving, until he concluded his videotaped testament to the Palestinian community, his friends and his family. I remember a gesture Wafa made after the suicide bomber finished his speech: she suddenly raised her right arm and waved.

Two months later, on 27 January 2002, Wafa Idris entered Palestinian infamy when she became the 47th suicide bomber and - more significantly - the first woman kamikaze to blow herself up in the name of the Palestinian struggle. Back in Paris, I would always remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. Several hours later, my journalist friend who had taken me along that November day to the Red Crescent office called to say he had footage of the suicide attack. I rushed over to see it and while the entire scene was horrifying, the sight of Wafa's body lying in the middle of Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, covered haphazardly with a rubber sheet, was stunning. Even more shocking was the image of an arm, her right arm, which had been ripped from her body, lying bloody and torn several inches away. At that moment something clicked in my head and I recalled her goodbye that day in Ramallah.

A week after Wafa's suicide blast, I travelled to the al-Amari refugee camp to visit her family. Approaching the house, which is situated in a narrow alley, I noticed photographs of Wafa displayed on all the buildings. Children carrying toy guns and rifles ran up excitedly to point to Wafa and ask me to take a picture of them with their heroine, the woman who died a martyr's death. "One of us!" they exclaimed with glee. A group of adults lingered near the Idris home, including several shopkeepers who wanted to share personal anecdotes about Wafa so that I would understand how she was revered.

But the Idris home was deserted, the family gone into hiding. Immediately after Wafa's death, the house had been ransacked by the Israeli military. Pushing aside the remains of a white metal door that had been torn from its hinges, and stepping over shards of glass that had once been the living-room windows, I entered. Suddenly, an old-fashioned dial telephone on a table began to ring and ring. The noise startled me and it took several seconds to regain my composure.

There were bullet holes in the walls, drawers had been tossed, beds turned upside down, and slashed cushions strewn around the floor of the living room. The only intact items were pictures on the walls of Wafa, in various stages of her brief life: in a graduation gown and cap with a diploma in her hand; standing with a group of Red Crescent workers at a reception with Yasser Arafat; and finally, the now-familiar photo of Wafa wearing a black and white chequered keffiyeh, the symbol of the Fatah organisation, with a green bandanna around her head, on which was written "Allah Akhbar".

It seemed to me that amid all the destruction and chaos, Wafa's spirit was still very present and strong in her childhood home. It was hard to leave, but since there was no one to talk to, no one to see, I finally walked out into the street. There were more people crowding around the house, pushing and shoving to reach me and to talk about Wafa. All of them, regardless of age or gender, said the same thing: that one of their own had become a heroine for the Palestinian struggle - a woman, a symbol of the army of women who were ready to die for the cause. It was then that the journey began that would take me throughout the Middle East in an effort to understand this misguided feminist movement, which held up Wafa Idris as an example of the new, liberated Palestinian woman.

In the course of my research three more women strapped on explosive belts, following in Wafa's footsteps, and blew themselves up in the name of Allah. As I travelled throughout Gaza and from one West Bank town to another, interviewing the families and friends of the four women who had succeeded in giving their lives, as well as approximately 80 girls and young women who had tried and failed, I discovered the hard reality - that it was never another woman who recruited the suicide bombers. Without exception, these women had been trained by a trusted member of the family - a brother, an uncle - or an esteemed religious leader, teacher, or family friend, all of whom were men. I also learnt that all four who died, plus the others who had tried and failed to die a martyr's death, had personal problems that made their lives untenable within their own culture and society.

I found that there were, in fact, very different motives and rewards for the men who died a martyr's death than for the women. Consequently, it became essential for me to understand the reasoning of the men who provide the moral justification for the seduction and indoctrination that eventually convinces a woman or girl that the most valuable thing she can do with her life is end it; at the same time, I saw it was crucial to understand the social environment that pushes these young women over the edge of personal despair.

What stunned me as I questioned these men, some of whom were in jail, was that all of them, by virtue of their powerful role in these women's lives, had managed to convince their sisters, daughters, wives or charges that given their "moral transgressions", or the errors made by a male family member, the only way to redeem themselves and the family name was to die a martyr's death. Only then would these women enjoy everlasting life filled with happiness, respect and luxury, and finally be elevated to an equal par with men. Only in Paradise, and only if they killed themselves.

Three months after Wafa Idris blew herself up to become the first Palestinian shahida (female martyr), long after the mourners had gone and the excitement had worn off, I went to the al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah to meet Wafa's mother. The inside of the house had been made habitable again by friends and neighbours with money supplied by the Fatah movement.

Dr Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, the (slain) spokesperson for Hamas, admitted during an on-camera interview that, depending on who takes responsibility for the attack, either Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Palestinian Authority distributes a lifetime stipend of $400 a month to the families of male suicide bombers; he points out that the families of shahidas such as Wafa receive $200 per month. It would seem that even in death women are not treated equally.

Only 56 years old, Mabrook Idris looks far older, and feels years older, she says, given her weak heart. Greeting me in her shabby living room, she holds the tattered poster of her child, which she picks up automatically the moment I appear, seemingly by rote after so many months of practice, when local dignitaries, neighbours, friends and Western journalists have visited her to pay their respects. "Thank God," she says. "I am proud that my daughter died for Palestine, proud that she gave her life for us all. Thank God, thank God..."

But after an hour of sitting with her, talking with her, listening to her, Mabrook Idris is weeping. "If I had known what she was going to do, I would have stopped her,"' she says. "I grieve for my daughter." Finally, Mabrook Idris stops talking about death and begins to talk about her daughter's brief life.

Wafa was born in the al-Amari refugee camp in 1975, conditioned to Israeli occupation and experienced in street fighting. "We once had a home in Ramla," Mabrook adds wistfully, "but in 1948 we were forced to flee. Wafa never knew any other home but this." She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand. She is silent for several minutes as two of her grandchildren, the children of her son Khalil, scramble next to her on the sofa. She hands them each a poster of their heroine aunt and instructs them to kiss Wafa's image. Their mother, Wissim, Mabrook's daughter-in-law, sits nearby, cradling an infant. The whole family shares the three-room house with Mabrook, as did Wafa before she died. At one point during the interview, Wissim recalls Wafa once saying that she would like to be a martyr. "But only once," she insists. "When she saw pictures on television of a suicide attack committed by a man, she said that she wished she had done something like that."

As had been previously arranged, three childhood friends of Wafa's arrive. Ahlam Nasser, who worked with Wafa at the Red Crescent, Raf'ah Abu Hamid and Itimad Abu Lidbeh are still visibly shocked by the death of their friend. But while Raf'ah claims that she had absolutely no inkling that Wafa harboured such violent intentions, Itimad remembers how in 1985 she and Wafa travelled once a month to the north of Israel to visit their respective brothers who were in an Israeli prison. "Our trips up north continued right into the intifada in 1987," Itimad explains. "When Khalil, Wafa's beloved brother, was arrested for being a member of Fatah and sentenced to eight years in prison, Wafa told me that she didn't care if the Israelis killed her, she would always try to see him on visiting day." Mabrook Idris agrees that the hardships of the occupation hit Wafa hardest then. "My two sons worked as taxi drivers and they helped support us. When one son was arrested by the Israelis and the other lost his job because of the curfew, my daughter was desperate."

(To be continued)
This is an edited excerpt of Barbara Victor's book Army of Roses. The second and final part will be published in our next issue.