حول العودة من غزة

الرجوع إلى القاهرة من غزة تجربة غريبة وصعبة. لمدة خمسة أيام، عشنا - نحن مجموعة الأدباء والفنانين العرب الذين كنا "احتفالية فلسطين للأدب" - في غزة. والآن غادرنا. 

الأضواء، الضجيج، السيارات؛ القاهرة. الفروقات الشاسعة عبر المسافة القريبة. 

غزة، جارتنا، شقيقتنا: كم نحن قريبون، وكم تكافح الآن، وحدها.

لكن غزة لم تهزم. 

سراييفو تختال بعلامات الحرب فيها: تؤطر وتبرز دروس التاريخ للأجيال القادمة. بيروت تغطي علاماتها بالمساحيق والمولات - تختار أن تنسى، أن تعيش لليوم. نيويورك تدفع بنفسها في السماء، تنغرس فيها، تتحدى المستقبل. أما غزة فتعيد البناء، وتعيد البناء، وتعيد البناء. كل ما لديها تستعمله - فقط لتظل باقية. ليس بمقدورها أن ترسخ تاريخها ولا أن تؤَمِّن مستقبلها. تعيش بحسم في الحاضر: تعيد البناء، وتعيد البناء، وتقاوم. 

في غزة تبتلع الأساسيات حياتك اليومية - المياة، الكهرباء، البنزين. كلها تعاني فيها النقص، كلها تظهر وتختفي بتخطيط أياد أجنبية. 

في غزة تشم أنفاسك فقط حين تنظر إلى البحر، وحين تغرب الشمس تتقد المياة بكشافات السجن - خط متكامل ثابت من الأضواء يبتر الأفق، يمحي إمكانيات المجهول.

في غزة يعرف الناس أنك غريب حين تجفل لدوي خرق حاجز الصوت؛ لم تكتسب بعد المناعة لعذابات السجان.

في غزة تعلق بين الماضي والحاضر: تعاني وحشية الاستعمار القديم، يجسد تهديده اليوم روبوتات طائرة.

في غزة قوبلت بدفء لم أخبره من قبل، ورأيت صمودا لا يجب أن يطالَب به بشر، وتشرفت بالتعرف على شعب يحافظ - في وجه كل المصاعب - على القيم التي تشكل صميم إنسانيتنا: العطف، والتراحم، والتجمعية، والصبر. التخلي عن غزة يثير التساؤلات حول كم الإنسانية المتبقية فينا - ويدفعنا للعمل على التمسك بها. 

On Returning From Gaza

Coming back to Cairo from Gaza is a strange and difficult experience. For five days the Palestine Festival of Literature – a collection of Arab artists from inside and outside the Arab world – lived in Gaza City. Now we have left.

The lights, the noise, the traffic of Cairo. The contrast is overwhelming.

Gaza, our neighbour, our sister: how close we are, have always been. And how hard she struggles now, alone.

But Gaza is not defeated.

Sarajevo wears her scars with defiance– memorializing history’s lessons for the next generation. Beirut paints hers over with malls and make-up – choosing to forget, to live for today. New York pushes herself further into the heavens – challenging the future. But Gaza, Gaza rebuilds and rebuilds and rebuilds again. It takes everything she has to continue to exist. She can neither cement her history nor secure her future. She exists firmly in the present: rebuilding, rebuilding, resisting.

In Gaza your daily life is consumed by fundamentals – water, electricity, petrol. All in short supply, all arriving and disappearing according to the designs of foreign hands.

In Gaza the only free breath you can take is looking out to sea. But when the sun sets the water is illuminated with prison floodlights – a perfect unmovable line of lights that cuts short the horizon, erases the possibility of the unknown.

In Gaza people know you’re foreign when you jump at the explosion of a sonic boom; still not yet numbed to the jailor’s torments.

In Gaza you exist between the past and the future, suffering colonial barbarities unleashed by robots in the air.

In Gaza I was greeted with a friendliness I have never felt before. I saw a resilience that should not have to be possible. And I had the honour of meeting a people who are keeping alive – against all odds – the values we prize as humans: compassion, community, patience. That they have been so abandoned should make every one of us question what little humanity we have left . And do everything we can to hold on to it.

Analogue Zone, Cairo

This week Analogue Zones begins in Cairo - a week long workshop on shooting, processing and cutting 8mm and 16mm film. It is the first project to run out of Cimatheque - soon to be the hippest cinema in Africa. 

The week opens with a screening tomorrow night of selected experimental films, including one I made when taking the same workshop in Athens in September 2011. 

The Aspirations of Man

I haven't had a chance to write anything for a long time and as work intensifies along three fronts - Mosireen, the Khaled Ali campaign and the Palestine Festival of Literature - it may be a while yet.

So I thought it worth to quickly post a video that epitomizes all that we hope will soon be within reach of independent film-makers the world over.

Reponse to Arab Israeli Book Review

Ahdaf Soueif's book on the revolution so far has, comfortingly, been given a lousy review by Samer el Youssef in the Arab Israeli Book Review. I have left the following comment, and it is "awaiting moderation". But since I don't expect it to be approved, here it is: 

I wonder if the reviewer has read even a chapter of this book? Soueif makes it clear, repeatedly, that the book is intended as an act of intervention in an ongoing revolution, that it is false to think of the 18 days as a complete narrative and that we are engaged in an ongoing struggle.

Secondly, anyone that is familiar with Soueif's work, or, indeed, has read the book, will know that she has been writing fiercely critical articles of the Mubarak regime for the last decade. For anyone that wants to check them out, they are all compiled both on her website and the Guardian's.

Finally - though it's hardly worth mentioning in such a summarily incoherent article - the reviewer accuses Soueif of "posing" as a revolutionary, aligns her with people "who don't know a word of Arabic" - and then goes on to say she was seen "manning the barricades at Tahrir Square". Which one is it? Does the reviewer even know?

The fog of confusion hangs thick over this article. But that should hardly be a surprise given the website that hosts it. 

The Camel Battle: Anniversary Edition

My first real day of action in the Egyptian Revolution.

The People Demand the Fall of the Regime: Egypt 2011

This is a short film I've put together that tries to show what 2011 in Egypt felt like.