The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

After the end of the fighting and the agreement that the PLO should
leave Beirut, we wore a red ribbon on our heads, as a sign that we would
never give up, and never leave Beirut. My father told us that we were
now illegal in Beirut, and that we would have to go back to Syria. Togeth -
er with friends, we developed plans to hide from my father, so that he
would not find us. We were registered to leave with the ships, but my
father allowed us to go with our friends to a farewell party. We listened
to the Barbra Streisand song “Endless Love”, and all of us teenagers
were lying in our arms crying. My sister and I were sent back by ship to
Damascus. We listened one week to the tape with “Endless Love” and
did not want to see anybody.
After leaving Beirut, the Israeli Army entered Beirut. My father had
stayed in Beirut, hiding. He sent us messages via telex every day, to tell
us that he was still alive. When we heard about the Sabra and Shatila
massacre, we were very worried about my father. Sometimes, we had
no news from him, and heard contradictory news from people. Some
said he had been in Sabra and Shatila, others said that he had been arrested
and was in a camp. Finally, somebody brought the good news
that he was alive.
I finished high school in Damascus, and went to study in Prague, Czechoslovakia,
from 1983 to 1989. I studied economics and foreign trade,
and got a master’s degree. I was active in the Palestinian Communist
Party, and I fell in love with my husband whom I met in Prague. He is Palestinian,
born and raised in Nablus, but he is a refugee too, from Jaffa.
In the summer of 1989 we married and decided to live in Palestine. But
as he had not finished his MA yet, and my residence permit for Prague
was ending, I decided to take the offer of a scholarship in East Berlin. I
left Prague and arrived in Berlin, which was in a revolutionary situation.
I was on Alexanderplatz when Mikhail Gorbachev came and everybody
was screaming “Perestroika, Perestroika”. After a few weeks the wall
came down; I went with the masses to West Berlin and got a big stone
from the wall.
My stay in Berlin ended with the school year. I went back to Syria and
tried to enter Jordan for several months. In August 1990, Saddam Hus-
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