ABSTRACT
Omar’s father came to settle in Hawi al-Hawa as one of the peasants working on the al-Meshrif land. After his father’s early death in 1957, Omar had to work from the age of eleven in agriculture, and generally he had to struggle to sustain himself and his family. His account revealed the limits of familism, its internal stratification and conflicts, and also the reasons why joining the Ba’th Party acted as an escape from the monotony and injustices of rural peasant life. This is a unique account from the man who became the president of the Peasants’ Collective in the village. Omar’s life history, told during two long interviews, portrays a man’s struggle just to survive as a social being under conditions of hardship.
