Embroidered Palestine: A Stitched Narrative

Palestinian rich cross-stitch embroidery is considered the group’s “folk marker.” In the years following the dramatic events of 1948 and 1967, “Palestinian embroidery” gradually became a unifying form of grieving-creativity and national pride. The present article focuses on embroidered maps of Palestine, called Taṭrīz khārṭaṭ Falasṭīn, that are made by Palestinian women to be framed and hung on the walls of Palestinian homes.Based on in-depth interviews with Palestinian women in Jerusalem and its vicinity, it explores and analyzes the voices arising out of this style of embroidered narrative and approaches the source of its distinctive potency. Operating within the multinarrative sounding board of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this embroidered narrative is revealed as a potent folkloric site that is able to recruit traditional creativity in order to express political, national, and gender-related sentiments