I had the privilege of speaking with Sara M. Saleh, a writer, human rights lawyer, organiser, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon. Her debut novel Songs for the Living and the Dead and full-length poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls were both released in 2023. Saleh recently completed her Juris Doctor, while her research concentrates on human rights and international humanitarian law, police accountability, the prison-industrial complex, and the incarceration/detention of marginalised populations.
Valerie Chidiac: Your parents are from Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon. Do you ever get asked if one identity is more prevalent over the other, or if you prefer one place over the other. I know you can’t always compare places, especially Palestine, but I’m asking because I used to get asked where I prefer, Lebanon or Australia.
Sara Saleh: It’s very funny that you asked that and specified Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine but didn’t include Australia in the question.
VC: That totally slipped my mind.
SS: But yes, I do get asked if I prefer one over the other in terms of my Arab identities and often it’s from family and friends being cheeky. There is that feeling of wanting to make sure, especially regarding the marginalised identities that have been in various ways, oppressed and erased. So people ask, how do you feel connected? Do you feel like you belong from these places? I always respond and resist these sorts of binary or fractured ways of thinking around identity. It’s so neat and linear in colonial thinking that looks at identity as division and as blood in percentages and as numbers.
For me, identity is very fluid and works as a flux, they ebb and flow together, they’re not fractures, they’re layers. Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, I love them all. They interact with each other and that’s what comes out in me. I have challenging and complex relationships with them on a personal level, but that comes with anything you love, and I am very proud to be from those places. I always make an effort, even though it’s a mouthful, to acknowledge that my paternal lineage is Egyptian and maternal Lebanese Palestinian, even though Lebanon doesn’t pass on citizenship through the mother. We grew up undocumented in Lebanon, but that discrimination doesn’t mean that we don’t love the people.
That’s not even touching on the hyphenated, complex question around Australia and on who gets to decide ‘East’ and ‘West’, because that’s usually the narrative. I am fully from there and fully from here, but at the same time, fully both. I am a daughter of parents who have been dispossessed multiple times. Here, I am complicit in dispossession on this land, which informs my positionality and where I stand in my solidarity. While it is an honour and a privilege to straddle home and homeland together, at the end of the day, this is a settler-colony. It is not ‘Western’, but Indigenous. Its custodians and longest living culture are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and that to me is what we need to remember, our starting point.
VC: As you were talking, I remembered that Edward Said has a similar background to you. Does that make you feel closer to his writing?
SS: It makes me feel comforted and in a sense, it’s relieving to know that I’m not the exception in any way or shape or form. There are lots of Palestinians and Arabs who have mixed identities in the diaspora. Because of the nature of our dispossession so many Palestinians went to of course neighbouring Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, many went to Egypt. As a matter of fact, that’s where my mom met my dad, because of the civil war in Lebanon. [Edward] Said, he’s one of the most prominent Lebanese Palestinians. My very own teacher and mentor whom I love, Dr. Randa Abdel Fatah, is an Egyptian Palestinian. Her Arabic accent is Egyptian and mine is Lebanese yet neither of our accents reflect our identities fully. It’s not a marker of authenticity. I grew up in multiple places, but she grew up in Australia, and so she has unique intersections and geographies that inform her upbringing and her identity. It’s also relieving to know that there are many of us out there, even though it makes me sad and wonder, what if we had stayed in Palestine? Would I be fully Palestinian? It’s a privilege to be on the move, and have enriching backgrounds, but we also can’t really work in hypotheticals. I know that I wouldn’t be me anyway [had we stayed].
VC: You have previously said that when you were three, you would stay at the University of Sydney’s kindergarten while your father was doing his PhD. Firstly, what is this kindergarten, because I have never heard about it. And secondly, what are some of your memories at USyd?
SS: That article was a feature for the website, and it is bizarre and surreal to have graduated from USyd knowing that it was my first ever nursery or maybe a childcare. I don’t really remember. I know that because as an adult when I was walking past those areas my dad would say, “this is where we brought you” but I don’t know if it’s still there. It was very helpful for my dad and my mum because as I was the oldest, and they were very young, trying to balance multiple jobs.
When I was at USyd, I found that there wasn’t a lot of diversity and I’m talking 15 to 18 years ago at least. There wasn’t as much diversity as I expected and so that was really challenging to navigate, and for learning politics and policy. A lot of the staff, the departments, were majority white and when studying politics of the areas that I was interested in, they were mainly taught by white people through that white lens. I felt like there was a gap, especially having been raised in the tradition of admired folks like Said and postcolonial theory.
This isn’t to say that there weren’t positive experiences or that there weren’t good scholars and material to study but I really struggled until a friend of mine suggested going to the Arabic and Islamic Studies Department. Initially, I thought it was going to be more around culture and people, while I really wanted to do ‘politics’. I didn’t have the tools to realise that they’re very linked. That department was filling the gaps that others like Government and International Relations were not at the time. After that, I chose to do my honours in Arabic and Islamic Studies, specifically in analysis of mainstream media narratives and the language used to depict the occupation of Palestine.
VC: USyd’s environment is in many ways different to your time, but you can still see some of your experience still existing for many students. But there is greater awareness and less of a burden on people of colour (POC) to explain to those who are not POC about why diversity matters.
SS: Yes, and the student body is going to reflect the diversity of this country. These are structural issues and academic institutions are good at paying lip service to diversity and representation in a tokenistic way. USyd cannot be complicit with research, weapons, academics and Israeli universities who are on the boycott list and then say that it is a place that values rigour and freedom, as well as cultural awareness. What can genuine representation look like on an institution that is on stolen land and being complicit in other oppressive activity and colonial projects elsewhere? There’s much more to say, but there are some amazing academics and staff at USyd who are trying to change and push back. And ultimately this is an issue that’s structural and for the decision makers in power.
VC: You initially had aspirations to be a journalist but that shifted to writing and advocacy. The media and sociopolitical landscape was different then, but if you were starting off now, would you see yourself as a journalist?
SS: I think that some of those obstacles and whiteness in mainstream media would still be present. And what I mean by whiteness and white supremacy, it’s not just diversity reflected in the staff’s faces, it’s in management and policies. It’s also in the way these organisations are run and whether they include people of all intersections in a meaningful way. I just think that if I were now a student, perhaps I would feel more emboldened. As we are seeing now, there are so many incredible journalists of colour who are strong, powerful, ethical, and excellent at their jobs who are setting the example. There are those who came before them and did the heavy lifting like Maher Mughrabi, the features editor at The Age, who’s been there for a long time and working incredibly hard as a Palestinian. It must be hard to exist in these spaces and to see the demonising narratives that are being constructed and ongoing to this day. There’s a little more room and support for journalists like that, as well as diverse and critical narratives. I may have felt more confident to continue or to stay in that field because it wouldn’t be as unwelcoming or supremacist or as right-wing — but we have a long way to go.
VC: Now onto your books. I adore the cover of your poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls (Ghazal El-Banat) (2023). When I was reading it, I was not expecting to relate so much, and to the poems about Lebanon in particular.
SS: Thank you so much for saying that, I’m so glad that it resonated. It means a lot to me that you saw yourself in some of those pieces and I think that’s exactly the point in having books like that you know is to make my people and my community feel the same. It brings us closer, a shared experience, despite our varied values and upbringings.
VC: When including phrases “ijit el kahraba” and “3mele missed”, did you consider spelling it out for readers who may not be familiar with these cultural idiosyncrasies, or did you just write in how you felt best? In Songs of the Dead and Living (2023), you didn’t italicise words in Arabic so as not to emphasise them being in a non-English language.
SS: Yes, so it doesn’t play into ‘the other’. English isn’t the default and that is okay. There’s a lot of ongoing conversation at the moment around the politics of translation and the power of it. I acknowledge that not everyone’s going to come to this view or agree with why we should or shouldn’t. However, I want to find a balance between being a generous writer to my readers, but also making them do a bit of the work and understand that not everything is for them. When I read a First Nations poem or a book of poetry by someone as phenomenal as Wiradjuri poet Jeanine Leane, whose new poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering (2024) has just come out recently, she does not provide translation. When she does, she calls it ‘interpretation’. As a reader, I don’t feel diminished by that or go “I can’t believe Jeanine didn’t think about me”. I can read and relate to it because it is universal, it’s good writing, and I don’t need to be of that background to read it.
It’s okay to have language in there that speaks only to my people, there’s a reason for that. We don’t have a lot of literature at the moment that does that and this is my way of having conversations centering my community and their shared joys that are meant for us. Hopefully other people will still read the poem and still feel something. Also, some of those idioms just can’t be translated. Even if I want to, it doesn’t do them justice. Arabic is such a poetic language and there are so many cultural nuances that will be missed.
VC: A line that stood out to me was, “have you told anyone about the Enid Blyton books you stole from Stanmore Library, because your mother worked three jobs?” I can relate to that desire to read no matter what the material circumstances are. Coming from someone who also grew up reading Blyton, which of her stories spoke to you? And what were some less relatable elements that you had to look elsewhere?
SS: I think that is a very deliberate choice. Mind you, I read Blyton but they weren’t my favourite books. I read so much… Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, whatever was available at the library and that I could understand through the different ages. I remember Sweet Valley High by Francine Pascal which was about these twins, Jessica and Elizabeth, who were blond and blue-eyed. That was the dominant type of book. Also, the books that would appear on Scholastic, I would beg my mum because they were the most exclusive and new. I would tick so many and my mum would say you can have one only, two if I am lucky. Most of the books that were available to me were very Eurocentric. It’s not that I don’t like them, but to make the point that the literature that was available to us was a very Eurocentric canon that did not value or include books from all of our different backgrounds and heritage.
It’s very disappointing to me when I think of little Sara and how there were no other people who looked like her on the shelves back then. That was very defining for a very long time because I loved books and I knew I wanted to be a writer. But everywhere I turned, it was writing not for me. I tried to write stories where ‘Crystal’ was the main character, and my teacher would say, why are you writing these stories and names? But this is what I’m reading, these books formed me. Now I can look back with a critical eye and understand that part of why we didn’t feel like we belonged was because we didn’t see ourselves in these spaces and we were only able to access very Eurocentric literature. It is possible for us to be writers. We all have such an incredible history and I wish that had been acknowledged and included in a place like Australia which has its own history and long lineage of Indigenous storytelling.
VC: On the topic of representation, I read Songs For the Dead and Living and then Palestinian-American author Etaf Rum’s two novels, A Woman is No Man (2019) and Evil Eye (2023). These novels all portrayed the Arab immigrant and the pressures of marriage in a way that felt very close to real life.
When pitching your novel to publishers, did you have to contextualise the subject matter? And during the writing process were you cautious about some readers projecting stereotypes about Arab men and women?
SS: So you asked me earlier what it was like to be mixed heritage, let’s call it. What’s so important is that I wanted to be able to write our stories in a way that does justice to those backgrounds and complexities because if you think about it, they’re actually not really represented by other Palestinian writers. So many Arab writers, specifically Palestinian or Lebanese, will write about someone in Palestine, and not always Palestinians in the diaspora. We are at a point where we’re mature as a community, as a writing community. We can write diverse narratives that do not just limit us to place, and can write complex characters that are dealing with multiple issues and tensions like with racism, Islamophobia, patriarchy, misogyny, state violence and border violence.
I think it’s really also important to understand that we still write, from a place and from the position where our community is marginalised. We need to be really cognisant of the ethics and responsibilities of writing our communities and honouring the subject matter, without pandering to the white gaze. There’s a growing number of books about these experiences because for too long we’ve either been silenced or not given that space. This naturally reflects the fact that our experiences aren’t homogenous, there is not one way to be Palestinian or Arab. Our literature is moving forward and the rest of the world has to catch up.
So very quickly to answer your question around technical issues or contextualising with my publishers: Other people might have different experiences, but I have been lucky. When I spoke to my publisher, and when I pitched this book, I was very clear about what I wanted and how I wanted to do this. We needed to balance the editing process, the fact-checking and the feedback to make sure that we’re telling the story in the best way possible. We were having an honest conversation and the publishers were really open to learning and taking on feedback in the same way that I was.There is a power dynamic between publisher and author, but it was a very generative and honest relationship.
My publisher knows I’m outspoken on Palestine, and I asked, “how are you going to be able to support me”, especially with balancing book deadlines and my role as a community organiser without compromising the story nor the way I show up for my community. I don’t want to give too much away, but one of the characters experiences family violence, and of course I needed to think about my communities. I don’t want to feed into those harmful stereotypes that have long existed and will continue to exist. If people are coming to my work already carrying that sort of problematic, Islamophobic perspective, I’m not writing to convince them of our humanity. My book isn’t going to be the thing that changes their view or tries to appease them, that’s not its function. The world expects us to be perfect even though we, like everybody else, have issues, flaws and make mistakes. The best I can do is write about my subjective experience in a considered manner and have fun with the writing.
VC: I’m sure like many, you have heard your grandparents talk about the now non-existent travel from Damascus to Beirut to Jerusalem. Do you have a specific story from your grandparents that you would like to share with our readers, given that Palestine is not always discussed pre-1948?
SS: Oh my god, I love that question so very much. Unfortunately, the very sad thing for me is that my paternal grandfather died when I was very young. My maternal grandfather who is from Jerusalem, died very young and even he was displaced quite young. I don’t have the records for his story. I wish I did. [Randa] Abdel Fattah’s dad, he’s a Nakba survivor. Hearing him talk is one of the things that really sustains me and keeps me going. People like him tell us that they’re seeing the world through our eyes and seeing a shift, what with the movement coming a long way. I really don’t want their stories to be lost because I think once we lose those things, we use our sense in our identity as a people and it becomes easier for Israel to commit the cultural genocide that it wants to commit. I really do appreciate the question that you just asked. My teta speaks of the time before Lebanon got its independence from France and had its borders carved out, it was Bilad Al-Sham. She also talks about even though there’s many differences, local identities, villages, urban and rural towns, different religions and sects. These markers, while they can be divisive, denote people. Beyond that, it indicated a common language, history and struggle against colonialism. Yes they were able to travel freely, and for me it sounds in line with my views of abolitionism. It’s amusing because I don’t think my teta is saying it from an ‘abolitionist’ perspective, but they are the foregrounders really. She’s embodying it and I’m learning the language for it. They never had the luxury of self actualization, only survival.
VC: It’s been six months since the genocide first began, and which is a continuation of the Nakba that never ended. I don’t know if there is anything left to say or ask. So please discuss anything you think people should hear right now.
SS: To be honest with you, it’s obviously a really challenging time at the moment. We’re all traumatised and I can’t imagine how the people who are in the those on the front lines right now are feeling because it’s Eid as we have this conversation* and it’s very hard for any of us to celebrate when our people are being slaughtered. The only thing that is keeping me going is the fact that we are seeing such a tremendous shift in the discourse, and people from all walks of life coming together and self-organising. I’ve never seen this amount of organising for Palestine before from moms, teachers, unionists to nurses and healthcare workers. I feel fortified by that and know that we need to keep going, even on the days where we are low on hope and optimism. This moment will define who we are and how we move forward in the world we want to build. There’s no turning back, we owe those who are alive to keep them alive. Even though we have no guarantees of what’s going to happen in the future but looking to the past, to other movements in history whether it’s First Nations people, comrades in Vietnam or Algeria, we know that empires and colonial projects have fallen before. We cannot stop until Zionism ends. We don’t need any guarantees. Slavery was abolished with people who showed up and fought it every single day, and didn’t know that in 30 years time, that it was going to be abolished because the alternative was doing nothing and that’s not an alternative.
VC: We tend to hear more about the ‘Western’ government’s complicity, but what do you think of the Arab world/SWANA region’s response to the genocide?
SS: I think across the Arab world and the other ethnic identities and backgrounds, there’s so much solidarity. I think that they have always been and will continue to be with the Palestinians because freedom for us brings us all closer to freedom. I’ve never doubted the support of the Arab people. I think the problem is just as there are complicit, responsible governments in the ‘Western’ world, we also have governments that are profiting off of death and displacement everywhere, including their own people. That’s down to the nature of power and the status quo.
VC: At the USyd Book Society, we recently chose to read Against the Loveless World (2019) by Susan Abulhawa for book club. What are some Palestinian works of any medium that you would recommend to students?
SS: I love Susan Abulhawa, I had the immense privilege of speaking and being involved at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival which she founded and directs (along with a stellar team). I went with Randa Abdel Fattah, Jumana Bayeh, a Lebanese scholar who teaches at Macquarie University, Karen Wyld, an Aboriginal woman of Martu descent, and Lorna Munro, a Wiradjuri and Gamilaroi poet and multidisciplinary artist. It was an absolutely life changing experience, forging those solidarities and being able to be in a space that just really celebrated us in our writing in such a joyous way.
To answer your question, of course, Susan Abulhawa, Etaf Rum, Hala Alyan, George Abraham who’s got an incredible writing collection called Birthright (2020), Fady Joudah, Sahar Mustafah, and Adania Shibli who wrote Minor Detail (2020) and copped censorship from German festivals. One of my favourites is Isabella Hammad. I love Enter Ghost (2023), the follow up to her debut, The Persian (2019). Given what’s happening in Sudan, I want to shout out Safia Elhillo and Yassmin AbdelMagied. n Australia, you have Randa Abdel Fattah, prominent writer of fiction, nonfiction, YA, you name it. You also have Samah Sabawi, a poet and playwright whose novel is coming out in September, Hasib Hourani and their collection out in September, Jumaana Abdu whose novel is also coming out in September – so we need to show up for all three! As well as Micaela Sahhar, whose narrative non fiction work is coming out next year. It’s Pal Lit excellence!
VC: On your website, it says that your latest collaborative project, Muslim Poetry Project, is underway. What can you tell us about this and any other projects on the horizon?
SS: Thank you for asking that because I am excited about this project. Poets of any Muslim background or self identify as Muslims, will be published in what is pretty much the first anthology of its kind here. It’s untitled as of yet but we are open for submissions right now so please send your poems through! I’ve been working on it with poet, theatre producer and friend Zainab Syed and Manal Younus, an Eritrean-Australian poet. This year I’ll also spend time on tour sharing my novel and the poetry collection. I’m always writing, but after that I would like to focus on finalising my new book for 2025 or 2026. While I’m focusing on all these projects, my ultimate priority at the moment is Palestine.
VC: And finally, as the fiction judge for this year’s Honi Soit Writing Competition, should writers tremble in fear or do they have nothing to worry about?
SS: That is hilarious. I think that they should freaking enjoy the process. Competitions are so fraught and loaded. I have contradictory feelings when it comes to competitions and prizes and winning because it’s so subjective and it’s not a reflection of people’s talent or worth at all. So having said that, do it because you want to be great at it for yourself. Do it because you love and want to agonise over every single word and every single full stop and every single scene and character. Do it because you are having fun and because you can’t not write, it’s the thing that you do. Don’t worry about the prizes and the recognition and the awards and the competition just really have fun with this. I’m really looking forward to reading the stories. There’s no fear here, just a lot of joy and talent and craft and love of playing by the rules but also experimenting. Go wild, be a hot mess. I’m looking forward to that.
*This interview was conducted on April 12, 2024.
If you want to apply to be a part of Sara’s ‘Muslim Poetry Anthology’, visit this link for submission guidelines and details. Sara M. Saleh will be present at the Honi Soit Writing Competition Awards Night as well as four panels at the Sydney Writers Festival.
