Rasha Ahmad Saffarini

Abstract

Designed and built by Zaki Saffarini in the 1930s, the house of Salah Al-din Amin Salah, the former mayor between 1930 and 1933 and head of municipality of Tulkarem, was abandoned because of three events: British imperialism in the 1940s, Zionist invasions in 1948, and Salah Amin’s permanent exile in 1959. In 2019, the house was purchased by the architect’s grandson even though he was not able to use it.

In this piece, the house is documented through dialogues between first- and third-generation refugees to explore how memory is absorbed as well as the role of counter-memory in diasporic contexts. The piece is a diary of stories, poems, and images that narrate the recollections of the mayor’s family and neighbours, collected through conversations with the son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and the architect’s family. However, the narrative is situated within the author’s diasporic sense of being Palestinian, which is acquired through the cultural practices she has cultivated from her ancestors to cling to the rights of ownership.

Therefore, the fragmented recollections captured are interrupted by the author’s outlook in response to living under occupation yet also in exile, echoing the fraught relationships between the land, the distant native of Palestine, and the intrusive invader. As such, the narrative fluctuates between the past and present, while also looking into the future of the house and the author’s return. To do so, the diary is approached in four ways, expressed as linguistic conditions: ‘was’, ‘would have been’, ‘is’, and ‘would’. Two conditions, ‘was’ and ‘is’, present a glimpse of the reality of the house. The other two describe an ambition for what home may be which could only be achieved through the unreal conditionals of a post-Israeli-occupation world.

This piece is based on a site-writing method in the MA program at the Bartlett School of Architecture. The course ‘Critical Spatial Practice’ was led by Polly Gould, Jane Rendell, and David Roberts.

Keywords: diaspora, home, site-writing, Palestine, exile, recollections, oral heritage, storytelling

Full text: OAJ ISSUE 11 FINAL_Article_3

DOI: 10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2024s03

Biographical note

Rasha Saffarini is an architect and researcher focusing on the role of critical and creative practice in understanding the social, political, and religious qualities of cultural heritage in the ‘current yet not’ Middle East, its ecologies and dwellers. She studied architecture at the American University of Sharjah and has gained her MA in Architecture and Historic Urban Environments at the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London).

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