Namesake: Imagining a world where Islam's female warrior guides today's Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian women

Palestinian-British researcher and writer N. S. Nuseibeh’s ancestors did something unheard of in the Arab world: in a region where people’s lineage is patrilineal, they decided to name their family after their foremother, Nusaybah bint Ka’ab, Islam’s legendary female warrior who fought alongside Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) on the battleground.

Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman was released at the height of the ongoing war in Gaza. This essay collection explores what it means to be a Muslim, Arab and Palestinian woman today.

Nuseibeh draws on her life experiences growing up between Jerusalem and Britain. Each essay starts by reimagining Nusaybah’s everyday life in 7th-century Madinah and ends by pondering what Nusaybah would have done in today’s world, where Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian women face multiple layers of racism, gaslighting, mental health struggles, and stereotyping.

Namesake starts with Nuseibeh recalling how her late grandmother would repeatedly ask her as a girl, “Are you English or are you Arab?” Nuseibeh would answer, I’m a Palestinian Arab from the Nuseibeh family, descended from Nusaybah bint Ka’ab Al Khazrajia!”

Her grandmother didn’t ask her this question 1,001 times because she was old and forgetful; this repeated questioning about Nuseibeh’s heritage was an effort on her grandmother’s part to ensure that future generations knew who they were.

This has become paramount today when, in Palestine, the Israeli army has wiped entire families off the face of the earth so that they no longer exist in civil registries.

Speaking from her family home in Jerusalem, Nuseibeh says that since her book was released at the end of February, amid the ongoing slaughter of her people, she has not celebrated her book.

“It's felt like such a non-thing in the midst of all this horror,” Nuseibeh tells The New Arab.

“I have had some nice messages from Arabs and especially Palestinians in the diaspora who've said that they felt seen or they felt less alone during this psychologically devastating time because of the book, and for me, that's been the most wonderful, incredible thing. Just to have brought comfort to anyone in this time feels precious,” Nuseibeh added.

Nuseibeh describes her journey to getting Namesake published as unique – while studying for her PhD at Oxford, she submitted a short fiction story to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and won. She was then approached by an agent.

Nuseibeh had always toyed with the idea of writing a book about her female ancestor, but not a novel or biography.

The little we know about Nusaybah bint Ka’ab is primarily about her role on the battlefield with Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), but Nuseibeh says Nusaybah is such a multi-faceted woman that she thinks it is "wild" that such an interesting figure had not made it into the Western cultural consciousness.

Nuseibeh primarily used the Hadith, English and Arabic biographies or seerah (life) of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), research papers, and history books to reimagine Nusaybah’s everyday life.

With most of her elder relatives having already passed away, she relied on her father and uncles for ancient family stories about their foremother.

She says that writing about her female ancestor was a thought-provoking experience that forced her into places of discomfort as she examined herself and her values more closely.

Of the many topics explored in Namesake, one standout essay is on worry and anxiety. Nuseibeh wonders if her ancestor Nusaybah was free of worry – she seemed endlessly courageous and fearless – and shares her own experiences of anxiety.

She writes how in an age of anxiety, that worry and anxiety are triple-fold for Palestinians, which she says is a rational response.

Nuseibeh says that Palestinians experience a unique form of gaslighting, in which people deny the Nakba, the ongoing occupation, apartheid, and the inequalities that Palestinians suffer.

“As a Palestinian, it makes you feel crazy, and gaslighting does that,” she says.

“Even if you're in the diaspora, it can be painful and scary, and there's just no end to this situation. Even if there's a ceasefire, which hopefully there’ll be one soon, it doesn't actually change the status quo of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. It's a worrying time to be Palestinian.”

Another essay explores anger, and how despite there being many reasons for Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian women to be angry, we suppress outward shows of anger as the West constantly portrays us as a threat.

Nuseibeh, for one, has experienced this suppression of anger in situations which would otherwise be cause for it.

Once while out, a man asks her where she is from. When she replies with "Palestinian," he says she is lucky she is attractive otherwise he would have punched her.

"There's a lot to be angry, enraged, and furious about. I certainly think no one should be afraid of showing that anger just because they don't want to be perceived as a threat,” she says.

“But personally, I'm not someone who has a straightforward relationship with anger. That's partly why I wanted to explore it in the essay.

"For some people, anger is galvanizing and that's great for them. For me, it's an emotion that I'm a bit suspicious of, and I feel like it can be a bit intoxicating," she adds. 

“It's time to demand better and to organise, protest, and refuse as a Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim to be treated as subhuman,” she continues.

“It's also time to be creative. If we have the mental space to do that, to think of other paradigms beyond the current racist, nationalist capitalist one that structures our world, to really do the work of imagining things being radically different, not just for Palestinians, but globally, because none of this is sustainable.

"If expressing anger helps a person to do that, then absolutely go for it. But I guess for me, the point isn't anger. The point has changed. So however we get there, that's what we should be aiming for.”

Namesake is a fascinating exploration of identity politics as a millennial Palestinian and Arab woman who has one foot in her homeland and one in the West, living in two parallel worlds.

She navigates between a country where she and fellow Palestinians suffer ongoing occupation and inequality, and another where she is told she is “free” but is subject to Britain’s white superiority complex and xenophobic treatment.

Nuseibeh has done a remarkable job of bringing to life a female icon in Islamic history revered by Muslim and Arab women worldwide.

It is a moving essay collection on how we can be inspired by Nusaybah bint Ka’ab’s many admirable qualities in today’s world.

Namesake is published by Canongate in the UK and Interlink in the US and is out now. 

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on Twitter: @UNDERYOURABAYA