Micheline Awwad Owned the Street

A woman is dressed, ready to leave her house. She has put on her black dress. Wrapped a yellow scarf around her neck. Put on her yellow heels. She might have looked at herself in the mirror before stepping out. She might have fixed her hair. She must have being going somewhere …

The church, perhaps…

It’s the late 1980s; outside, the streets are no longer just streets. But she doesn’t know that yet. Or perhaps she does. She walks out anyway.

And then, somewhere between where she was going and where she ended up, she takes off her heels. She carries them in one hand. Her feet are bare. And suddenly, the woman who left her house dressed for the day is standing in the middle of the street, moving, throwing, taking part.

Watch the yellow (oh, no, not ‘the yellow line’); the yellow scarf, the yellow heels. It feels almost too bright for the photograph. But maybe that’s the point.

Women do not stop being women when they enter the street. They bring everything with them: the clothes they chose, the lipstick, the earrings, the heels they eventually take off because the street is easier without them. They bring their softness, their anger, their humor, their fear, their courage. And they take up space.

There is something beautiful about a woman who does not wait for the street to become comfortable before she claims it. She simply walks into it.

This photograph is from the 1987-Intifada. But the woman in it feels much bigger than that moment. She could be any woman who has ever stepped outside and decided that the world was not going to tell her where she belonged. She looks dressed for the day. Then she looks ready for anything. And somehow, she owns both.

Women, dear reader, teach life, sir!

Photo Credit: Micheline Awwad, Beit Sahour, c. 1988: “For nearly 30 years, the identity of the woman in this famous photograph from the 1987-1991 Intifada remained unknown; until the BBC met her in 2017. She is Micheline Awwad from Beit Sahour. She had been on her way to pray at the church when she came upon young people confronting the occupation army, and she joined them in throwing stones.” Photo by Alfred Yaghoubzadeh, Armenian-Iranian photographer. Online at: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1449820667176444&set=pcb.1449820697176441