When I was around 8 years old, my neighbour and distant relative gifted me a bathroom towel decorated with a colourful band that she had embroidered herself.
It included my name, stitched in a light red thread, small flowers that look like the ones that grow in the walls during winter time, stitched in light green, and tree motifs stretched in a darker shade of green, all on a white canvas.
I had never seen that kind of stitching before. She described it as “cross-stitch”. A little while later my sister decided to learn how to stitch. Even then, I still didn’t engage in this art form much and I almost forgot about it, until I saw a long beautiful robe, fully decorated by multicoloured floral patterns on a black canvas. I was amazed. I knew how much manual labor and time embroidery required so, I never fully understood why people kept stitching manually now that we have machines.
Taken in the 1970s by Emile Ashrawi, this photograph captures Fatima Yousef from the village of Kobar- Ramallah, seated on the ground with her back to the wall wearing a Palestinian embroidered thobe while sewing another with two girls standing next to her. Photo credit: The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
But the answer was simple: heritage preservation. Embroidery - tatreez in Arabic - is a form of direct resistance against the erasure of identity. Any attempts at changing the practice could be considered a loss. Tatreez is much more than a form of “cross-stitch” or an intricate traditional dress design.
When I moved to Beirut in 2017, I started noticing that my Palestinian friends were decorating their clothes with embroidered bands. They were modern, fun, colourful, and still held a big significance. I was intrigued to know more, as this is something I’ve seen before, but never really given it a deeper meaning. It was like a statement more than a decoration and this is how I discovered the value of tatreez for Palestinians, and my admiration for this art grew bigger.
This form of ancient stitching and embroidery is a Canaanite practice that emerged on the land currently known as the Levant more than 3,000 years ago. Tatreez was not only a Palestinian practice, it was also a Jordanian, Syrian, and Lebanese practice, basically a Levantine tradition.
Taken during the 1960s, this photograph shows girls learning how to embroider at the Nahda Women's Association in Ramallah. Photo credit: The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
For centuries, women would gather and stitch their dresses together. It started as a need, continued as an art, and now became a symbol of resistance. Embroidery today is a concrete representation and expression of Palestinian identity and heritage, and a symbol of what they lost, and what they want to return to.
Historically, the motifs on embroidered dresses, called thobes, reflected the area, town or village of the person wearing it and the natural landscape of every region. It also reflected their social status.
Today, Palestinian women gather and stitch together in what is known as “tatreez circles”. Every woman stitches her homestown’s motifs and patterns, preserving what was lost since the nakba - catastrophe - in 1948. These circles preserve history, landscapes, people’s stories, memories, and their traditions. Women wear their dresses as a statement and as a reminder of the destroyed villages that their families had been displaced from.
Taken in the 1920s, this photograph shows a Palestinian woman wearing the traditional thobe of the city of Ramallah. Photo credit: The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
This practice, that women actively preserve and pass on, plays a role in documenting history through art, in maintaining a sense of solidarity and support between communities, and most importantly, in keeping their identity alive. Through the intricate designs, women weave their stories, and share the pain of Palestinians who were robbed of their homes, lives, and lands.
A black-and-white photograph of the members of the Board of Directors of Qalandiya Camp Women Handicraft Cooperative Society at an exhibition of Palestinian embroideries at the society’s HQ, taken in 1958. Photo credit: The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
Tatreez has become such an important cultural and artistic expression that in 2021, the United Nations’ cultural agency (UNESCO) added it to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
I never learned this craft. It’s way too difficult and time consuming for me. But this alone makes me appreciate the effort Palestinian women put everyday into preserving something so vibrant and precious, something that validates their heritage, history and perseverance. And I couldn’t be more grateful to have a piece of tatreez decorating my home and to be surrounded by so many history-weavers.