UEL Seminar November 14th

Andrea gave a talk and showed a cut of Samar's film of the Beirut Workshops to a small but really nice group. It took place at the University of East London's super-zoomy Campus in Docklands (above). Those present included Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, Erene Kaptani and Catherine Donaldson from the UEL staff and Jed, Andrea, Samar and I from the Beirut team.

Stas Smagana from the Goldsmith's MA course was also there and made some really good contributions during the discussion after. Both he and Erene have worked with refugees in London. Some areas of discussion:

The value of our making such a short visit.
The differences (or not) of working with refugees/victims of conflict in the UK context and those in their own country.
And the extent to which affected people coming to the UK context build new communities of support...
The need to return to Beirut with a follow up to our pilot project. And how that might be effected.

Later, I talked with Erene about her Playback theatre work and hope to see some of it before Christmas.

Video from Hezbollah Victory Celebration

This won't be the final edit but since it's now nearly two months since the event, I thought it best to at least put most of it online for people to get some idea.

Just to remind you: this was on September 25th 2006. In Haret Hreik, Dahieh, South Beirut, Lebanon.

PS. SONIA'S STORY (28TH SEPTEMBER, BELOW) HAS NOW GOT A 5 STAR RATING ON YOUTUBE!!! I HOPE THIS DOES AS WELL...

Madrasa in Dahieh

This is the local school where Jeremy and Andrea ran their music and puppet workshops.

I include two pictures snatched hurriedly before they began.

The school was very calm, pretty and had an air of great tranquility. Many of the staff were in evidence the day I was there, getting things ready, cleaning, preparing. But the school was still not operating as a school (on September 20th) as a result of the Israeli invasion and bombing and the refugee crisis it had caused.

As I understand things, 'Back to School' will still be delayed another week or so.

Workshop Gang

This is some of us sitting in the Garden of St Joseph's Church, part of the St Joseph's University. In the background is the Monot Theatre in Ashrafieh. This is a few minutes before we are to go inside and do our first workshop together. Tuesday September 19th at about 1815 pm.

Personnel included in the photo are Mohammed (orange T-shirt), Amina (green top), Hanane (white top), Hanifa (flowery pants), Maarouf (guy with the Pepsi) and Zahraa (black hijab). Can anyone identify the girl in the brown trousers?

Jeremy and Andrea seemed to have sat on an ants' nest...

A Few Things

I'm Explaining a Few Things


You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.


From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.

Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?

Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea.


And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.


And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

-- Pablo Neruda (writing about the Spanish Civil War) Trans. Nathaniel Tarn,

Sonia's Story.

This is Sonia.

I spoke about her in my post of September 25th. It's taken me until now to make a little edited version of my interview with her, conducted in her family flat after the 'Victory Celebration' in Dahieh.

The photograph 'Targeted Apartment Block', in the post below, was taken from her balcony that night too.

In fact, it was the bomb that took down this 13 story block of flats onto the supermarket below that caused all the damage to her own dwelling. She talks about this on the video.

You will hear other voices on the tape. I think they are mainly her mum talking to Hanane in the background. And you can also see her dad in the corridor, at one point, I believe, showing Hanane the damage the bomb caused.

Sonia was at pains to tell me that they still hadn't got the place fully right. The yellow colour of the door jamb, she explained, is only the undercoat! It won't be staying that colour!

The only other thing to say that the whole flat was lit by a couple of low wattage neon strips hung at strategic points around the flat. Once again, a result of the bombing. They were still lacking a lot of their electrics.

A Few Choice Targets

Photos:
A young female target.
Targeted apartment block.
A young male target.
Celebrating children target.
Targeted Motorway bridge, Dahieh.

Them - and Us

I'm taking the liberty of posting a comment that appeared on the blog this morning. It's from a friend of mine, Raf and I'm posting my reply here. It might help stimulate some healthy debate. Who knows?

raphaele has left a new comment on your post "Victory Celebration. Dahieh, Beirut":

the pics are great, the very last one could really have been taken on a futball victory ... the women are all covered. and anyway ... and i wonder if your way of telling things (tea, pastery and smiling people) isn't another way of writting propaganda !!! am i going to get censored ? anyway, i'm a desperate case, i'll never be a hezbollah fan whatever you write and say. looking at their leaders paintings is enough to discourage me. i'm going to brussels today, back at the end of the week. Hope to speak to you then.

Of course I'm going to publish it! This is the world of Hassan Nazrullah! We allow everything. Ooops! I've been brainwashed - Help! - maybe it was something they put in those biscuits!

But seriously, Raf, which 'way of telling things' would you prefer? Would you like me to tell it this way: That all these women were secretly unhappy that they were having to wear the hijab? Or, 'in truth', oppressed? That when they got home their arab husbands beat them (because, of course, it's well known that all arab husbands beat their wives) - so all their smiles on the Celebration were really false smiles? Or that many of the people who came to the Celebration, in their heart of hearts, don't actually like Hassan Nazrullah or Hezbollah, but are too afraid to say it? Or that some of the people who came in the coaches Hezbollah organised came because they'd never left their poor little villages and rather fancied a trip to a scruffy bit of wasteland in a poor suburb of Beirut, just to escape the daily wretchedness of their unbearable arab lives? Or that they were forced to come by local Hezbollah thugs, after threats made to their loved ones?

Or that all the children there, dancing around and waving flags, 'knew no better'? That they were just being manipulated - and practically ABUSED - by their parents? Or that even if all the people who were there were there of their own free choice, they don't actually understand what kind of organisation Hezbollah really is? Really. In reality. That, actually, those people we're - actually - just all being hysterical? Because, of course, being arabs, and being poor, and being Muslims, and being black - as near as damn it - they're just badly educated and don't know any better?...

Maybe.... maybe....

But wait a minute. Haven't I heard that all before? Isn't that the Figaro script? Remind me. Or the CNN one? Or the BBC's? Or the Time's? Or the Telegraph's? Or La Stampa's? Or The New York Time's. I forget. And, of course, these august news organisations always know best.... After all, they're not hysterical... they're objective... they're not black .... or arab.... they have The Truth.... despite anything - ANYTHING - that the local people might think or say or feel....

because, of course, WE IN THE WEST KNOW BETTER!! And always do.

Ok. Raf, I'm not pretending I didn't go there with an agenda. Everybody has an agenda. But it's the people who pretend they don't have the agenda who worry me. Particularly when they work for big news organisations.

At least I was there. I chose to go there. By choosing I already have an agenda, sure. But at least I was there on the ground. At least I was talking to ordinary people for four hours. Recording my impressions, however 'agendered' they were. And I'm just giving you one person's impression. Just one person. Isn't even that allowed any more? Not even one person's impression that disagrees with the orthodoxy? With the norm? With The Truth? With Le Monde? Not one? Forgive me. Forgive me for abusing the sacred. Forgive me for abusing the Truth. Forgive me for abusing The Orthodoxy. Confessio. Confessio. Confessio. Mea Culpa.

Raf. Next time come with me to Lebanon. I really hope to go again. And I really hope to go again soon. Come with me to Dahieh. To the Madrasat. To the bombed bridge. To the thirteen storey block of flats that's now a hole in the ground. Come and meet Zahraa with the hijab and the four Mohammeds and Abdullah and Zenaib (also with the hijab) and Hussein and Helen and La Donna and Heba and Ola and Jamal and Hanane and Hanifa and Rami.

And then we can have a good dialogue...

Oh, my god! It must have been something they put in the Lemonade!