Maqluba is a traditional Levantine pilaf dish, consisting of meat, rice, and fried vegetables placed in a pot. When served, the pot is flipped upside-down. The Arabic word maqluba means “upside-down.”
Upside-Down Love: A Memoir in Two Voices by Sari Bashi is the title of the recently published English-language book, originally published in Hebrew in 2021 as Maqluba. The book by Israeli American human rights lawyer Bashi is an account of how she met and built a family with her spouse, a Palestinian professor living in Ramallah.
Maqluba serves as a metaphor for how the couple navigated an extraordinary marriage, dealing with social taboos on both sides, amid stringent military restrictions and an often Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
“Food is an important part of the book; it’s a way of sharing intimacy,” Bashi told The Jerusalem Report in a recent interview. “It became clear for us early on that important issues in Israeli-Palestinian society were upside-down, not as they should be. There was no space for two people getting to know each other and falling in love. So we had to turn things upside-down in order for them to be right side up, to get to a place where we could get to know each other.”
The book has alternating chapters written by Bashi and Osama (a pseudonym) over the course of their relationship, first as lawyer and client, then as friends, lovers, and eventually as a married couple building a family together.
There are many interfaith couples living in Israel, where there are no legal provisions for civil marriage. These are mainly Jewish and Christian partners and “other” partners from the Former Soviet Union (FSU).
Jewish-Arab marriages, when both partners are Israeli citizens, are rare but recognized. Marriages between Israeli Bedouin men and Palestinian women are recognized under religious law but face severe legal, bureaucratic, and security-based hurdles for civil registration in Israel.
As well as the bureaucratic hurdles, marriage between and Israeli Jew and Palestinian Muslim is viewed as controversial to some, Israelis and Palestinians alike.
“Palestine and the Levant have a long history of pluralism and (imperfect) tolerance,” Bashi said, responding to this point.
“I know that many see our relationship as taboo, but for me, Hebrew, Arabic and English or Judaism and Islam blending together, as it does in our home, is natural. And one day that kind of pluralism will again be native to this land,” she said.
A forbidden bond
Yet for Bashi and Osama, at least initially, it was literally illegal for them to even meet.
Bashi was raised in New Jersey in a Zionist environment. Her father was an Iraqi Jew who immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and fought in the Six Day War before moving to the US. “My family wasn’t political, but right-wing,” she said. “I went to a Jewish school, we were taught a kind of right-wing Zionism. I think when I moved to Israel as an adult and had a chance to engage in what was going on in a different way, it was a slow process of realizing that, from my point of view, things were not as I had been taught.”
The star-crossed romance began when Bashi represented Osama in Israel’s Supreme Court. She had recently co-founded, with Prof. Kenneth Mann, the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an NGO that provides legal assistance to Palestinians who need military permits to access work or family members outside of Gaza.
She successfully lobbied for Osama to be allowed to leave the country for his doctorate in the UK, and to return to Ramallah. Under its policy of separation, Israel restricts movement between the West Bank and Gaza. Because Osama was born in Gaza, as stated on his Israeli-approved ID card, he is not allowed to live in Ramallah, except under a temporary permit. Traveling elsewhere in the West Bank – or abroad – meant that the authorities would send him back to Gaza on his return.
When Osama returned three years later, their relationship began to change gradually, from lawyer to lover. Upside-Down Love – written diary-style in alternating chapters from both Bashi’s and Osama’s perspectives – chronicles the story of the difficult logistics of their courtship.
“I started writing a diary soon after my partner and I got together because it was so overwhelming. I had such strong feelings, and I couldn’t talk about it with anybody,” Bashi related. The inequality in their legal status was so profound, that it sometimes seemed impossible to bridge.
The book incorporates diaries and correspondence as a kind of dialogue, though Bashi allows, not always in chronological order. “There were times when we were writing to each other because it was sometimes easier to write, and times when we were fighting. This is a memoir, reconstructed as best I can.”
Eventually, Bashi moved from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to live together and ultimately marry. “By moving to Ramallah, I went from being a lawyer to being a criminal defendant,” she said.
Bashi and Osama have two children, aged 11 and eight, who attend a private school where the languages of instruction are Arabic and English. Bashi speaks Hebrew to them. “My children seem to feel comfortable code switching,” she joked.
After leaving Gisha, Bashi taught at Yale University and served as program director for Human Rights Watch. Today, she is the executive director of Israel’s Committee Against Torture.
Living between worlds
Bashi has long been a competitive long-distance runner, with impressive strength and endurance. “Isn’t a woman running alone in isolated areas, whether Jew or Arab, a bit scary?” I asked.
“In the last years, my running has become much more restricted. The landscape has changed; there’s been a lot more encroachment by settlers on villages,” she conceded. “One thing that still helps is that I’m a woman, which means that, by definition, in this part of the world I’m less threatening than a man. I can also ‘pass,’ depending on the situation, because of my physical appearance: Palestinian, Israeli, or American tourist, depending on which checkpoint or village.”
After all these years of writing her blogs, articles, and the book, Bashi still uses a pseudonym for her husband. “It’s a way of protecting him,” she explained. “One thing I tried to emphasize in the book is the issue of power dynamics. I have privileges that he doesn’t have in terms of safety and security. He faces more risks than I do. So, it’s easier for me to use my name but not his.”
In the introduction to the English edition of Upside-Down Love, Bashi summarizes the historical background and political context in which the book takes place, “from my subjective point of view,” she said. “The English edition had to have a bit more explanation. For Israeli readers, much was a familiar story, though told from a different perspective. It needed more explanation for a foreign reader, so the translated version underwent significant editing.”
It’s certain that for readers outside of Israel, many details will be startling. As one American friend commented, “For the first time, I became aware that Gaza citizens cannot use the seacoast, why evacuations didn’t happen by ship, or why food and water couldn’t be delivered by ship.”
Published as it was after October 7, 2023, the book includes an epilogue about the situation. “This English edition comes to light at a time of unspeakable violence, destruction, and loss in Israel-Palestine, particularly in Gaza,” Bashi writes.
The memoir concludes with a message to English-language readers: “Please know that despite the terrible violence engulfing Israel-Palestine, there are good, loving people here who are working for a better future.”
The book has also been translated into Dutch, Italian and Spanish. The recipe for maqluba is printed at the end of the book.■