This chapter returns to the Palestinian rural setting once more, as in Chapter 4, only this time through a gendered lens, looking into the memories of the women of the Nakba generation. These women, as witnesses to the period, tell us something about the transition from an explicit national project to the messy local and familial stories of exile, of deprivation, and especially of loss. They defy a simplistic chronological and coherent narrative, they respond to the context, they bind past and present, and they give testimony not only by way of speech but by way of reenactment. These feminine narratives have always existed alongside the national story, but the latter always overwhelmed the former. When we draw near to the ground level, the level at which family life is lived, we can go some way toward defying the simplicity of the telescopic national view that still dominates how the rupture of 1948 is recalled and understood.

Let us first look into the usual positioning of Palestinian women's narratives. There is a relatively narrow base of evidence on these women, especially from the first years of exile, and certainly not in any written form. During the revolutionary period of the 1970s women did become more prominent in the public realm, through their participation in the Palestinian organizations and the military apparatus. Class background mattered here: while the camp women gave practical support to the fighters, women from an educated background were more involved in administration and research (Peteet 1991).