أم سعد

Umm Saad (Arabic: أم سعد / ALA-LC: Umm Saʻd) is a novella written by fiction writer and journalist Ghassan Kanafani. Umm Saad is real, as she lived with Kanafani's family for many years, and represents Palestinian revolutionary women, in specific Palestinian mothers who "give birth to children only for them to became part of the Fedayeen eventually, experiencing fear and pain of loss", along with Palestinians suffering due to war overall. Despite its literary and technical simplicity, the novella is considered to be one of Kanafani’s major pieces as it shows the writer's political consciousness. Odette David points out to physical features of Umm Saad associated with elements of nature such as wood, trees, soil, and water that make her character be "Mother-Earth". On the other hand, Egyptian author, Radwa Ashur, accused Kanafani of depicting the image of women as a mother in the story, and argued that her political contributions made her closer to be a revolutionary mother rather than a revolutionary in itself. However, director of Al Rawat Foundation, Fayha Abdulhadi, considered Umm Saad's character to be epic, and a model for the socialist realism books.