Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Hello and welcome to Women of the Middle East Podcast, Woman
Speaker 2 00:00:07 Of the Middle East.
Speaker 1 00:00:09 This podcast relates to realities of Arab women and the rich and diverse experiences. It aims to present the multiplicity of their voices and wishes to break overdue cultural stereotypes about women of the Middle East. My name is Emma Maki. I'm a feminist, scholar and educator.
Speaker 2 00:00:28 This is Women of the Middle East podcast.
Speaker 1 00:00:31 This is season four woman voices across genres where I will be speaking to women producing feminist content across different genres and outlets. These courageous voices delve into untapped areas such as women with disability, hybrid identities, intergenerational trauma, feminist narrative, and activism, and much, much more. I'm your host, Emma Malki, contributing to creating a new narrative about us by us.
Speaker 2 00:00:56 This is Women of the Middle Eastern Podcast.
Speaker 1 00:00:59 Hello and welcome to Woman of the Middle East Podcast. Today is a very special episode and a very special guest. Uh, we have Shada Shri Shada. Shri is a Kuwaiti Palestinian author, academic scholar, and she's an assistant professor of English literature, her PhD. Uh, she read her PhD in University of Kent, and she focused on madness and disability representation in literature, one of those areas that, uh, are very unique and very new to our part of the world. Her research focuses on women with chronic illnesses and mental illness and literature, madness and disability and fiction, Middle Eastern literature, Victorian literature, post-colonial literature and critical race theory. She's especially interested in the concept of hybridity and looks at the correlation of disability studies with identity in the Arab world, having been diagnosed with Ms herself at the age of 18. Welcome, Shahan to Woman of the Middle East Podcast.
Speaker 3 00:01:56 Thank you, Dr. Emma. I'm very happy to be here, and I'm a big fan of the podcast, and I'm grateful to actually be having this conversation with you.
Speaker 1 00:02:05 It's my pleasure, really. And congratulations on your recent book, Head Above Water Reflection on Illness that came out this summer, actually, and is published by the UK publisher, uh, Ne Tree, uh, press, um, Shaha, there's a lot to talk about, uh, head above water. Um, uh, shift me to the core. Um, we know each other for some time now. Um, and I've always followed your academic career and I I admire you as an academic. And we met several years ago in Doha, and I remember we identified on several levels, one of which is being hybrids ourselves and how hybridity dictated our personal choices and professional trajectory. Um, although I have to admit to you that I, after reading the book, I I identified with your mom, <laugh>, uh, and this, this is another conversation that we need to have, but tell me, I see head Above water as a hybrid form of Memorial based on diary and blog entries that you have written. Uh, can you explain to me this hybrid format of your narrative?
Speaker 3 00:03:16 Of course. So head Above Water, uh, Reflections on Illness is the first book, uh, of its kind in the Gulf. So I'm really, really, you know, excited that a lot of people are beginning to read it and beginning to pick up on these, uh, themes. And they're beginning to look at it as a memoir. However, even more specifically, it's actually an illness narrative. So that's, it's a subgenre. So an illness narrative can include diary enterings, it can in include, uh, photographs, pictures, um, x-rays, MRIs, any kind of visual format or anything that documents the illness or the, uh, experience of illness. So head above watered attempts to do that. And I needed those diary entries to sort of pull in the reader and, and get you to see the, um, the raw reality of this bodily experience that, you know, never gets, uh, written about or never gets talked about in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 00:04:19 Um, I also kept a blog for nearly 10 years, and, um, so I revisited that blog back in 2018. The blog was, I think, more than a decades worth of, of, uh, blog entries. I think it started in 2003, and I still continue to, to blog sometimes. Um, the blog actually generated a lot of interest, a lot of breathers were reading and following and commenting. There was a lot of dialogue, and that actually urged me to think about, why don't I put this in a book in a, in a narrative format that can include some blog entries, some diary entries, and then also reflect on those entries. And, you know, using just a sort of a cohesive narrative, but also allowing room for those diary entries to just, you know, pop at you and, and sort of, you know, make you feel that you said, I felt very, you know, I was shaken by it.
Speaker 3 00:05:14 It, it feels a little bit uncomfortable to be invited very, very intimately into, into the mind of this author, which you may know or, or not know. So like yourself, a lot of people actually do know me, but not on this intimate level. And, you know, I have a lot of readers who I've, you know, haven't actually met me or, you know, I don't teach them. So there's no, um, previous, uh, relationship. And it comes out in the book through these diary entries, which makes the book a very hybrid narrative. And I really believe in the concept of hybridity. I, you know, again, uh, being like yourself, um, from two, two very different backgrounds, Palestinian and tribal Bedu, uh, Kuwaiti, I believe that nothing can be just a pure narrative, not our lives, not our identities. So I wanted head above water to really kind of shake this, this, this genre of, of what, what do we expect from a memoir? And that's why it's an illness narrative. It looks at a very specific time period of the author's life. That's, that's what it does.
Speaker 1 00:06:18 Oh, exactly. That's, um, absolutely. You've stated elsewhere though, that documentation is very important to you, which takes me to the concept of writing the self. Right. Uh, memoirs are written usually by public personas who have reached the state of wisdom, usually age to you haven't the reached that's age, uh, to, to reflect on their life experiences. Nevertheless, writing this book seems to have an existential angle to it when it comes to you. So the to be not, or not to be, that is the question to, I think therefore I am, Chad seems to say I write, therefore I exist. Is your book a form of confirmation of existence and a validation of experience?
Speaker 3 00:07:01 Absolutely. I think that's a beautiful way to put it. You know, um, I write, and therefore, you know, I exist. It goes back to this idea of voice and this idea of, um, claiming your narrative. So while, you know, I'm not a, you know, public persona, not old enough to be writing a memoir, the illness narrative allows anybody to write, having, you know, experienced that, uh, quite, you know, difficult experience of, of illness, which a lot of us actually go through. Some people go through it just earlier in life, but illness as a, as a, um, as a topic or as an experience, it's just part of the human experience. Uh, you may get I, um, randomly one day, or you may, you know, experience illness with old age. So there's no way that that's something that we will never experience. So it's a topic that I think literature needs to explore.
Speaker 3 00:08:00 Uh, memoir writing is, is not reserved simply for people who have this sort of, um, you know, um, this sort of experience that needs to be told because there's been a, at the end of it, but it's just about an experience that we will all have to live through. So while we can't experience, you know, um, being of a different trace, you can't just, you know, wake up one day and change your racial background, but you can wake up one day and experience disability or experience illness. So I think for me, that's, that's really why I felt the need to write the book, because also with illness, and most ill people will, I think, um, agree with this, and most people with disabilities will probably agree to this. The voice is robbed and it's robbed by the medical doctors to begin with. Uh, you are spoken for, you've become just a number on a file.
Speaker 3 00:08:58 Um, there's no sense of, you know, what is your background, what is your story? You just are a bunch of symptoms and a diagnosis. So there's a, an initial sort of assault on your voice, and I felt that very, very young, and I was able to connect that with also the idea of voice and agency from a post-colonial angle, You know, writing back, uh, to the colonizer. In this case, there was medical colonization, and, you know, I saw it everywhere. I saw it in experiences of, uh, being around other, other people with, um, with their own struggles, their own illnesses being silenced by either the medical professional or by the male figure. Sometimes the father, sometimes the husband, and he would speak for you at these medical visits, although it is your body, your experience, you know, he will speak for you and moha be heard.
Speaker 3 00:09:50 So having said all that, that's why I felt this urge to write this narrative, because I also studied extensively looking at narratives of illness from the Arab world written by Arab women themselves. And I couldn't find anything. I only found one book by oi and, um, in it, she narrate her experience with cancer. Um, but that was, you know, arawa heavier than Rado. That was the only book out there. And for me, that was just staggering and shocking, and again, made me think, Okay, then voice has been robbed, essentially. And so to write back, that was the, the only way I thought I could sort of rectify the situation.
Speaker 1 00:10:34 Yeah, definitely. And you do it beautifully. Um, I wanna speak about the recurring themes and, and, um, your writings. Love is one of those main themes in your writings. We see some glimpses of, uh, love and head above water, uh, for your love for fla, your love for your mother, your love for your grandmother, lack of love for yourself. But love is always accompanied by loss, which changes the dynamic of the story. It seems that love and loss are the main protagonists. They share the same experience. They, they, they share the same characters and this within the same events. It's my reading. Right. What do you think of that and how is this related to who you are as a woman with a disability?
Speaker 3 00:11:31 So really my point reading to think about something, I never actually sat down and thought about how love and loss are more intertwined than I think. Um, I think with love, like you said, there was a lot of lack of self-love. And like many, you know, young women, again, like I, in the region, I teach a lot of, um, young women, and they, they say the same things to me that I say in this book, The lack of love, this, um, this desire to be perfect, this desire to, um, not just be perfect, but not have any losses, always trying to accumulate more beauty, more wealth, more knowledge. So we, we have a very, uh, difficult relationship with loss in general, and I think women are really, really, you know, doubly affected with, with these standards of, um, you know, accumulating rather than losing. And when it comes to illness and disability to lose any, any part of the body or even, you know, the ability to use makeup or the ability to wear heels, which we take for granted, um, all of these losses were, were very difficult to, to terms with.
Speaker 3 00:12:41 Um, and I think when you think about love in the book, absolutely, it's there, but I see also a lot of lack of love in the book. Um, love and loss in the book are always in conversation, I think a, a dialogue of love throughout the book, or that's what I was trying with my dialogue with my student Yes. Mean in the book. So there's this, um, respect and friendship and love, which is actually getting the conversation going. And that's why I begin to write. And that's why I began to urge by this love or urged by this, um, you know, friendship that continues throughout the narrative with all the losses in the book. That's the threads that's there, that there's a love for academia, a love for teaching, a love for, um, you know, life really. And again, for me, the only way come to terms with loss is through a love of life more than, more than on a personal level, more than, you know, with all the different categories you've listed.
Speaker 3 00:13:45 That's the only thing that really kept the narrative going and, and keeps me going on on a daily basis. So also acceptance of loss. And a lot of us really struggle with, with loss, really understandable, but I think with a life interrupted by illness or a life interrupted by a sudden onset of some sort of disability, whatever that may be, we also begin to recognize how, um, vulnerable we are and more than anything, how mortal we are. And that loss can really happen on an everyday basis, and it can be really, really fast. So I'm not sure I've really answered your question, but it's a dialogue that I think I would love to continue, you know, to think about what's love and loss, um, doing in the nurses.
Speaker 1 00:14:35 And I wanted to you a bit further, because yeah, I have to admit, I, I read your book twice. I read it during the summer, and I read it again, preparing for this interview, and I cried twice. Um, this is how much it was moving to me. Um, uh, and you say now because it's a conversation that is still going on. Yeah. Um, my feeling that you still
Speaker 1 00:15:08 Struggle with the concept of love. And when you just answered, now, you said, no, we, we speak about loss and, and we have to understand that loss needs to come with acceptance, but also love needs to come with acceptance. So for, I, this is why I wanted to ask you actually as, um, Audrey, Lord, this said, uh, caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation. That is an act of political warfare. Another reading is that love and loss contribute to coming to terms with the reality of your illness and it's stratifications on you, Right? And on your, um, life and hopefully okay, healing. So would, would, would it be optimistic to say that this is a narrative that would lead shead to that state of peace and acceptance and healing?
Speaker 3 00:16:03 Absolutely. I think that's, um, that's a whole point really of, of the book. It is a narrative of love. It is a narrative of healing. Um, again, even when people have read this, they've looked at it as a, a memoir of illness, but I, you know, again, the author's intention might be different from how the readers are perceiving it, but I see it as a narrative of love, as an narrative of healing, not just for me, but for a lot of women's voices who are in the book. And for a lot of readers I still haven't spoken to, haven't met, um, the ones who have read it have sent me, you know, emails. And we've had this dialogue, which was really incredibly healing for me, Uh, but also for them being able to share these vulnerabilities and these experiences. So sort of, the book has created like a healing space for me and for the reader.
Speaker 3 00:16:53 So when you say I cried, I, I find that really, you know, helpful for me to hear, but also if there's a sense of catharsis, uh, for the reader, for you and for me, both on, you know, opposite sides of, of, um, of the book. So absolutely, it is a journey of healing. It is a journey that I hope can be healing for others too. And I think when you read an illness narrative, more than anything, there's an ethical responsibility also placed on the reader, which I hope a lot of people will sort of keep in mind. When we are reading an illness narrative, we are looking to listen more than anything, rather than to, um, to judge or to, you know, question the validity of this experience or to question even, um, is this someone I should admire? Is this someone I should look up to? Rather than focus on that, focus on your healing experience of having read the book, that's the ethical responsibility of, of the reader, I think.
Speaker 1 00:17:51 Absolutely. Um, we see the intergenerational, uh, trauma of estrangements manifest itself in your own story and, and your, uh, book, we learn about your grandmother and her exile twice, once when she fled. Palestine took Kuwait after its occupation at the age of 17 in 1949, um, losing both of her parents. Uh, and the second one, she had to leave Kuwait as Palestinians were, uh, expelled, um, from Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion. And in your own word, you say twice expelled, twice abandoned by a home. Then you tell us about how this sense of estrangement, um, has manifested itself on you, whether through language or through, you know, the body or through your identity as well, and you know, the way you, you represent yourself. So tell me more about this.
Speaker 3 00:18:52 So I think, uh, with, with exile, and especially with the Palestinian experience of, of exile and diaspora, again, this comes from not just a personal, uh, narrative, but also, uh, this is, I think my post-colonial background of, of being a critic. I wanted to bring that into the book too. And for me, having grown up with this intergenerational trauma, like you said, and I think those are the exact words, intergenerational trauma, something that we never really think about. Um, I believe that I carry this trauma within the body, and I carry, you know, my grandmother's voice, you know, saying I miss, uh, Kuwait, I miss my home in Kuwait. I miss the, the, the dialect that I used to listen to and, and all of these experiences that I've sort of absorbed, and I feel like I still carry them. And it's something that I didn't think about until I started, you know, thinking about, uh, the idea of home.
Speaker 3 00:19:50 And not just from a first colonial perspective, but from a disability perspective or a disability studies perspective. We think of home as being only, um, geographical, but home, at least, you know, in my, my perception, home is your body or home is the body you're born with, the, the body that you are handed as the minute you are born. And of course, um, you can lose parts of that body that you're accustomed to, that you're used to. So what does it mean when I wake up one day and my hand is not functioning, it is no longer my hand, it is no longer my home. What does it mean when, you know, and my eyesight has, doesn't feel like it's smart anymore. So the perception that is in front of me does not feel like home anymore. And again, I really am very much connected to thinking about the body.
Speaker 3 00:20:41 So I started thinking about the body as also a place that we can be exiled from. And I, I started connecting down to my grandmother's experience, uh, and her family, of course, and, and, you know, in general the experience of exile that, you know, many, many generations have, have gone through this trauma. Uh, but to bring it, to circle back to the idea of healing, you know, perhaps they didn't get that chance to heal. I know personally that my grandmother didn't. But, um, for me, using a feminist consciousness and a feminist politics, I'm able to look at that and find a sense of peace or a sense of healing, again, through understanding the acceptance of that home, um, can be renegotiated. And that, you know, there is another way of looking at, at this newfound home, there's always a sense of loss that comes with it, that nostalgia is always there, but also being able to live with that and not through a, you know, thought or traumatic everyday experience. So that's where head above water, um, comes in. And I attempt to do that in the narrative. I attempt to think about home in a different way.
Speaker 1 00:21:56 Uh, you said, um, that rendering, uh, pain, um, and words is, uh, difficult, but you do it, uh, so beautifully. I have to tell you, I you've created those images in my, in my mind that I can see, like, um, when you speak about your grandmother and her body as a container of traumas, um, when you speak about your own body and how you're ex excelled, um, exiled from your own body, you know, those, those images are so powerful. And then yet you say, you know, it's very hard to talk about pain. It's very expressed to very hard to express pain. I love what you said about healing and pr, this space of healing for the readers too. I have to tell you, um, yes, definitely you have created one for me to the extent that, uh, although I've never, uh, even, um, attempted to look at intergenerational trauma and how it's manifested itself in my, um, life, uh, and again, we, we, we lead very similar lives.
Speaker 1 00:22:58 Uh, now I'm, um, I feel that there is an ethical, um, commitment to my ancestry that I have to, um, I have to uncover those traumas and maybe by healing myself, uh, I would pass on the healing to them, but it's sure, that's very, very powerful. Okay. Let's talk about language identity. Um, again, you speak about language identity and your language hybrid, I'm telling you as if, as if I'm seeing myself talk about it. Yeah. I got to a point where I've written a book about it on how I taught, uh, language hybridity to my own students in a composition, uh, course that I taught in coin view me university here in Qatar, but talk about hybridity from being communication inhibitor, which was at some point to a unique form of communication. You say, language was a place I could create a new identity for myself, someone I could fashion the way that I wanted. Tell me more about this.
Speaker 3 00:24:05 Well, I think the idea of, um, language for any, any literature lover is a, is the story of love. That's, that's, uh, for me, language has always been, um, a place that I've not just found myself, but I was able to find a voice within that, um, you know, that fashioning of a new language. So just to take it back a little bit, this concept of language being an individual, it's actually, uh, goes back to, you know, growing up in, um, in English schools or American curriculum and, you know, speaking a certain language at home, speaking another language, uh, at school being, um, told off for speaking that language, uh, at home and then going back to school and not being allowed to speak in Arabic. And it gets even more complicated with dialect rather than language C versus Palestinian dialect, blah, blah, blah. And all of these were actually very oppressive categories.
Speaker 3 00:25:06 Um, there's a lot of stigma still today. We see it. Uh, why are you speaking in English on a podcast that is, you know, for women of the Middle East? You will get that question. And there's always this immediate attack on, on people who choose to utilize English or to create a language that they feel comfortable in. Um, for me, language is a, a way that I could be to narrate by creating an identity that is <inaudible>. So I don't feel like it is an English identity. I don't feel like it is a British or American identity. I feel like it allowed me space to create my own world, uh, away from these two dichotomies of qua Palestinian Arab versus English. And I was able to play around with it. And I think, um, a lot of us also who are, or who speak, um, you know, with different languages, do a lot of code switching.
Speaker 3 00:26:04 So we will speak in Arabic and English at the same time and growing older. That's when I started realizing that it can be something I can take pride in something I, you have to feel shame for. So again, back to the idea of not of love versus love. There was a lot of stigma towards not using the proper language, not being Arab enough, not using, you know enough, not feeling palet. Are you ashamed of your heritage? I'm not of stigma really, but having, um, actually fallen in love with language allows me to use it to my advantage by writing all these books and, uh, by, you know, being able to really express what it means to be in this body.
Speaker 1 00:26:52 Um, you're a unique intersectional feminist voice in the region. You're a pioneer, really. Um, while you're the main subject and head above water, a subject that crosscuts categories of gender, race, ethnicity, class, this ability, your feminist consciousness is, is burdened by the multiple oppressions woman lives through in your society. Can you talk about that? The woman's stories that you tell, uh, and head above water.
Speaker 3 00:27:24 So just like, you know, to quote you on that, this ethical responsibility that you said you felt, you know, when you wanna think about the intergenerational trauma and your ancestors, I felt an ethical responsibility once I became, um, a writer and an academic. Once I realized that I do have a voice, I have language. So when I realized that I have a voice and I have a language to write, and I felt the need to express these multiple oppressions, uh, to write about these voices that to otherwise have a platform, um, all of them in the narrative have been given different names. They are composite characters. So, um, it's, it's a very ethical procedure, and they all were aware that they were being written about. And of course, the idea is to pioneer these narratives, not just through my narrative or my story, but these are voices of people that otherwise are not heard.
Speaker 3 00:28:21 These are women who struggle in a patriarchal society. Uh, they struggle not just with illness and, um, marriage, but also with ageism. So women who are seen as no longer desirable because they have age and and so on. So in head above water, it is a, of voices of these women. And that I, I don't think the narrative would exist without these voices. There's a lot of also student voices, also, uh, younger women who are struggling to find themselves, uh, you know, at university or being accepted, um, amongst family. All of these narratives are there. Why did I do it again? Cause of this ethical responsibility. I felt a privilege that I had needed to be used in, in the right way. And a lot of people who read the book actually were able to connect, or they felt the other stories resonated with them more than my story. And that really, really is, is, um, it means they work means the narrative are there. So while yes, I am burdened with these, you know, oppressions, I also feel that telling these stories is a, is a stepping stone.
Speaker 1 00:29:39 Yep. Um, you also touch on the importance of, um, woman circles and, and, um, sisterhood and how that was one of the right events in, in your narrative where we, we thought that, okay, here is a hopeful event that could lead to many other, um, hopeful events. Tell me more about what sisterhood, um, you had formed, maybe yourself or, uh, was, you know, in the middle of, and how it's actually helped you.
Speaker 3 00:30:14 So, uh, it's really important, I think, to think about circles and feminist support circles, and that's what your podcast does. Um, you know, the listeners now with us are part of the circle. They are listening in, which means that there is support already for the podcast, uh, for, for, you know, um, for all of us really. And without this feminist support circle, without the, the listener and the speaker, I don't think I would be here today. So I still see the support and, you know, being invited to these podcasts and going to, um, meetings where I am also a listener, where I get to listen, uh, to, to people also sharing their experiences to women, talking about their experiences. I think we don't talk about females friendship much in, in this part of the world, which is interesting because a lot of our friendships are with women and we grow up around women, we grow up, uh, with aunts and mothers and, and neighbors are women. We, so there's a lot of emphasis on patriarchal women and, uh, you know, how women can be against each other and blah, blah, blah. That narrative is what's always there. I don't think we talk enough about how that, how that circle can be healing. Um, you know, friendship, my best friends have been part of my healing and, and continues to be, and I am part of theirs. And that's something that just gets
Speaker 3 00:31:39 Now with a feminist consciousness, we kind of really need to understand is to access to where are these circles and how can we better all be better allies for a purpose? And again, you know, being a professor, being a professor, being a student, we can continue to bridge this gap. And, and that's what I continue to do. And I'm finding that my students need too with each other. And, um, it's just really healing more than anything. And again, if we look, can't look at without at. So I think that's the, that we need these circles, We advocacy, we, the,
Speaker 1 00:32:22 We ask them do, do. Um, Chad, welcome to Woman of the Middle East Circle, and thank you for, um, allowing us into yours. Uh, again, your personal account has, um, I, I thought I knew you and I thought, uh, that I loved you already <laugh>. But, um, after reading your book, which I encourage everyone really to read head above water, um, I feel I love you more, um, and we relate more. Um, my final, uh, point to you actually more than, um, a question is yes, this is a Mr, but I think we would love to hear back from you and we would love you to write another one. Um, and four or five years from now, do you think this is qualification
Speaker 3 00:33:19 Also, you just gave me this idea. It's something I've never thought about. I always thought this would be the one work, and it's like a lifetime, you know, work, but it in shallow, I, again, there are listeners, so it, it would really be an idea to think about and thank you for, you know, being so supportive and the work you do. You know, you've passioned an entire support community and a wonderful circle of, uh, you know, people who come to the podcast, listen to the podcast amongst, of course, other, other things that you do. So I'm really happy to be part of the circle.
Speaker 1 00:33:52 Thank you, she so much. I'm very proud of you. And again, I love you so much. Uh, thank you for being with us on the first episode of, uh, Woman of the Middle East podcast, uh, series, uh, four, um, and hope to see you very soon.
Speaker 3 00:34:06 Thank you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 00:34:08 This is Woman of the Middle East podcast. Thank you for listening and watching to stay up to date with Women of the Middle East podcast. You can subscribe and don't forget to rate us. If you would like to contact me directly, you can do so on Instagram or Twitter or via email.
