Sustaining Narrations: Exploring Arab Druze Women’s Gatherings as Sites of Knowledge, Resource Sharing, and Collective Care

• In Event: Out of Place: Arab and Arabic Narratives Between Empires

Abstract

Arabs have consistently contended with empire – conceptually and literally – in the last century especially. One of my interlocutors, born and raised in a small Druze village in the mountains of Lebanon, shared with me that her “mom started working on papers for me and my sisters a couple of months before they started calling it a war” in reference to the Lebanese Civil War. Her story mirrors those of most of my interlocutors who traveled from the Levant to North America between the 1970s and 1990s to flee the unrest and turmoil brought on by the war, which came as a result of the culmination of centuries of exploitation through colonialism and imperialism. My interlocutors, comprised of Druze women who migrated to North America and young Druze adults who were born in North America, traces the traditions brought to the diaspora and attends to the traditions that have been maintained intergenerationally by the Druze community in diaspora. Focusing most specifically on informal “sobhiyat w zyarat” (the Arabic terms for morning and afternoon gatherings), my work explores narrative traditions in Levantine culture vis-à-vis Druze women’s gatherings in the North American diaspora and Levantine homeland. Through my proposed framework, Druze women’s maintenance of informal social gatherings in diaspora is representative of cultural anti-colonial and anti-imperialist narrative traditions that are maintained while living under empire—and, in fact, indicative of women’s insistence on survival, sustainment, community, care, and joy in the face of civil unrest.

This paper ultimately aims to theorize the life-saving and life-giving traditions and practices of Druze women by highlighting the ways they navigate everyday life. During these informal gatherings, Druze women are able to cultivate community and foster collective care through narrative. While women’s gatherings are often perceived as frivolous, unproductive, and sometimes even shallow, I argue that these environments actually encourage sharing invaluable life stories that range from experiences with governments and politics to intra-family power dynamics to navigating obfuscated bureaucratic systems—amongst so much more. As a result, these women are better equipped to navigate countless situations because they can tap into a wealth of knowledge simply through active listening and sharing. This practice also promotes emotional intimacy and collective care that is sustaining and cathartic in the midst of ever-changing, precarious sociopolitical times. Druze women, then, can easily be recognized as beacons of light within their communities—teaching and insisting on life in its most curious, capacious, and tender forms.

Author

• Deena Z Naime, University of Southern California