Samah Sabawi is an author, playwright and poet and a recipient of multiple awards both nationally and internationally. Her theatre credits include the critically acclaimed and award-winning plays Tales of a City by the Sea and THEM.

In 2020, Samah received the prestigious Green Room Award for Best Writing in the independent theatre category, and was shortlisted for both the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. With Stephen Orlo Samah edited the anthology Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas, winner of the Patrick O’Neill Award and she co-authored I Remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, edited by Vacy Vlazna, winner of the Palestine Book Award. Samah received a Doctor of Philosophy from Victoria University for her thesis titled Inheriting Exile, transgenerational trauma and the Palestinian Australian Identity.

Samah’s new book, Cactus Pear For My Beloved, is out now through Penguin and available at all good bookstores.

Header image: © Andrew Campbell at The Melbourne Headshot Company

Archer Magazine: Hi, Samah! Thanks so much for chatting with us about your new book, Cactus Pear For My Beloved. Your family’s story is astonishing, and you tell it with such heart and care. Can you tell us about the process of writing this book?

Samah Sabawi: It began as part of my PhD. My thesis was looking at transgenerational trauma and the Palestinian Australian experience. For this, I relied on decolonised research methodologies, mainly autoethnography and personal testimonies, to tell the story of Gaza and its people over the decades.

My father was my primary research subject, and that was truly magnificent. I ended up with over 60 hours of interviews with him, probing his incredible memory trove to piece together the story of our ongoing ethnic cleansing from our homeland in Palestine. After the PhD was done, I went back to the story, and began a process of rewriting it in its current form, as a novel.

Abdul Karim Sabawi, Samah’s father, on his beloved Gaza Beach, 1960. Photograph courtesy of the Sabawi family.

AM: “We cannot rely on one occupation to free us from another, or one tyrant to free us from another. … Freedom will not come to us through an external power. We have to earn it ourselves.”

This, along with many other passages in the book, struck me as ever relevant in the current day. After all, this is very recent history. What has your family’s journey taught you? How have the events of the book shaped your own identity?

SS: These are big questions. How much space does your magazine have? My family’s journey taught me so many things; it taught me that we must refuse to be victims of our circumstance or surrender ourselves to fit within neat definitions that reduce us to powerlessness and despair.

Palestinians never surrendered their agency. They have survived and thrived despite more than 75 years of ethnic cleansing, occupation and oppression. Above all, the lesson I’ve learned was that we are free when we choose to illuminate our minds with knowledge, our hearts with love and our path with resilience. This is the armour needed to resist and defeat racism and oppression.

Abdul Karim and Souhailah Sabawi, Samah’s parents, 1967. Photograph courtesy of the Sabawi family.

AM: You’re a multi-talented writer known for your phenomenal work across different genres, such a poetry, playwriting and creative non-fiction. Do you have a favourite genre? Or do you find that they each allow for different forms of expression and emotion?

SS: They all serve different purposes. Poetry is therapy. It is cathartic. It is where I go to when I am overwhelmed with emotions that need to be expressed.

Writing my family’s story and history of Gaza had to be presented in the form of a novel. There were too many details to fit within a poem or a play.

Writing for the stage is the most fun, as it is about creating a world and building a community around it. You start with a script, and it takes an entire team of cast and crew to bring the work to life. It is the most rewarding and is probably my favourite kind of writing.

AM: On that note, your father is also an incredibly talented poet. I love that some of his poetry is featured in Cactus Pear For My Beloved. Did you father’s writing inspire your own career? And more generally, who are your main literary inspirations?

SS: Absolutely, I grew up in a home where poetry was as important as the air we breathed. My father inspired my passion for writing. Other Palestinian literary figures growing up where Mahmoud Darweesh, Ghassan Kanafani and Muin Bseiso. I also loved the works of Egyptian poet and satirist Salah Jahin and Syrian playwrights Duraid Lahham and Mohammad al-Maghout.

Souhailah Sabawi, Samah’s mother, in 1958. Photograph courtesy of the Sabawi family.

AM: “In chasing the threads to write this book, I took my father home to Palestine. Together we traversed the tracks of his memory, and with these written words I reconstructed his beloved Gaza in all its brilliance and glory before the occupation…”

Although you were displaced from Gaza as an infant during the Six-Day War, you have strong ties to your birthplace and visited Palestine in July 2023. What is your favourite thing about Palestine and/or Palestinian culture?

SS: I am in awe of Palestinian women. I have never seen such extraordinary patience, resilience and love for family. I love being hugged kissed and fed by my aunties, and I love watching the way the matriarchs of families are treated literally like they are queens of their realms, their orders obeyed without questioning.

I love the food, the music, the walks on Gaza’s seashore and the Palestinian people’s hunger for life. I love that promises are kept. I love that faith never falters even when bombs fall. I love the generosity and the compassion Palestinians have for foreigners, despite the many ways in which the world has failed them.

Souhailah Sabawi (centre) with her children (left to right) Abir, Samah (infant), Khulud and Hussein, before their exile from Gaza in 1967. This photograph was taken to form an official identification required to cross the border. Photograph courtesy of the Sabawi family.

AM: The most recent print issue of Archer Magazine focused on the theme of RESISTANCE, with emphasis on the current genocide in Gaza. With regard to the stories within your book, what does resistance mean to you?

SS: Resistance to oppression is an obligation. For me personally, it is a daily practice of truth and courage guided by my deep belief that all humans are born free and equal regardless of their colour, religion or ethnicity.

Cactus Pear For My Beloved is out now through Penguin and available at all good bookstores.