Suad Amiry’s Habibian Way
Suad Amiry’s Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries (2003) is a masterclass in using dark humour as an act of political defiance and psychological survival. The book is constructed from emails and diary entries Amiry wrote between 1981 and 2004 to maintain her sanity. At its absolute centre is the 42-day military curfew imposed on Ramallah by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2002. Amiry brilliantly captures how military occupation reduces grand geopolitical struggles down to the most agonizing, microscopic, and fundamentally absurd domestic realities.
The ultimate comedic and tragic premise of the memoir can be effectively summarised as the Clash of two sieges: Ariel Sharon vs. The Mother-in-Law as captured by Amiry’s iconic quote:
"Perhaps one day I may forgive you for putting us under curfew for forty-two days, but I will never forgive you for making us live with my mother-in-law for what seemed, then, more like forty-two years."
When Israeli tanks roll into Ramallah, Amiry braves the shelling to rescue her 92-year-old mother-in-law, Um Salim, bringing her back to her own home. What follows is a brilliant juxtaposition of two distinct forces of nature. While Israeli sniper fire rings outside, Um Salim wages a domestic war inside—demanding to eat only at specific times, from specific plates, using specific cutlery. The unrelenting, stubborn routine of an elderly woman completely destabilizes the terrifying authority of a military siege. Amiry uses dark humor to deliver profound historic gut-punches. In one scene, as tanks approach and they must flee, Um Salim insists on meticulously packing her dresses, looking for a specific yellow blouse to match her purple skirt. Losing her temper, Amiry snaps and tells her to leave it behind because they will simply "come back for it later." Um Salim responds quietly: "That’s what we said in 1948 when we left our house in Jaffa; it was May then." In a single line, the comedy evaporates, revealing the deep-seated trauma of the Nakba that governs the older woman’s hyper-fixation on her belongings.
Amiry documents the sheer madness that occurs when a strict military curfew is lifted for just three unpredictable hours so an entire city can buy food. She describes the supermarket as a battleground of "manic consumerism," where complete strangers are desperately tossing boxes of Pampers and yoghurts to one another across crowded aisles. People are hoarding random items they will likely never eat, driven by the panic of a ticking clock. When Amiry and her husband are stopped by an army jeep for being mere minutes late returning home, she enters a tense, silent staring match with a young, nervous soldier—defying her husband's terrified pleas to just look away.
Amiry Highlights the insane legal framework Palestinians must navigate to exist. The peak of this absurdity involves Nura, her dog. While Amiry and her husband spend seven painful years waiting for permission and ID cards just to legally live under the same roof, Nura accidentally secures an official Jerusalem identity passport. Amiry then successfully smuggles herself across an Israeli checkpoint by confidently explaining to a baffled soldier that Nura cannot drive a car and therefore needs Amiry to chauffeur her to Jerusalem. The logic is so ridiculous that the soldier simply waves them through.
In the larger trajectory of the Palestine novel, it’s interesting to note how Amiry represents a fascinating synthesis between the individual existentialism and collective history. She takes the individualistic, interior wit of an intellectual professional (an architect) and uses it to document a profoundly collective trauma. She proves that under occupation, the ultimate form of resistance is not just political martyrdom, but the stubborn, humorous refusal to allow the absurdity of war to strip away your humanity, your domestic quirks, or your sanity. In more ways than apparent, Amiry aligns with Emile Habibi in the Palestinian canon. While the post-Nakba literary landscape is often associated with the somber, tragic realism of Ghassan Kanafani, Amiry’s memoir subverts this expectation by operating within Habibi's satirical, absurdist tradition. By filtering the claustrophobia of the 2002 Ramallah curfews through a darkly comic lens, Amiry channels Habibi’s 'pessoptimism,' proving that mapping the sheer absurdity of occupation is, in itself, a vital act of psychological resistance. Like Habibi, Amiry realizes that when a political reality becomes completely irrational, the only logical way to write about it is through satire.