November 2023: A Smaller World
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November 2023: A Smaller World
And my short, Words of the South
Over the course of the last +44 days of massacres and callous words, my world has felt smaller. The same world I was curious about, that I thought cared about me and others like me. That world has shrunk. The rooms we can feel welcomed and safe in may not be found within every arbitrary yet increasingly visible border.
“I keep going back to that phone call, to a voice on the phone, hailing from the far and distant land of humanity, where I am a guest until proven otherwise.” - Karim Kattan in At the Threshold of Humanity ← read this!
In the midst of this hallway of closed doors, I was searching for something to disrupt the stream of rage. I wanted to find something that challenged the imaginings of an undeserved, limited existence and I found Edward Said’s commencement speech of AUB’s class of 2000. In it, Said proposes another way to approach the world as Arabs with American education, an alternative reaction from the subjugation/rejection binary.
You don’t need to be an AUB grad to be part of the audience he’s addressing. Take a moment to read the whole thing. It gave me a needed boost to keep going, to keep fighting for a whole world for us all.
THE LAST MONTH OF AANAB NEWS
AT LEAST 10 LITTLE LINKS
The Story of Palestine’s Colonization, and Resistance, Is Embodied in the Trees by Taya Amit
Scroll down to the interview with Reem Assil in The Restaurant Industry Professionals Organizing for a Cease-fire in Gaza by Jaya Saxena. Interview with illustrator & writer Aya Ghanameh in #14: 'We talk about Palestine as an abstract idea, not about Palestinian people' by
and an interview with comedian, Mo Amer, in the LA Times. A somewhat related interview with Soha Bechara for Al Hayya Magazine.Also in Al Hayya, Vee Badaan deconstructs the Israeli army’s vegan boots.
“Today, we should be aware of how the trope of “womenandchildren” is circulating in relation to Gaza and to Palestine more broadly. This trope accomplishes many discursive feats, two of which are most prominent: The massifying of women and children into an undistinguishable group brought together by the “sameness” of gender and sex, and the reproduction of the male Palestinian body (and the male Arab body more generally) as always already dangerous.” - from 2014’s Can Palestinian Men be Victims? Gendering Israel's War on Gaza by Maya Mikdashi
This amazing interactive map from Beirut Urban Lab of Israeli escalation on the Lebanese Southern border. Here’s an infographic of strikes on either side of the border from Oct 7 till Nov 9.
Sarah E. Parkinson writes The Ghosts of Lebanon: To See What Lies Ahead in Gaza, Look Back to Israel’s 1982 Invasion and Huda al-Marashi asks, Israel-Palestine war: Did we learn nothing from Iraq?
“What we are not allowed to say, as Palestinians speaking to the Western media, is that all life is equally valuable.” - Saree Makdisi’s No Human Being Can Exist from October 25, 2023
And if you haven’t yet, read Hating It Lush by Kaleem Hawa
AT LEAST 5 LITTLE JOYS IN DARK TIMES
My family is from Venezuela 💃 | Post Malone’s Something Real (listen to it with headphones) and my feelings exactly | Wild Geese by Mary Oliver | A printable Gratitude Zine by Austin Kleon | The tomb of Queen Meret-Neith
PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
COMING UP NEXT
My editorial calendar for the last three months of 2023 has been scrapped as Palestine and Lebanon teeter on the edge. The extra Whole Bunch dispatch and The Wine Down are on hold until further notice. The B for Bacchus Shop has been shut down. Maybe I’ll be back to publishing weekly in January but for now, I will do my best to stick to twice a month and, as always, FREE PALESTINE.
November 2023: A Smaller World
At the risk of sounding shallow after reading your very thoughtful newsletter.... I would love a post with your thoughts on the al Fayed storyline in The Crown. ;)