educated man in Kweikat, a teacher. This was why her home was a little larger and more solidly built than others around. Her husband had died of a kidney sickness -- a common cause of death and disability among Palestinian refugees -- so now she worked as a cleaner with UNRWA, where widows had preference for service jobs. Having to deal with the world of jobs and 'waasta' (connections) had built her into a formidable figure, a character, someone who had status in the 'hayy' and the camp at large. People visited her to ask her advice or help. When a Resistance group set up an adult literacy class in Bourj camp, they begged her to attend knowing that if she did, other women would follow. She had a large circle of acquaintances with whom she exchanged visits. Many lived outside the camp, in the nearby suburbs, or in Beirut itself. Through Umm Hussein, I learnt that Palestinian women of mature age could roam over as wide an area as their social contacts and income permitted; and that through their visits, a wide range of functions were accomplished - social, economic, and informal-political. Far from being enclosed in domestic space and labour, Umm Hussein was a traveler through social space, an observer of human nature, a person who could make things happen. Her visits weren't confined to Palestinians, many of her friends were Lebanese, both Muslim and Christian. There was a hajji who conducted a religious learning circle for women, whose daughter was training to be an air hostess - an interesting combination of the 'traditional' and the 'modern' in one family.⁶ We also used to visit Palestinian families who had moved out of the camp into Bourj Barajneh suburb, among them the much respected PFLP leader Abu Maher Yamani. Among Umm Hussein's visiting friends were UNRWA teachers and employees. These formed a social stratum distinct from the better off Palestinians who had settled straight away in Lebanese cities. They were closer to the people of the camps in terms of origin, residence, and income. Sometimes they were originally from the camps, but enabled by salaries to move out.

I drew on Umm Hussein heavily when I began writing about Palestinian refugees. Her story of flight from Kweikat as a child of twelve was the first Nakba story I ever recorded,⁷ and she was the subject of an article I wrote for a UK

feminist magazine, Spare Rib. Sometimes I resented her dominating style - she had an unintended knack of reducing me to the status of a family pet -- but I recognized that as a guest and a member of her household, I was under her jurisdiction. I liked her stories: battles with the superintendent of cleaning services at UNRWA; building their first solid house after tents from mud bricks; the hijra. Like Umm Joseph, she was strong and decisive; but being part of a much bigger camp, as well as a worker in a large institution, she was more worldly-wise, more urban.

War was heavily in the air during my time in Bourj (1972-74). Several camps were hit by Israeli air-raids, and one - Nabatiyeh - was completely destroyed. Israeli over-flights were frequent. Lebanese hostility to the Palestinians was also on the increase. Even though Umm Hussein moved around outside the camp without apparent fear, others were more worried by Lebanese anti-Palestinianism. Though most people expressed pride in the 'feda'yyeen', older people sometimes said they feared a Lebanese backlash. If you provoke 'al-sulta' (authority, the state), they told me, you would regret it. In 1973 there was a brief spurt of Lebanese Army attacks against some of the camps; Lebanese fighter planes circled over Shateela camp but they didn't hit Bourj. The PLO adopted a programme of shelter-building in the camps, but was very slow to implement it. I was surprised by the lack of complaints about this. One of Umm Hussein's neighbours said she would never go down into a shelter and be killed 'like sardines in a can'. Another (male) claimed that 'our children must get used to the sight of death'. Sometime after I left, a shelter was dug under Umm Hussein's house, just in time for the Civil War that broke out (officially) on April 13, 1975, when the Kata'eb militia killed a bus-load of Palestinians returning from a football match in Tell al-Zaater camp.⁸

One of the ways I could be useful to Umm Hussein's household was to chaperone her adolescent daughters. I knew they could not go to political meetings but we could visit the homes of their school friends and cousins. Occasionally Resistance women cadres visited us on mobilizing missions. These were awkward occasions. The social gap between 'fellaheen' (peasants) and 'madaniyeen' (urbanites) had widened in Lebanon. Though linked by a common