Menopausal Palestine

Menopausal Palestine
written by Suad Amiry
Reading Menopausal Palestine was a real delight.
Menopausal Palestine is a collection of short coming-of-age narratives from real life — of 10 women, all involved in one way or other with the Palestine liberation movement in its secular, non-Hamas phase from the 1960s to the 1990s, not all of them Palestinian by birth, but all Palestinian by choice, and all close friends of Suad Amiry, the collector and narrator of their stories.

In addition, these women are now all either menopausal or on the brink of that new state, or non-state. They have a supper club called CRIME (Committee of Ramallah Independent Menopausal Enterprise), and celebrate their freedom from youth raucously over a meal at a nice restaurant (with sleek bodyguards outside). The meal is the closing scene, a way for Amiry to show us these tremendous yet quite ordinary women as they are in the present time. In the last dinner three new members, young and pre-menopausal also join. Together they discuss Hammas vs. Fatah, also the pros and cons of botox, age-defying techniques and through all this, futile attempts to deny menopause, which here is a metaphoric term for the Palestine, slowly getting engulfed by the right-winged Hammas, while these PLO members observe the change.

Each of the stories, although told in an extremely light hearted manner, depicts of the social and political of this disputed geographical entity viz. Palestine. And interspersing political history with stories, in an extremely delectable manner, makes the read so challenging. Jamileh's discovery of Palestine, on June 5th, 1967, through her father's cries and sorrows, Reem's slow engulfment by the PLO, Rana's fantasies with Marlon Brando, during her 90 minutes view of last Tango in Paris,or Fadia's personal loss in Jordan's 9/11, Ola's love for Nasser which led her to love Palestine, Ann marking her world map with liberation green pins celebrating victory for the countries coming out of colonial rule, and red ones for still under the rule- her jubilant green marks on Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Chile and her long wait for the past 25 years to remove the red ones from Palestine, all tell poignant tales of these women, "for whom Palestine--or its absence-was the centrifugal force around which their lives revolved".

My recommendation... A MUST READ