On the Vulnerability of Memory and the Power of Storytelling, or How My Grandmothers Made Me a Historian

ABSTRACT The deaths of both my grandmothers, at different intervals, created for me a crisis of memory. While one grandmother died before I could preserve enough memories of her, the other died following a long battle against memory loss. As I reflect upon memory, particularly as a matrilineal inheritance, I also ask what else do we inherit as women from our grandmothers and mothers. We inherit the stories along with the illnesses. We inherit trauma as well. In this essay, I explore the power of storytelling, and its link to memory and memory loss, particularly in relation to our experiences with compounded and intergenerational trauma from generations past in Lebanon, and to my own personal trauma of the cataclysmic event of August 4. I ponder whether it is this ‘inheritance’ that made me so invested in the preservation of the past. My grandmothers have made me a historian and so I write to remember, to run away from the inevitability of my loss of memory.