| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Hanan Ashrawi Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
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Dr. Ashrawi, welcome to Berkeley.
Thank you; it's good to be here, Harry.
How did your parents shape your character?
Other than biologically, well, I talk about my parents as being of two legacies.
I describe them as my mother from the lavender legacy and my father the jasmine legacy.
And by that you mean?
My mother was more of a product of a British Victorian tradition. My father was very much a Palestinian, sort of peasant tradition, even though he was a doctor. And both of them, I think, shaped my character in terms of first the intellect, in that my father was a humanist but a person who wrote a great deal, who had a love for the language and the word, and also a commitment to the Palestinian people. My mother in terms of the emotion, the warmth, the homemaking, as well as a being woman who was a pioneer in her own right actually, so the sense of daring as well.
Among all of the things that your father gave you, he also was a man who spoke for women's rights. In your book you say in the 1920s your father wrote "Women deserve equality by right and not as a gift condescendingly bestowed by men."
That's true. Yes, my father has always been ahead of his time in that. (It's hard to think of him as dead.) He certainly contributed to the general intellectual debate in Palestine, political, human, and social. He was a firm believer and practitioner of social justice, and a sense of individual commitment. He also, even as I said, before he got married and had five daughters he was a firm believer in women's rights and an outspoken critic of those who felt that social justice can be postponed because we are facing national issues. Another famous statement of his is, "Liberate yourself, you liberate the land." We can always find others to blame, whether it's the British Mandate or whatever. But we have to be our own force for reform and for justice.
From a very young age you were assertive. You tell us in your memoir that at a certain point when you weren't even five you wanted to go to school and set a demand. What was your demand to your parents?
Yes, I was three, actually.
Tell us that demand.
I gave my mother an ultimatum because my cousin who was my age had a baby brother, and all my older sisters were going to school. I told my mother, either she sends me to school like my sisters or she gets me a baby brother. So she told me, "Well, it's not easy to have a baby brother, but you have to pray." I immediately knelt down and started praying. And I said, "Okay where's my brother?" and she said, "You have to wait a long time." I said, "No, it's easier then to send me to school," at which point she decided to ask one of my older sisters to be my mentor, to tutor me. And I, at the ripe old age of three, I started learning reading and writing Arabic and English. And I went to school then.
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