Between Home and Nation. Ghosts of the 1967 forced displacement in Suez

In the aftermath of the 1967 June War between Egypt and Israel, approximately one million people had to leave their homes in the Suez Canal cities. They relocated to other parts of Egypt for at least seven years, until their return after the October 1973 War. This dissertation explores the effects of this internal forced displacement on the everyday lives and politics of those who were displaced by writing a history from their homes and based on their memories. It fills a gap in the forced displacement literature by studying an understudied displacement and centering the narratives of the displaced themselves. The main question asked is: How did the experience of losing their homes during the 1967 forced displacement influence the relationship of Suezis to the post-defeat Egyptian state?

This question is answered through reliance on literature at the intersection of three disciplines:

political sociology, social history, and the anthropology of the state. The main methodology used is a combination of feminist oral history and history from homes. Those who witnessed the war and lost their homes endured an accumulation of losses that were human, material, and emotional. These losses are not simply the subject of past events. Based on the emerging literature on haunting and ghosts in sociology, anthropology, and political sciences, this dissertation follows the traces of these losses as ghosts. Identifying the ghosts of the 1967 forced displacement in the memories of the displaced, and following them to analyze absence and loss, offers an alternative reading of state politics. This uncovers layers within the post-1967 Egyptian political regime amid its defeat and management of the forced displacement, as well as the strategies Suezis utilized during the seven years of displacement. This dissertation is about reading the state and its politics from homes.

photography (c) Sabry Khaled

Articles: 

• 2023. Nassar, A., Madbouly, M., Ezzat, A., Abazeed, A., Abdelrahman Soliman, N., Agha, M., El Khachab, C., Elwakil, A., Mourad, L., & Taha, M. Objects, memories, and storytelling: Experiments in narrating ideas of home. City, 0(0), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2023.2254166 

• 2021. “The Three Decisions of Umm Bîjû: Walking in Suez and Seeing the Ghosts of 1967 War”, Égypte/Monde arabe, Troisième série, 23 | 2021. 

• 2021. “Remembering the 1977 Bread Riots in Suez: Fragments and Ghosts of Resistance,” International Review of Social History 66, no. S29.

Book Chapters:

• 2026. “En quête de dignité, à la découverte de la ghorba. Histoire d’une famille égyptienne en exil” Les Révoltes de la Dignité. Résister dans les mondes arabes méditerranéens. ed. Leyla Dakhli, Seuil. 

• 2024. “Al-aawda w al-ghorba. Harb October be oyoun mohagarry al-Sowiss” in Khamssoun aaman aala nasr October, ed. Khaled Fahmy, El-Maraya. 

• 2020. “Mobilized Along the Margins: Survival Strategies of Tuktuk Drivers in Egypt” in Socioeconomic Protests in MENA and Latin America: Egypt and Tunisia in Interregional Comparison, ed. Irene Weipert-Fenner and Jonas Wolff, Middle East Today. Springer International Publishing. 

• 2018. co-authored with Mohamed Yehia. “Egyptian History Without ‘Gatekeepers’ : Non-Formal History Learning in Post-2011 Egypt,” in The Struggle for Citizenship Education in Egypt, Routledge.