History from the Bottom… The Narrative of the Forgotten in the Arab World

Voice of Belady

29-04-2025

In a world where history is written from above—where the victories of sultans and the whims of rulers are recorded in gilded archives—the voices of the oppressed whisper from below, always present yet often ignored. Official history is shaped by hollow speeches, justificatory narratives, and orchestrated celebrations of triumphs that never occurred, while the truth is buried with its witnesses or left as a lonely cry in the dark alleys of forgotten towns and villages.
"Between Power and the Word… A Battle for Existence"
In the Arab world, history has always belonged to the ruling authority. It is reshaped as needed, and those who challenge it or write what should not be written are crushed. This is an age-old battle between the pen and the sword, between official discourse and counter-narratives, between power and storytelling. The latter is the voice of the poor and marginalized—those who never had a place in the records of the palace, yet whose stories live on in the streets and whispered tales of the neighborhood.
Ibn Khaldun was among the first to challenge this paradigm, shifting history from the halls of power to the markets and streets, observing the lives of common people and presenting a vision distinct from the rulers' proclamations. Today, this idea is being revived in various intellectual and literary movements, such as "History from Below" in Britain, "Microhistory" in Italy, and "Subaltern Studies" in India, all of which reposition the periphery as the true center of life and history.
"Syria… Where History is Written in Blood"
Since the onset of the Syrian tragedy, the regime sought to commit its crimes in silence, without witnesses. However, it faced a generation armed with words and technology, documenting events in real-time. Ordinary citizens—who never studied history or journalism—became the true historians of this era. Amid the machinery of media distortion, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube emerged as an alternative archive, ensuring that the truth could not be buried forever.
Yet, despite this documentation, there will always be those who attempt to rewrite the story according to the victors' desires. Executioners will be portrayed as heroes, and the names of grieving mothers and slain children will be erased. This underscores the importance of people writing their own history—free from the grip of power and its fabricated narratives.
"The Unspoken Truth in the Arab World"
While official history is written in palaces, true history is told in villages—among shepherds and farmers, in dark prison cells, in refugee camp alleys, and on the tongues of those who have no voice. Yet, this history remains hidden, banned from circulation, constantly threatened with erasure.
In Egypt, the history of the downtrodden is found in the stories of farmers expelled from their lands and in the silence of slums that surround Cairo like a sorrowful belt no one wants to see. In Iraq, it is the history of the disappeared in prisons and mass graves. In Palestine, it is the history of mothers awaiting their sons—either returning from detention or lost forever. In Lebanon, it is the history of those who survived wars, only to swallow their pain in silence.
Meanwhile, salon intellectuals theorize about modernity and democracy, while the people at the bottom die unnoticed, their names unrecorded in any book.
"Power Fears the Truth"
Mohamed Saad Abdel Latif, an Egyptian writer and researcher specializing in geopolitics.