ALAA MANSOUR IN CONVERSATION WITH SOHA BECHARA

Edited by Myra Abdallah
Photography by Olivia Schenker
Styled by Sarah Bounab
Translated from Arabic by Caline Nasrallah

The first time I saw Soha Bechara, I was a child, and she was on national television. She stepped out of a car, a smile on her face, and as she looked towards the cameras, she waved at the onlookers. It was September 3rd, 1998, and Soha had just been liberated from Khiam prison, where she’d been held for ten years. The prison was administered by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), under Israeli authority. Soha was arrested for attempting to assassinate the head of the SLA, Antoine Lahad, and was at that time a member of the Union of Lebanese Democratic Youth (ULDY), established in 1970. Soha’s direct action completely overthrew preconceived ideas that were entrenched in the collective imaginary regarding the Resistance fighting against Israeli occupation. Growing up hearing about her courage, I was transfixed by her modus operandi: shooting the enemy at point-blank range, straight to the heart, inside his very own living room, in front of his spouse—fully expecting to be shot down right away herself. The enemy didn’t die that day. Neither did Soha.

Her body being itself a site of power, and knowledge, she appears to me as a rhizomatic figure. In becoming the medium, literally embodying it, Soha embraces the radicality of freedom and manifests through her ongoing fight the unbounded nature of revolutionary action. As she once said during an interview, “Resisting isn’t a choice, but a decision, just like the enemy isn’t an opinion, and the occupation can in no way be legitimized.” For someone like me, a Lebanese woman from the South brought up in a Marxist family, a history like Soha’s, embodied in her physical and spiritual self, asserts the need to redefine and rethink the axes of our collective struggle, but also to invoke new forms of power and leadership.

Caring for oneself is a political act and is deeply intertwined with the struggle to be free. Without this care for the self, no struggle can grow, which makes this care an act of political preservation. Bechara’s political journey and carceral experience in the Khiam prison raise questions about the ability to create life from the unbearable and the power to conceive political and cultural microcosms that serve as alternative models of communicative action and reflexive resistance. Nation-building is a journey that doesn’t end with time: it never ceases to be.

“How do we create space to foster critical thought away from the influence of religious beliefs and tendencies that sanctify people’s sects and political leaders, the za’im?”

The day I interviewed her in Geneva, Soha told me something made no less true by its simplicity: no one can set anyone free.

Alaa Mansour ­— In light of the current circumstances and the dark phase we are going through, what with the coronavirus and its repercussions, how would you describe this reality, and how would you classify the terms used in relation to it, such as quarantine and social distancing?

Soha Bechara — One must make a distinction in how these terms are used: either to protect individuals or to impose a certain authority on them. While it is true that the terms are one and the same, they could have different connotations. Quarantine could evoke anything from being imprisoned between four walls to curfews and distancing, or even conditional trips outside. Then come the other parts related to quarantine, such as when the quarantine period ends, when it begins, and how people reintegrate back into society: getting to know people all over again—and so, only within set timeframes. But these terms could also refer to arrest, and this is a totally different story. You drive yourself to arrest through your choice of operation, through its nature and how it’s carried out, but from the moment you enter the world of detention, you are in a place governed by distance and separation. It is impossible to communicate with anyone else, not even prisoners in other cells. Prison has one goal: to numb prisoners down until they can think of no other human function but eating, drinking, and sleeping. In prison, they try to kill what’s inside a person, even their dreams of freedom.

AM ­— Building on your words about the Khiam prison and dreaming of freedom, you speak of a prisoner’s dream in your book, “I Dream of a Prison Made of Cherries.” How would you describe this freedom?

SB — Personally, since I am in conflict with this enemy, arrest just turned into another form of resistance for me. As such, my time in prison was a battle with the enemy that wanted to box me in between four walls, but those walls were supposed to constitute a prison whose impact goes beyond imprisonment of the body: it was meant to imprison my mind. But I wanted to prove to the enemy that even if they had imprisoned my body, they would not succeed in imprisoning my mind. Here lay the very core of the battle: my ability to protect myself from those walls—and this battle was necessary. So not once did I feel that the space around me was cramped, or that the cell was too dark. I would broaden the limits of that space that was delineated by the presence of the occupation forces, such that my resistance multiplied itself, in the sense that it took on new and different forms, even through things as simple as creating a needle by piercing a small piece of metal. Pierced metal might be of no value to some people, but keep in mind that no metal was allowed to reach me, and I was also forbidden from drawing roses. Yet I went ahead and inserted a thread into that piece of metal I’d pierced and, on a blanket, drew a rose with needle and thread. Even if they’d rip out the rose and take the blanket away, I would just sew another rose. This is how I entered into a direct confrontation with the enemy, a confrontation through which I tried to affirm my humanity and right to resist an enemy whose practices had the sole purpose of telling me that I was not human.

 AM ­— Thinking of the daily practices of resistance inside the prison, to what extent did writing help you and give you the ability to withstand the situation?

SB — First of all, I can’t really speak of a practice of writing inside the prison because it was more like repeating a narrative over and over again until I’d memorized it. There was no way to write anything down; pens and paper were not allowed in prison. But we were worried about the survival of our stories inside there. We were worried we’d be killed and our stories would die with us. My biggest obsession was to remember everything going on, to memorize some short sentences describing our conditions. I did this all in my mind, during the solitary confinement in which I was held for six years.

Later, we discovered that we could use the aluminum cheese wrappers to write with. Kifah Afifi was the first to discover this, and she passed the idea on to me. We used to fold the aluminum cheese wrappers and use them as writing tools. I used this to unload my sentences onto the cardboard pieces we used for paper. I filled up sixty-four of them. The female guards used to search our cells at unexpected times, even stripping us of our clothes, and I was worried they’d confiscate these papers if they found them. So I also carved this all on the wall in very small writing, but the guard found out and ordered me to cover it up. I removed the writing on the wall, but I managed to keep the papers with me. On one occasion, three women prisoners organized an operation to steal a pen from the interrogation room, and once they succeeded, they gifted me the pen. I wrote a third copy of our stories on toilet paper after that, and this copy was what stayed with me until after my release.

I also used to write on clothes or any piece of cloth. It was difficult; it’s not like there was fabric just lying around. These writings are incredibly important to me. I used to document every sound I heard, from the sound of keys to those of footsteps, screaming, and the movements of prisoners, female and male.

AM ­— In your opinion, what is the importance of having these stories be told by a woman?

SB — Let me say one thing first: I fight for rights, and rights know no gender. The supreme right is that the struggle not be for the sake of a woman or a man, but for people in general. In our Eastern societies, people’s concerns about a woman being arrested are centered around physical assault. They link this assault to a woman’s honor. But if we look at the problem through a broader lens, we find that this concern does not extend to all the other types of assault that come along with imprisonment: it does not include the abuse, injustice, and humiliation dealt by the Israeli occupation or others. Rather, it is limited to rape. And society’s problem is not with rape itself. It is more concerned about a woman’s virginity, as linked to her honor.

It is important for women to tell these stories because that puts the focus on women’s experiences in prison. It is important to highlight that we were not given sanitary pads. That the women who were arrested right after having given birth were not given any means to deal with their breastmilk, and that some had their breastmilk pumped out after the guards put a bag over their heads. That veiled women were forced to take off their hijabs in prison—which may have been one of the harshest scenes I had to witness. A man would never know how to describe it. Hence the importance of writing about women’s experiences in the prison with full transparency but also with the necessary sensitivity and respect of these women’s privacy.

AM ­— Has the dream of achieving social justice and democracy ultimately failed?

SB — It cannot fail. The nation-building process does not stop, regardless of the passage of time. The battle against occupation may end with liberation, but the battle to build a homeland is an open and ongoing one. The country has not yet begun building itself. The question we should now be asking is: when will we lay the cornerstone? Looking at the current situation in Lebanon, how can we, as Lebanese women and men, free ourselves from the shackles of our sectarian and confessional system? How do we create space to foster critical thought away from the influence of religious beliefs and tendencies that sanctify people’s sects and political leaders, the za’im?

The most important step is that every person begin to look inward, on an individual level: people need to have a clear idea about what their relationship with religion is and means. I personally consider religion to be one of the reasons behind the stagnation of the Arab world. We are in the middle of a major conflict, and no one wants to admit it. We cannot build a state that is capable of carrying out its duties so long as this state lays on a foundation of religion, confession, and sect, and so long as legitimacy is referenced against these. Religious belief is personal. The responsibilities of the state have nothing to do with religion. But I also think that now is not the right time to be calling for secularism because the majority of the population is not leaning toward it. As long as the majority is not interested in this battle, another slogan will have to be raised to allow for the establishment of a state governed by the rule of law and built on accountability, without any confessional or sectarian affiliation.

AM ­— If a state governed by the rule of law were to exist, would change begin from there, and would we then be able to talk about secularism?

SB — We still have a long way to go before we get to that battle. This movement never really had any power. Social movements are like snowballs—they keep rolling and increasing in size, but we don’t know where they’re going or in what direction they’re heading. Associations laid out the path, to a certain extent, but associations operate under specific slogans, and a country cannot be contained within the limits of one slogan. We cannot build a country solely on the basis of women’s rights or the protection of children. I believe that political parties should be the ones calling for change and fighting these battles. But where are these parties today, and what use is a party if no one supports it? Even the Left and the Communist Party are living off the glory of their old days; there is no new discourse that does not bring up the past. In principle, I am not against that, but every movement needs to at least have a clear goal. All over the world, the Left is in crisis: be it in relation to the economy, consumption, or production.

“I do not think that the Palestinians are waiting for anyone to liberate their land. […] Liberation will come from within Palestine. ”

AM ­— To what extent is our fate, in Lebanon, dependent on the Palestinian cause? And how can we continue the battle to liberate Palestine under the existing tyrannical regimes?

SB — I do not think that the Palestinians are waiting for anyone to liberate their land. One of the mistakes that the Arab world made was when it considered itself to be the representative and bearer of the Palestinian cause and Palestinian liberation. This will not happen, because no one can set anyone free, not in the name of Arabism, nor in that of Arab nationalism or any kind of affiliation. Liberation will come from within Palestine.

AM ­— The assassination attempt on Antoine Lahad was a radical operation, so to speak. Being face to face with the enemy and shooting him in his own house. Do you think that being a woman made it easier for you to gain access to his house and carry out this operation?

SB — Yes, of course it did. Antoine Lahad was a primary target on the list, and initially the whole idea of this operation had been that I would be outside the target zone at the moment of implementation. But the fact that I am a woman from a Christian family was a huge plus in getting me to reach my goal. Since we live in a patriarchal society, the prevailing idea was that a city girl was easy, accessible; not to mention how superior villagers felt to people from the city. It was enough for me to just say hello to the guard for him to let me in, no questions asked, without even searching me. Because of the way the hierarchical structure in the Arab world is, people easily feel inferior, so in order to avoid getting the weapon in my possession discovered, I said hello to the official guard—who was himself eager to please his boss’s acquaintances so that he would remain in his good graces. These things may seem secondary, but they are actually very impactful.

AM ­— You’ve said before that resistance is a decision, not a choice, and you’ve mentioned in an interview that occupation is not an opinion and that we must resist with weapons. What are your thoughts on neutrality in Lebanon?

SB — A person cannot live in an occupied country and try to legitimize this occupation; the occupation must be resisted.

It is not an opinion, and there are no justifications for it. When your country is occupied, your identity is occupied, and the only solution is to resist the occupation to achieve liberation. The Israeli occupation has practically become an opinion for people to discuss, and those who deal or engage with it seem to find justifications for doing so. Despite the many shortcomings of international law and the United Nations, armed resistance is still an internationally legitimate right. When it comes to identity and belonging, resistance is the only response, and to me, the most supreme form of resistance is to look beyond weapons towards boycotts and insurgence.

AM ­— What do you think about using the term activism instead of resistance?

SB — Activism implies an internal framework, a working with to effect change. As for resistance, the term leaves no space for there to be any sort of with. When I resist something, I am working against it, be it an idea, an action, or an existence of some sort. As for activists, they could work with those they once resisted: they could organize a movement and search for mutual points of contact between them. But such a system can only be resisted. I am against political change through armed action, but we have to resist.

AM ­— Do you not believe in revolutionary violence?

SB — I come from a background of union work that supports the idea of revolutionary change, but if the change comes from outside, we cannot really call it change because it will always be subject to clashes when the interests of foreign countries are involved. If we look at how Lebanon was created, we find that it was built on the basis of foreign interventions that ultimately became an integral part of its political system. As such, the country was designed as a reactive entity, one influenced by internal, regional, and international situations.

 AM ­— Do you believe that for a revolution to be successful, it needs to have a specific leader(ship)?

SB — Yes, I would prefer that the revolution have an elected leadership that serves for a determined period of time, and I don’t think that this leadership should be venerated or regarded as sacred. If the leader turns into another form of sheikh or priest, that takes us right back to the problem of sectarianism, confessionalism, and factionalism. I also think that education plays a foundational role when it comes to how we view leadership. Taking on responsibility needs to come hand in hand with the idea of temporariness. Leadership is limited to a temporary period in the lives of officials, and it legitimizes their duties, which should be at the service of the people. I am in favor of limiting the mandate of people in charge, because it is unreasonable for the same person to be elected several times—otherwise, this practice will just turn into another form of dictatorship.

AM ­— What do you have to say about the Beirut port explosion disaster?

SB — Clearly, for us to have gone through what we did, corruption has long been deeply embedded in every corner of the country. I would have hoped for all this build-up to erupt into civil disobedience, which is the only solution that could lead to the creation of something we all dream of. But let’s at least begin with establishing an independent judiciary.

What the judge needs to do is implement the stipulated law. The laws are there, but do we have a judicial, legal, juridical body that is committed to respecting and implementing these laws? Merely respecting them is not enough; the key is to actually implement them, because that is what ensures the exercise of rights and duties without infringing on others, and that is what ensures the prosecution of aggressors.

It is unreasonable for everybody to be stuck in this system of dependency and factional affiliation. We need to be able to liberate this body from sectarianism and politics. That’s the easiest way to impose prosecution on the guilty, but it requires jurists to make some sacrifices—which may garner them some death threats.

AM ­— Do you think we are suffering from a crisis of values?

SB — No. Our crisis is in our system, not our values. If you were to look into every different group, you’d find that everyone wants affordable food, access to medical care and to be able to educate their children; everyone rejects murder and theft and assault. But the question is, how did these groups allow their leaders to get them to the point where they have to beg for their simplest, most basic rights? Is it reasonable to expect citizens to pay multiple bills for water and electricity? Not to mention the garbage crisis, which has also taken on sectarian dimensions.

Change does not come without effort. The youth residing in the country has a role to play here, but so does the rest of the Arab world: there is a battle it has yet to undertake, one that can be summarized in the role of religion in the state. As long as this has not been tackled, the infrastructure will be divided on a factional basis, as will everything else. All this leads to is more racism. Racism that is very apparent in how Lebanese women and men treat foreign workers.

“A person cannot live in an occupied country and try to legitimize this occupation; the occupation must be resisted.”