Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson read an extract from the second part of Adania Shibli's novel "Minor Detail", a haunting meditation on war, violence and memory that cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

This reading was originally conceived as part of Radio Al-Hara's 24 Hours Palestine.

Translation from Arabic: Elisabeth Jaquette
Voices: Graeme Thomson & Silvia Maglioni

A mix by our comrades from Radio Tropiezo / Crater Invertido from Mexico City, originally created for Radio Al-Hara’s 24 Hours Palestine broadcast.

Thank you so much Radio Tropiezo!

RADIO TROPIEZO
https://radiotropiezo.org/

RADIO AL-HARA
https://www.radioalhara.net/

24 HOURS PALESTINE
https://soundcloud.com/24hrs-palestine

Asmaa Azaizeh is a Palestinian poet and interdisciplinary artist. She was born in 1985 in the village of Daburieh. For firefly frequencies artist Caterina Giansiracusa reads the Italian translation of her poem "The Eye of the Blackbird".

Thank you Caterina!

Here is the original version in Arabic:

عين الشحرور
 
بعد قليل
سيسقط قرص حياتي في حضني
 
لن يحدث الكثير بعد ذلك
 
الّذين تمنّيتُ لقاءهم ماتوا
البلد الّذي حلمتُ به
صار أغنية رابْ في سيّارةٍ بعيدة
الخيول الّتي ربّيتها في صغري
عضّت ذراعي
ولا يبدو أنّها ستفلتها
 
في كلّ الأحوال
محبرتي كبيرةٌ
ولا يبدو بأنّي سأعيش وأفرغها
القصائد الّتي تمنّيتُ كتابتها زججتُها في كفنه
والأخطبوطات الّتي نتأتْ من ظهري
علّمتُها كيف تتلمّس غيابه
 
أجلس فوق صخرة الشوق
وأنتظر أن تنحتني الريح
فأصير شحرورًا بعينٍ كبيرة
عينٍ كبيرةٍ وعميقة
سأرى فيها قرص حياتي الجديد
ربّما لن أذكر أنّني كنتُ أنا
وأنّ هذه الشجرة
الّتي ستصير بيتي
كانت شيئًا غامضًا كأنّه أبي.

https://www.asmaa-azaizeh.com/

JEAN GENET QUATRE HEURES À CHATILA
by Pharoah Chromium

UNE PHOTOGRAPHIE A DEUX DIMENSIONS… 06:07
SAINT GENET À CHATILA 04:42

This podcast comes from a 7” vinyl release, a spoken word record with a sonic background.
The two tracks are also a continuation of what was initially started with a previous release of Pharoah Chromium named "Gaza: an electro-acoustic collage that tried to capture the intensity of the 2014 war waged in Palestine, a subjective record with political content on historical events.

In this case the focus is on the massacres that took place in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila over the course of three days in September 1982, in Beirut, Lebanon.

In an eerie twist of fate, one the most talented and subversive writers of the 20th century happened to be visiting Beirut at the time these gruelling events occured. He was one of the first foreigners to enter the camps and witness the carnage. His text “4 hours in Shatila” is a minutious and poetic account of the war crimes Genet’s eyes encountered and endured for 4 hours that day.

The chosen excerpts of the original french text are read by Elli Medeiros, a singer well known for her legendary collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and producer Jacno among many other things, who had the kindness to accept lending her voice to the powerful material.

Thank you so much Pharoah Chromium!

https://pharoahchromium.bandcamp.com/album/jean-genet-quatre-heures-chatila

Read “4 hours in Shatila” English full text PDF: 
www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/38796

Lebanese artist and performer Lina Issa reads "We" by Palestinian poet Ghayath Almahoun,written during the Israeli bombing of Gaza at the end of 2008.

(English translation by Catherine Cobham)

WE
We, who are strewn about in fragments, whose flesh flies through the air like raindrops, offer our profound apologies to everyone in this civilised world, men, women and children, because we have unintentionally appeared in their peaceful homes without asking permission. We apologise for stamping our severed body parts into their snow-white memory, because we have violated the image of the normal, whole human being in their eyes, because we have had the impertinence to leap suddenly on to news bulletins and the pages of the internet and the press, naked except for our blood and charred remains. We apologise to all those who did not have the courage to look directly at our injuries for fear they would be too horrified, and to those unable to finish their evening meals after they had unexpectedly seen fresh images of us on television. We apologise for the suffering we caused to all who saw us like that, unembellished, with no attempt having been made to put us back together or reassemble our remains before we appeared on their screens. We also apologise to the Israeli soldiers who took the trouble to press the buttons in their aircraft and tanks to blow us to pieces, and we are sorry for how hideous we looked after they aimed their shells and bombs straight at our soft heads, and for the hours they are now going to spend in psychiatrists’ clinics, trying to become human again, like they were before our transformation into repulsive body parts that pursue them whenever they try to sleep. We are the things you have seen on your screens and in the press, and if you made an effort to fit the pieces together, like a jigsaw, you would get a clear picture of us, so clear that you would be unable to do a thing.

Thank you so much Lina for your reading!

Ghayath Almahoun
https://www.ghayathalmadhoun.com/poetry-in-english

Lina Issa
https://dancingontheedge.nl/artists/lina-issa/

Maria Nadotti legge tre passaggi dalla conversazione tra Rüdiger Wischenbart, Jean Genet e Leila Shahid, avvenuta a Vienna il 6 e il 7 dicembre 1983.
 
La conversazione è raccolta nel volume Jean Genet, Palestinesi, trad. it. di Marco Dotti, il Saggiatore, Milano 2024, pp. 205-219. 
Il testo integrale
Qui


Maria Nadotti reads three passages (in Italian) from the conversation between Jean Genet, Leila Shahid and Rüdiger Wischenbart, that took place in Vienna on the 6th and 7th December 1983.
 
Thank you so much, Maria!

Image from the film Ici et ailleurs, Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville

WALA
Chiara Guidi reads the French translation of WALA, by Palestinian poet and activist Susan Abulhawa. The poem evokes and "speaks for" (and with) the thousands of Palestinians, whose lives and livelihoods have been stolen or destroyed by Israel, as they in turn become a source of cheap labor, lining up in long demeaning queues to work in Israel, where they are often exploited and mistreated. It also "speaks for" (and with) all the oppressed people around the world.

Thank you Susan, Thank you Chiara!

WALA *
(Susan Abulhawa)
 
It’s 3 am
In the cattle cage

The line is long
And thick
With bodies

You wait

A jibneh sandwich
With cucumber
In a plastic bag
Clutched in your callused laborer’s hand

Your wife prepared your breakfast and lunch
She was up before you
And together you prayed a predawn salat

She kissed your face and said
Allah ma’ak ya habibi
Allah be with you, my love

You kiss the faces of your sleeping babies
You haven’t seen them awake in months
And you wonder
Has Walid’s voice begun to crack yet?
Have Wijdad’s hips begun to flare?
How big was Suraya’s smile when she came home
with her report card?

It’s 4 am
In the cattle cage

Still, you wait
The line before you is so long
And behind you now, it is longer

Few speak
You’re packed so damn tight
That you hold one another upright

You see your own fatigue
Reflected in the weariness etched on
The faces all around you

You look away
Pine for a smoke
But who the hell can afford that?

You stare at the graffiti beyond the
Iron bars holding you in
Written just for you
Written
By zionist settlers sucking the breath from your lungs

You understand the meaning
Of their English words
“Die Sand Niggers”

Sometimes
You pine for that, too.

It’s 5 am
In the cattle cage

The soldiers arrive
The line loosens
You take one step forward
Propelled by the weight of bodies
Behind you

Your jibneh sandwich
With cucumber
In a plastic bag
Is crushed.
It never survives

It’s 7 am
In the cattle cage

Now is your turn
You produce your papers
Unfold and refold
Eyes down
Heart down
Your shoes are down on their luck

But
You’re out of the line
Fifteen men before you were pulled aside
And you tried not to look
Not to hear the one begging
Don’t hit me

It’s 7:30 am
On the cattle bus

You ride
The country they stole from you
Seeds outside your window
And you imagine
The man you would have been
The man you should have been
Out there
Riding the family steed
The thoroughbred mares your grandfather
Raised and nurtured and loved
In a Palestine
Un-raped
Un-stolen

It’s 8 am
You get off the cattle bus
Your crushed jibneh sandwich
With cucumber
In a plastic bag
In one hand

Your eyes down
Heart down
You put your toolbox down to knock
On the zionist settler’s back door
Where the help goes

But

The zionist settler boss-man yells
Wala
Mish hon el yom!
Not there today
Boy!

And all you can do is thank Allah that your
Wife and your babies are not
There to hear them call you
Wala

* 'Wala' in this context is similar to the word 'boy' used by slave-owners when addressing their slaves.

A LITANY FOR “ONE LAND”
After Audre Lorde

(Mosab Abu Toha, from Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear)

For those living on the other side,
we can see you, we can see the rain
when it pours on your (our) fields, on your (our) valleys,
and when it slides down the roofs of your
“modern” houses (built atop our homes).
Can you take off your sunglasses and look at us here,
see how the rain has flooded our streets,
how the children’s umbrellas have been pierced
by a prickly downpour on their way to school?
The trees you see have been watered with our tears.
They bear no fruit.
The red roses take their color from our blood.
They smell of death.
The river that separates us from you is just
a mirage you created when you expelled us.
It is one land!
For those who are standing on the other side
shooting at us, spitting on us,
how long can you stand there, fenced by hate?
Are you going to keep your black glasses on
until you’re unable to put them down?
Soon, we won’t be here for you to watch.
It won’t matter if you blink your eyes or not,
if you can stand or not.
You won’t cross that river
to take more lands,
because you will vanish into your mirage.
You can’t build a new colony on our graves.
And when we die,
our bones will continue to grow,
to reach and intertwine with the roots of the olive
and orange trees, to bathe in the sweet Yaffa sea.
One day, we will be born again when you’re not there. Because this land knows us. She is our mother.
When we die, we’re just resting in her womb
until the darkness is cleared.
For those who are NOT here anymore,
We have been here forever.
We have been speaking but you
never cared to listen.