Amman museum displays treasure trove of traditional Palestinian, Jordanian clothing

Widad Kawar, known as Umm I’bas Al-Falastini, "mother of the Palestinian dress," has devoted her life to preserving the ethnic and cultural arts — dress, costumes, jewelry and textiles — that have been scattered across the region.

For Kawar, born in 1931 in Bethlehem, the dresses recall a happier life before the Nakba — “the catastrophe,” as Palestinians call the establishment of Israel in 1948 — when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.