May Sayegh

May Sayegh, the daughter of Musa Sayegh and Hind Farah, was born in Gaza City into an educated Christian family that was politically committed to the struggle for national liberation.

She married Mohammad Abu Mayzar, a writer and Fatah member, and was the mother of four children: Abeer, Wael, Randa, and Omar.

Sayegh went to primary and preparatory school in Gaza City and then completed her secondary education at al-Zahra' girls’ school in Gaza. At al-Zahra', her talent for writing became apparent; with the encouragement of her mother, a woman of letters, she began writing beautiful compositions, which her teacher read to the students from the upper classes.

In the late 1950s, Sayegh moved to Cairo and enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University, where she studied philosophy and sociology. In her second year at Cairo University, she happened to recite one of her poems in front of writer Youssef al-Sibai. He was so impressed by it that he had it published the next day on the final page of al-Gumhouriyya newspaper, together with her picture. Then Ali Hashim Rashid, director of the Sawt Filastin [Voice of Palestine] broadcasting service, invited her to read her poem on the radio. This subsequently opened the door for her to give readings of all her writings on the radio. During that time, several of her poems were published in Egyptian newspapers, after which they began to be published in prominent Arab literary magazines such as the Lebanese al-Adab and the Iraqi Aqlam.

Sayegh was a founding member of the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW), which held its inaugural congress in 1965 in Jerusalem. Then, in 1968, she joined the Fatah movement and fought with it in Amman until the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) withdrew its forces from Jordan in July 1971. She relocated to Beirut, where she was elected as a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. Starting in 1973, she also was nominated as a member of both the PLO’s Executive Committee and the Palestinian National Council.

From 1971 to 1986, Sayegh held the position of Secretary-General of the GUPW. From 1975 until 1982, she was a member of the permanent secretariat of the Women’s International Democratic Federation. Beginning in 1975, she attended the meetings of the federation’s Congress on Equality, Development and Peace, which were held in Berlin, Paris, Havana, New York, Moscow, and Baghdad. After the proclamation of an independent Palestinian state in Algiers in 1988, Sayegh continued to represent Palestinian women at pan-Arab and international conferences and symposiums, including the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Sayegh lived through some of the most critical stages of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation in Lebanon, especially during the Lebanese civil war, which broke out in the spring of 1975, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982. She played a part in leading grassroots efforts by women to give support to the Palestinian and Lebanese people’s determination in holding out against the Israeli army’s siege of Beirut. During those years, she published a number of articles in the magazine Filastin al-Thawra [Revolution Palestine], whose board of editors she had joined. She also wrote for the Beirut newspaper al-Safir and the journals al-Katib and al-Karmel.

Sayegh published her first collection of poetry in 1969, entitled The Crown of Thorns. Then in 1972, she contributed a poem to the anthology Qasaʾid Manqusha ʿala Misallat al-Ashrafiyye.

In 1974, she published another collection of poetry titled Love Poems for a Name Hunted Down. Her next collection of poetry, published in 1985, was titled On Tears and the Joy to Come. Her last collection of poetry, published in 2014, was titled If Only Hind Never Vowed, harking to the famous line by the ancient Arab poet Umar ibn Abi Rabiʿa.

In 1988, she published a memoir titled The Siege, an Autobiography and followed it up in 2002 with a novel, Awaiting the Moon. She also authored a number of working papers and critical studies on the women’s issues during this time, along with two books on this subject: Studies on Women and The Arab and Palestinian Woman, both published in 1981.

Sayegh combined her adherence to the Palestinian resistance and involvement in its ranks out of a belief that the cause of women was an inseparable cause of a free Palestine on the one hand, with a creative expression of this through poetry and novels on the other hand, tying her identity as a writer with that of a political militant together in a close-knit connection. In her view, Palestinian women needed to contribute to the national liberation struggle and by doing so would improve the conditions of the roles they are given to play and strengthen their position in Palestinian society, so they would no longer be second-class citizens, achieving parity with men as equal human beings. In an interview with the Egyptian magazine Adab wa Naqd in 1987, she explained what motivated her to write: she had images, reserves of emotion, remnants of memories stored up from childhood and youth, and political ideas that she wished to express, sometimes in the form of poetry and sometimes in prose. Her poetry sprang from jets of feeling and a complex emotional and existential spark, whereas her prose came out of a feeling that it was her duty toward the people and the future to tell all to the generations to come, and that her experience should not be squandered uselessly, given that she belonged to a generation of Palestinians that marched several steps forward on their people’s path to liberation.

Sayegh died on 5 February 2023 in Amman and was buried there. Fatah released a statement on her passing: "Today, all of Palestine, the Fatah movement, and all humanity’s supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle bid farewell to a towering figure that leaves behind for Palestine this unique corpus of struggle and accomplishment that will remain a beacon for all free peoples." The Palestinian Ministry of Culture mourned her; its Minister of Culture, Atef Abu Saif, wrote: “Palestinian and Arab culture have just lost a literary figure of some stature, an icon who was an epitome of creativity and one prolifically so. The deceased was a prominent and active contributor to the enrichment of the Palestinian and Arab literary canon, not to mention the role she played in leading the Palestinian women’s movement.” She was also mourned by the General Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists, whose president, Murad Al-Soudani, stated: “The passing of May Sayegh is a great loss to the cultural and political scene and to the [Palestinian] political struggle. In her departure at the hands of fate, we may draw some succor from her literary works  and the record of her life of political struggle, whose flame will continue to be fired by the truth of Palestine and the Palestinian people.”

Sayegh was awarded many medals and prizes, the most prestigious of which was the Order of the Star of Jerusalem medal, conferred upon her by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2009, in appreciation of her outstanding service toward Palestine and the defense of its cause all across the world, and the al-Quds Prize for Culture and Creativity in 2013. She was also awarded the Order of Ana Betancourt medal by Cuban President Fidel Castro, established in commemoration of one of the leading women who fought for Cuban independence from Spain in the nineteenth century.

Poetry Collections

"إكليل الشوك". بيروت: دار الطليعة، 1969.

[The Crown of Thorns]

"قصائد حب لاسم مُطارد". بيروت: دار العودة، 1974.

[Love Poems for a Name Hunted Down]

"عن الدموع والفرح الآتي"، بيروت، المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر، 1985.

[On Tears and the Joy to Come]

"ليت هنداً لم تعد". بيروت: المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر، 2014.

[If Only Hind Never Vowed]

Prose Works

"الحصار". بيروت: المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر، 1988.

[The Siege]

"بانتظار القمر". بيروت: المؤسسة العربية للدراسات والنشر، 2002.

[Awaiting the Moon]

Sources

Descamps-Wassif, Sara. Dictionnaire des écrivains palestiniens. Paris: Institut du monde arabe, 1999.

جودة، أحمد. "مع الأديبة مي الصايغ". في: "أدب ونقد"، أيار/ مايو (1987).

حنا، جورج. "مي الصايغ.. عن وطن يسكننا ونكاد لا نسكنه". "رويترز"، 2 آذار/ مارس 2015.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0W149F

"رحيل مي الصايغ.. عمرٌ لفلسطين وقضية المرأة". "العربي الجديد"، 5 شباط/ فبراير 2023.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/culture/رحيل-مي-الصايغ-عمرٌ-لفلسطين-وقضية-المرأة

زعرب، امتياز النحال. "فلسطينيات: وجوه نسائية فلسطينية معاصرة". غزة: دار المقداد للطباعة، 2013.

سعادة، علي. "الشاعرة المناضلة مي صايغ ترحل ’بانتظار المطر’". "عربي 21"، 11 شباط/ فبراير 2023.

سماح، عادل. "مي الصايغ.. صورة فلسطين في الخارج صورة وردة في كتاب الشعر". 26 آذار/ مارس 2023.

https://kitabat.com/cultural/مي-الصايغ-صورة-فلسطين-في-الخارج-صورة-و/

شاهين، أحمد عمر. "موسوعة كتّاب فلسطين في القرن العشرين" (الجزء الثاني). دمشق: المركز القومي للدراسات والتوثيق، 1992.

الفراني، عبد الحميد جمال وعوني محمد العلوي. "أعلام النساء الفلسطينيات". بيروت: دار العلوم العربية، 2013.