Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Today, writing feels like planting the proverbial tree in front of the apocalypse. Decades ago, I started writing to do the words again. When I escaped like a refugee from Bosnia to Sweden in the 1990s, there was a time when the words stopped working in every way.
I couldn't even say “tree” and associate it with the big beautiful things outside the camp. I was crazy as Hamlet, crying “words, words, words!” Sound and rage. It means nothing.
We, the Bosnians, did not want to use the word “genocide” until the mighty judgment told us that we could, and even then, or especially then, the denial industry wants to prevent us from calling a spade. The denials have taught us that words have a burden. The right words can lead to action. Not like these empty phrases we heard about the Palestinian genocide.
I learned English at the end of my life, mainly because I was ashamed that the Swedes spoke it well and could not stimulate two words together to save my life. Over time, I learned that the stories of our forced exile, although unique, reflect the experience of displacing millions of other people. Somehow they created magical intimacy with people who were so many different from us who were sometimes welcomed from places I had never even heard of but heard of me. They had read my stories.
I imagined that this miraculous human relationship is similar to me, falling in love with this long -dead foreigner called Shakespeare at Stockholm University. His words came from the mouth of a little Pakistani professor with the largest voice I had ever heard. Ishrat Lindbrad, let her rest in peace, she had gray hair, colored sari and a British accent. “Being or not to be, this is the question,” she will recite in class.
She would become my teacher, my most fierce critic, and then my biggest fan. Always a friend. She was the reason for me to become a teacher. She was the reason to find out why Muslims pray for their teachers five times a day as soon as they pray for their parents. She was a good listener and didn't talk much, but when she spoke, she didn't matter. Never empty phrase. Never worn out a word. Always from the heart.
For the longest time, I wondered why God continues to repeat in the Qur'an that in paradise there would be no talk of inactive. It was one of the most tangible things to read. I want to say that anyone can understand that the bait of the beyond is expressed through things like gardens, rivers of milk and honey, wealth and unthinkable pleasures.
But to point out again and again that the paradise would be free from “trivial” or “lavish” chat, at the best case it was curious. I could not imagine someone say, “Hey, I'll work hard and be good and sacrifice everything to miss all these empty talk.” Now I can.
Remembering and experiencing our past as we observe the most ravine forms of force exercised by the Palestinian people, I am again brought out at that moment when the “tree” was not a tree and I could not stimulate two words together, even if you had me under firing S
Sometimes I am disgusted in the halls of my university where people have to say meaningful things, but what I hear most is empty talk. I do not recognize my Sweden, the country that has taken over thousands of US Bosnians in the moment of its biggest economic crisis and did well afterwards.
A former head of the Swedish church told me how once he flew to Sarajevo with help, landed on a dangerous asphalt, unloaded and flew back. Everyone contributed. During World War II, Raul Valenberg saved thousands of Jews in Hungary, issuing protective passports and sheltering them in buildings declared Swedish territory. I am the beneficiary of the Wallenberg Foundation, who helped me to finance my doctoral degree 20 years ago.
Now Sweden is cutting help. The Budget of the Agency for International International Development for Sustainable Peace is significantly reduced in just a few years, especially for the MENA region. We condemn and cut connections according to convenience. We help according to personal interest. The insolence of a position.
Sweden refrained from a resolution of the United Nations with a request for a humanitarian termination of fire in Gaza. There, in this great colose of nations, the resolutions sound like New Year's resolutions to us just mortal and the question is if a decisive thumbs can be moved to thumbs from crowds. And so “the businesses of the great moment … go wrong and lose the name of the action,” as Hamlet said.
It's been almost a year since I wrote. “Shrodinger genocide“And I wish the world would make me wrong with everything. I wrote because the words are my instruments. I wrote to the Swedish government about the future of Gaza education after there was peace. Written to friends and enemies. It is so said and written right now. Let's drown in words. It is as if every word has become a meme of endless stitches, and writing something still feels like planting the proverbial tree in the face of the apocalypse.
Even now, when the bombing has stopped and the long -awaited captive exchange has begun, I know from our own genocide history that crimes continue under the claim to end the fire, under the silence of the media and the crossing of foreign forces. If the war is really over, there are other types of fires that will have to be released by those surviving men, women and children who will eventually displace our attention, as well as others before us, allowing a cycle of their physical shift, for to continue.
Their images can slowly disappear from our emissions, but we should not allow condemnation and calls on the action to remain ordinary words. We must not stop wanting justice and respecting Palestinian rights. “
“Words, words, words,” I hear the ghost of Shakespeare's breath of my late teacher and wondering, is noble “to suffer from these slings and arrows with outrageous wealth, or to take a weapon against a sea of problems and contrasting them? “
The anger expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazee's editorial position.
