SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article deals with the reminiscences of Amat al-Laṭīf al-Wazīr, only daughter of ʿAbdullah al-Wazīr, one of the leaders of the Yemeni reform movement which sought to establish a constitutional government in the late 1940s. Against the background of her family’s devastation and dispossession following the failed revolt, the article explores the intricacies of her memory. Most studies of this period tend to privilege men’s heroic political narratives over the everyday struggles of women who unwittingly became victims of the ensuing turmoil. Amat al-Laṭīf al-Wazīr’s story highlights the effect violent conflict has on kinship relations and on the lives of survivors who were accustomed to men’s support and protection. Telling her story through an intersubjective lens, she makes claims as to how her father’s ill-fated attempt to refashion the twentieth-century Yemeni imamate should be remembered.