I began writing about the relationship between the body and garments and my relationship with my body when the Moro
ccan writer Fatima Zahra Rghighi asked me to contribute to a feature about the body. I wrote about my relationship with bras.
From there, I realized I could write a personal biography of the body based on my experience and society's context. I wanted to offer my testimony not only in literary terms but also in social and psychological aspects. This presentation of the body is not just about purity or its sexual aspects. It's similar to the soul – an open material for reading and interpretation within time and place. This means discussing it within the prevailing culture and its historical, religious, and traditional references.
My experience with these articles has been an enjoyable journey that I approach openly and honestly. I received great encouragement when I found that these articles talk about the stories of many Arab women who have gone through similar experiences without necessarily writing about them for a specific reason. My latest article was about my experience of losing my uterus, which was a personal journey for me. I discovered that I spoke on behalf of many women who lost the chance to become mothers due to medical reasons, addressing the issue of infertility. This also touched on the experiences of married women who have lost their uteruses.
I started writing these articles, firstly about the skin as the outer garment of the body and about hair, especially when it's grown long and covered with a headscarf. I wrote about my experience of leaving the headscarf and the body's journey and observation by allowing it to move freely or not within my conservative rural community that imposes restrictions on women's movement. I also wrote about clothing and societal acceptance or rejection, which leaves its unique imprint starting from the family at home, extending to the village people, and concluding with the society I engaged with in my work. I wrote about the internal and external aspects of the body, what it conceals internally, and what it reveals externally. I explored its conformity with societal norms and conventions on the surface while hiding deeper layers within.
The writing of these articles will continue until I feel I have covered the space I perceive and want those around me to perceive.
Articles about the Body
To Read
Articles on Raseef22
This book was published by the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Palestine in 2022. It contains thirty memories about food, explored through parallel paths that bridge the past and the present, alternating between the memories of the child and the present of the writer. Dr. Ibrahim Abu Hashhash, a Palestinian translator, critic, and academic, pointed out that the distance between the writer Ahlam Bisharat, who signed her name on the cover, and the narrator is very delicate, almost merged. The texts talk about the first experience of the taste in childhood as a celebration of life and food. He referred to an excerpt from the book that he found to be an essential opening for its reading: "There's a taste that isn't encompassed by the menu of the five flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. It's the taste that emerges from within us, from each individual”.
Abu Hashhash pointed out that the book, which he described as "enjoyable" and "distinctive," addresses "the flavor that every individual seeks, the unique taste of life that a person confronts and wants to experience qualitatively, considering the human as a qualitative being, not just a numerical entity. This inner and specific taste that humans seek is a literary aspiration and endeavor. The writer strives for a unique flavor not only in life but also in writing”.
Despite his description of the book “طعم فمي” Ta’m fami as "perplexed about its classification," and though "each individual text within it appears to be without a plan," the thoughtful reader delving into these texts, will notice that there is a governing plan. This plan, which could be called the personal plot, is flexible, pursuing the persona and not the event. Its flexibility extends even to encompass time."
He indicated that "childhood is the primary tableau in Ahlam Basharat's book, a magical tableau resembling myths as if it offers an endless feast. He emphasized that "the literature of any writer lives on the remnants of their childhood and on the successive interpretations of that childhood.”
"The events here may indeed seem to have occurred in reality; the characters, places, and times are realistic, as are the references to Palestinian history. However, this is only external, given the impossibility of reclaiming the past except through a montage process based on reinterpretation. Our perception of the past fundamentally stems from the awareness of the present. Therefore, even the vocabulary we use to express it has been acquired at a later stage. Here, the past is viewed through the consciousness of the present, making it an ongoing past, and time appears illusory, like any literary era.
He believes that every text in the book, upon completion, presents an independent tableau, but it shares with all thirty texts in presenting an overall tableau about the author's life, her persevering father, patient mother, the departed brother, the aunt's husband, the neighbors, and about the narrative of the region in the Jordan Valley as a whole, and Jiftlik in particular. Hence, the book "The Taste of My Mouth: A Culinary Memoir" is like a narrative sequence that forms something resembling a biography or a biographical novel written in a manner akin to a “jigsaw puzzle.”
A Biographical Novel “طعم فمي” Ta’m fami
The taste of my mouth
Thirty episodes about the taste of my mouth, taken from the book
2023, Maُan TV
Food for Palestinian prisoners