Voices of Resilience was an event held on 22 April 2024 organised by Comma Press, directed by Dr Dani Abulhawa, held at HOME, Manchester. It marked the launch of DON’T LOOK LEFT: A Diary of Genocide, by Atef Abu Saif, through readings from the book, with additional readings of poetry by Refaat Alareer, Hiba Abu Nada (both killed in the conflict) as well as other Palestinian writers. After previously cancelling the show, HOME reinstated Voices of Resilience due to mass public outcry, including artists withdrawing their work from the venue in protest and solidarity.
On the day of the event HOME’s entire building was shut down, with the foyer, bar and shop areas closed and left in darkness. All other events and screenings scheduled that day were postponed or cancelled. Barricades were put up outside the venue and before audience members could enter the building, they were required to show photo ID to the private security staff hired specially by HOME for the night. They searched bags, removing aerosols and liquids. All the bins had been removed from the foyer. Police were also present.
Jessica El Mal reflects on the night’s events below.
What forms can solidarity take? Marching in the streets, emailing MPs and boycotting products and companies are some of the ways that have long been employed. Our solidarities with the Palestinian people date back before October 2023, before 2021’s occupation of Sheikh-al Jarah, and as far back as the 1970s when the concept of political blackness and global south solidarities swept the western world. Salford’s Working Class Movement Library holds an incredible archive of Pro-Palestinian pamphlets, articles and posters from the 1970s and 80s. But now, more than ever, we are questioning the limits and legitimacy of our solidarity in all areas of our lives. And the arts are no exception. Since October, we have seen an uprising of Palestinians leading cultural events across North West England, like ASHTAR Theatre’s Gaza Monologues in Manchester last November, and the Tatreez workshops held at The Guild in Liverpool in February, to name a few. How do such events, and the age-old practice of sharing stories – like Ataf Abu Saif’s Don’t Look Left – function within a spectrum of resistance and solidarity?
In his essay ‘How Do We Reach Each Other? Towards Generative Solidarities’ Palestinian thinker and activist Karim Kattan explores how, in some respect, Palestine can be a fantasy – an imaginary that is held in the hearts of so many. Whether for the many significant religious sites it holds for the Abrahamic religions, or the admiration that the unwavering faith and perseverance of its people inspires. In the Arab world, Palestine is often described as our common heart, the one thing which unites us above all else. At the same time, it also becomes an emblem for far right, Islamophobic, racist discourse to cling to – a geography to brand with the label ‘terrorist’, with cliches of beards and tunnels. Kattan argues that Palestine, and Palestinian solidarity in particular, can break under the weight of these projections and fantasies. It is in the face of near totemism that narration offers an important alternative.
This is the power of Ataf Abu Saif’s writing, read aloud by Kingsley Ben-Adir on the night of the event at HOME. DON’T LOOK LEFT: A Diary of Genocide, published by Comma Press, is a poignant and intimate account that provides a raw personal perspective on the experience of conflict and violence in Gaza through the format of a diary.Abu Saif’s storytelling bypasses metaphor, politics and poetics by resting authentically in the everyday. Can anything be more personal, more ordinary, than a daily diary? Abu Saif presents himself neither as a hero, nor as a villain. He is neither steadfast in strength nor unwavering in faith for a spiritually starved reader to applaud. He is a regular guy. A father, a brother, a son. A friend who reminisces about growing up in the neighborhood streets. An uncle whose heart breaks when he fibs to his now-disabled and orphaned niece that everything is going to be okay. A husband that makes a promise to his wife to keep their son alive, a promise that he doesn’t know he can keep, with missiles just missing their house as they sleep.
Of course, the situation he is in is not normal, and every day since 7 October 2023 has become more and more horrific than any day of the last seventy-five years of occupation in Gaza. The intimacy of Abu Saif’s writing portrays this reality more fervently than anything I’ve heard before. Ben-Adir harrowingly honoured Abu Saif’s diary with such care, it felt as if the audience held a collective breath in our chest every time he began to speak. Sometimes they got caught in the back of his throat, or he had to pause to wipe away tears, as many of us in the audience did too. Playing the oud, a traditional Arabic instrument, Ahmed Adnan expertly enhanced the intensity of these performances. The maqams he used – traditional sets of melodic pitches characteristic of different emotions associated with specific events such as prayers, weddings or funerals – rippled their sadness, sensitivity and sometimes rage across the theater. We were told in the event’s introduction that it was ok to cry and to be emotional. It was refreshing to be given this permission. Sometimes the definition of resilience can be thought of as strength and force. At Voices of Resilience, however, the poignant performances showed us that when faced with such relentless grief, the true meaning of resilience is to retain the fullest capacity to feel hope and love. None on stage showed this more than the Palestinian activists, father and son duo, Musheir and Qasem El-Farra who joined for the Q&A. We saw that actually, when faced with grief as tenacious as this, with so many insidious layers, the true meaning of resilience is to insist on the capacity to feel, to hope and to love. Though he should not have to, Musheir El-Farra in particular embodied this enormously.
Too often, Arab men, and Palestinian men in particular, are vilified – not recognised as soft, or loving, or even human. Too often we see them resorting to extraordinary measures on social media to attempt to be worthy of empathy. The performers and speakers at the night’s event did not engage with this frustrating white supremicist stereotype at all. Abu Saif’s diary, especially, does not plead for humanity, nor does it employ overly visceral imagery of brutality. Instead, the writing is authentically pertinent through almost banal descriptions of everyday inconveniences and psychological torments which disrupt the life of normal people. In the event’s programme, Comma Press presented a quote from the 1994 introduction to postcolonial theorist Edward Said’s book Culture and Imperialism: ‘The power to narrate, to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them’. By publishing Abu Saif’s narrative, by hosting this event to hear his narration aloud, and by overcoming the challenges posed to the event even going ahead, Comma Press and the Voices of Resilience team offered an alternative to, and subversion of, the deceitful imperial media and censorship we are subjected to.
Interspersed with readings of Abu Saif’s diary entries, guest speakers performed Palestinian poetry. In her introduction to the event, Comma Press’s Bassma Ghalayini told the audience how, ironically, the initial idea for the event had come from a desire to share poetry in a non-policed environment. To embrace the pro-Palestinian community with art, outside of the weekly protests and marches which we usually engage with each other in every Saturday. Unfortunately, the security measures on the night were arguably veering towards Islamophobic, and gave the impression of the audience and performers being criminalized. Despite this irony and disappointment, it is an important reminder of the threat that poetry poses to power.
Especially when spoken, poetry is a well-loved mode of resistance used by communities across the SWANA region. From the Amazigh mountain villages in the Maghrib to the Universities of Cairo and across the Levant, it’s a practice which surpasses national borders, social class structures and time. In contexts of occupation and oppression, in Palestine in particular, poetry has a long history as a platform for expressing experiences, dreams and aspirations. As such, it challenges the legitimacy of the occupying forces by affirming and celebrating criminalized identities. Moshina Alam’s recent article chronicling Palestinian poetry from as far back as the Arab revolt to the present day was recently published in Amaliah. In the face of erasure and silencing, which Voices of Resilience narrowly overcame itself, but is, in fact, a harsh reality, the act of reading and listening to Palestinian poets is an act of cultural resilience.
Rather than offering a break from the heart-wrenching responses that Abu Saif’s narrative evoked, the poetry readings further captured the emotions of the audience – though these alternative pathways were a welcome alternative between chapters. The resonance of the verses, the rhythmic syntax and, sometimes, the use of satirical humour, ignited warmth throughout the audience. Though most of the performers read aloud onstage, Jeremy Corbyn read Refaat Alareer’s now widely quoted poem, ‘If I Must Die’, on video, flying a white kite as he recited.
The anguish of the audience was palpable. Many people know this poem by heart since Rafaat was murdered by airstrike on 6 December 2023. The news that his daughter, Shaima Refaat Alareer, poet in her own right and the loved one that‘If I Must Die’ is addressed to, was killed along with her family in another airstrike came just a few days after Voices of Resilience. These sick and twisted events remind us that Refaat and his family risked their lives for their artform. Now, only their words live on.
Looking around the audience, as well as the performers sitting on the stage, the collective grief was heavy and undeniable. Despite intrusive thoughts of anger, and sometimes an overwhelming sense of helplessness, the importance of bearing witness was made clear. We all, as an audience, as a venue, as passersby – in whatever capacity we have – carry a responsibility to listen and bear witness. And to expect a safe place to hold these testimonies, in whatever form they come in, is the least we should expect from our institutions. The event itself was triumphant, due to the amazing organisers, performers, HOME venue staff that were present on the night and the writers whose work was so beautifully evoked. It is imperative that as a community we have opportunities to come together, to grieve, to hold, and to bear witness. To engage in a solidarity which is not a projected fantasy, nor a selective empathy reserved only for the archetypes that fit a preconceived agenda. Voices of Resilience presented a reality as well as an ambition for liberation.
So how to close a review of one event, as impactful as it was, when it exists as only one event, while the continuous and relentless siege unfolds genocide in Gaza? In the face of increasingly bad news daily and ever-changing legislation around our rights to protest here in the UK, it is impossible to predict what the situation will be at the time this article gets published. The reality is there is no conclusion, no end. So for now, a poem. A kite flying for hope and solidarity.
If I Must Die
by Refaat Alareer
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
فال بد أن تعيش أنت
رفعت العرعير
إذا كان لا بد أن أموت
فال بد أن تعيش أنت
لتروي حكايتي
لتبيع أشيائي
وتشتري قطعة قماش
وخيوطا
(فلتكن بيضاء وبذيل طويل)
كي يبصر طفل في مكان ما من ّغّزة
وهو يح ّّدق في السماء
منتظرًاً أباه الذي رحل فجأة
دون أن يودع أحدًاً
وال حتى لحمه
أو ذاته
يبصر الطائرة الورقّية
طائرتي الورقية التي صنعَتها أنت
تحّلق في الأعالي
ويظ ّّن للحظة أن هناك مالكًاً
يعيد الحب
إذا كان لا بد أن أموت
فليأ ِِت موتي باألمل
فليصبح حكاية
ترجمة سنان أنطون
Translation by Sinan Antoon
Jessica El Mal is British Moroccan writer, curator and artist based. She currently curates for The Arab British Centre, is the founder of A.MAL Projects and is a current PhD candidate at University of Leeds.
Don’t Look Left by Atef Abu Saif is published by Comma Press.
You can donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians here.
Published 18.06.2024 by Jazmine Linklater in Explorations
2,125 words