History

In 2017, a thobe or old Palestinian embroidered wedding dress was exhibited for sale in an Israeli auction. The dress, which had clearly never been worn, inspired Amer Shomali by bringing to mind the very short story reputed to have been written by Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn”. Shomali contacted the auction house for more information and was told that the seller was an Israeli who had inherited the dress from his father who had been a member of the Zionist paramilitary group Haganah. He had always claimed to have found the dress in an abandoned Arab houses during the Nakbah in 1948.