Rawan Okasha pushed aside the black curtains, her large kohl-lined eyes scanning the two-storey theatre packed with people. Then she did something no other woman has done in public in Gaza for nearly a decade: she began to sing.
“Palestine is for its people,” she crooned. “And the houses they destroyed,” referring to decades of conflict with Israel, “will be rebuilt by the Intifada.”
Young women in the front rows screamed. Men joined in the lyrics.
But throughout the audience, monitors were watching for anything that might offend the pursed-lipped officials of Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, who had grudgingly allowed the rare concert. At one point, they ordered men who had burst into the Arab line dance called dabke to sit down.
Among the Culture Ministry’s rules: Okasha, 24, had to stand still while singing, dress modestly and stick to “patriotic music”.
Wearing a traditional embroidered gown and matching head scarf, Gaza’s chanteuse did not sing about broken hearts, parties, or other fripperies. Only in the Arabic folk songs did love shyly appear.
“I am achieving what is in my soul,” she said in an earlier interview. “I feel like I have a responsibility to continue singing, for the sake of the women of my generation.”
Since taking control of Gaza nearly a decade ago, Hamas has tried, in fits and starts, to rub out cultural endeavours its leaders see as immodest, or too Western, mostly by refusing to grant necessary permits.
The group’s version of musical entertainment is mostly barbershop-quartet-style groups composed of bearded men or modestly-dressed little girls, trotted out to sing for Palestine during public celebrations.
Many Palestinians share Hamas’s conservative values. Mohammad Assaf, the Gazan who became one of the region’s biggest stars after winning on “Arab Idol”, recently said he did not want his equally talented sister to sing in front of men.
It was not always this way. There was a troupe of dancing Gypsies in the 1980s. A co-ed group sang on Palestinian television in the 1990s. Okasha’s father, Mohammad Atef Okasha, now 60, formed a band in 2005, but he said it collapsed when Hamas seized power two years later.
In recent months, Hamas officials have been quietly loosening the reins as Gaza residents chafe under years of restrictions on their movement by neighbouring Israel and Egypt, enduring three wars in a decade and with poverty and unemployment rampant.
Nobody stopped women from riding their bicycles on Gaza’s main drag recently. There was no objection to a dog meet-up in a park, though Islamists consider dogs impure and see owning them as a Western habit.
And now this: Rawan Okasha and her 10-member band, Dawaween — slang for “idle chatter” — have performed four times since November.
“The idea of giving permission for a concert, for a dance, for theatre, it’s very new,” said the band’s manager, Adel Abdul Rahman.
Okasha is the eighth of 13 siblings who sing — call them the Okasha 13. “Other families make martyrs,” said her mother, Faiza, referring to Palestinians who die attacking Israelis or who are killed by them. “I make entertainers.”
The five brothers are paid entertainers. It was harder for the women, though. The family was embittered by the fallout after Rawan Okasha’s sister Ranin, now 31, released a music video a decade ago while living in Cairo that millions of people watched.
It was fairly tame by the saucy standards of Arab music videos. Ranin cutely posed in outfits and danced a little. But it scandalised conservative Gaza, and residents asked why Ranin’s husband — Abdul Rahman, now her sister’s manager — had permitted such trashy behaviour. Crushed, Ranin gave up singing when the couple returned to Gaza. She donned a head scarf.
But Rawan Okasha wanted to perform. This time, the family sought to create something that could win Hamas’s approval. “We were ready for this challenge,” her father said.
Samir Mutair, deputy secretary of Gaza’s Culture Ministry, said a committee had been formed to discuss the proposition. The band agreed to a host of conditions, and to keep the mood sombre.
“This is not a rock concert,” Mutair said. Gaza, he added, does not have concerts “where people come to cheer up”.
During a recent rehearsal, the band strained to nail the material. “You have burnt the mother of that song!” Abdul Rahman yelled as the musicians limped through an old Palestinian song. They repeated it.
“Better?” one of them asked. “Just less bad than before!” Abdul Rahman retorted.
During another song, the power cut — a regular Gaza occurrence. The band did not miss a beat.
Some 500 people paid the equivalent of about $2 (Dh7) to $6 to hear it.
At a last-minute practice session, Abdul Rahman screamed “Crisis!” when he noticed the words “Tel Aviv” on a banner draped across the stage that showed the image of an olive tree, its branches formed from the names of cities that Palestinians see as their heartland. No Jewish-Israeli cities were supposed to be on the banner, in a nod to Hamas’s unrelenting vow to erase them on the ground. A photographer with a marker tweaked the curling Arabic calligraphy, transforming “Tel Aviv” into “Tel Al Rabi”, Arabic for “Spring Hill”.
“Check the banner again,” a stagehand called out. “Maybe we missed other Israeli colonies.”
Okasha, who is pregnant and has a toddler son, sat on a stool backstage, waiting for a musical interlude, and then walked to the crowd, singing a poem by Ahmad Dahbour, “Children of Palestine”.
Mumin Qreiqei, who is 28 and lost both legs in the 2008 war between Hamas and Israel, moved his wheelchair close to the stage, taking photographs. Layla Hassouna, a pharmacist, said of the singer, “She is really brave.”
Nearby, Ahmad Al Naouq, a literature student, said he felt confused. “I liked it so much,” he said. “But I would never allow my sister to sing in front of men.”
Samar Al Shawa, 56, said Okasha “has a beautiful voice that reminds me of the old days in Gaza”.
Her friend Ahmad Ebrahim, mulling the controversy over a woman singing, interjected. “Gazans think their problems are because of the Israeli occupation,” Ebrahim, 35, said. “This is not true. They have problems because they live on an expired culture from 100 years ago.”
The music began again. Okasha raised her hand to dramatic effect, gazed at her audience and began singing a mawal — an Arab lament (yes, on love): “I give the preacher of good tidings a kiss on the eyes! My tiredness has disappeared, a kiss on the eyes! My tiredness has disappeared, oh, son of my tribe!”
From the stage, Gaza’s chanteuse met the eyes of her sister Ranin, whose own musical career had imploded. They exchanged smiles.
–New York Times News Service
