Francesca Fawdery, a doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge specializing in Palestinian literature, says in an article on the British Middle East Eye website that this is an attempt to understand something, and that what she is crossing is an interaction of the overwhelming personal and collective grief that she has witnessed and experienced since the last attack on Gaza.
She compares what she writes in the comfort of her office in Cambridge, where she is only disturbed by the noise of traffic outside her window, and the sound of students laughing as they return home after a loud fun time, and her best friend falling asleep to the now familiar sound of Israeli warplanes. , imagining the dread he is experiencing and trying to feel it as much as possible.
However, she says, she will never understand this feeling, no matter how much she sympathizes with him; Because she was not in the same place as many other Palestinians who, having spent their lives under brutal military occupation, were now accustomed to that sound, she wondered: Could anyone become accustomed to such a sound? The writer points out her deep connection to Palestine, even though she is not Palestinian, and the enormous, unbridled sadness that fills her life, in sympathy with her many friends and loved ones there.
Amidst these conflicting feelings about the pain that she undoubtedly suffers, the writer says that she is learning to realize that this response, which seems excessive and tolerant, is in fact a sign of her humanity, and her body’s innate function of deep compassion for those who are in a situation harsher, more violent, and more dangerous than her own. But still it does not override her urge to grieve.
Refuse to censor grief
Francesca Fodry says that our ability to grieve for a life far from our own reveals a lot about who we are as humans. She referred to a speech given by Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American congresswoman, about the importance of grieving for lives we did not know, where she said that she saw a video clip of Gazan children suffering from psychological trauma crying surrounded by the rubble of their homes, and they were told, “Don’t cry” in Arabic. At this moment, Tlaib herself burst into tears, and emphatically shouted, “Let them cry,” before asserting, “If you are not crying, something is wrong.”
The writer narrates that this feeling stuck with her, when she was trying to understand her sadness and the sadness of everyone around her, that it is somehow related to the tragedy we are witnessing. She commented that regardless of who we are or where we come from, if we do not feel angry, upset, and sad, it means that something is wrong, and we must wonder why we are not taking action.
It believes that it is in the interest of world powers to divide lives into those who can be mourned and those who cannot be mourned, those whose grief justifies the war machine, and those whose grief undermines it. We must therefore reject this censorship of grief.
She referred to what was stated in the book of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, “Diaries of Ordinary Sadness,” where Mahmoud Darwish narrates the special sadness that Palestinians living in Palestine 1948 are forced to endure every year on the anniversary of the “War of Independence,” when citizens are asked to mourn the souls of Israeli soldiers. Who were lost in this war. At the same time, Arabs must “cry inside or explode from the pressure”; Because “declaring the birth of Israel is at the same time declaring the death of Palestine.” While one form of grief is sanctioned and encouraged, the other is “forbidden.”
Grief is a form of political action
The author comments that what she found from the reactions to the unfolding violence, as well as the constant images and stories of trauma that fill her ears, is that, contrary to Mahmoud Darwish’s comically sarcastic description of Palestinian grief as “normal” in the book’s title, there is nothing ordinary about it; Because it challenges the traditional pattern of grief, where a bad event occurs, or a series of events in which a sense of loss, actual or perceived, occurs.
She believes that if there is a reason for sadness, it is the opportunity to mobilize suffering as a means of resisting the violent circumstances from which it arises. The opportunity in which we can, in the open space of collective grief – the opportunity in which we acknowledge and share each other’s pain – demand a better future, and being born Palestinian does not mean being born dead already.
She says, it is necessary to complement words with actions; We must demand conditions in which human dignity is respected and in which the lives of Palestinians matter, not only in death, from the perspective of measuring statistics and calculating losses, but in life. Where the right to life – and to a life worth living – is truly inalienable.
The doctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge concluded the article by saying that securing the demand for the “right to a decent life” is not just an observation of a ceasefire, and it is not a special demand that will be addressed at a later time, perhaps 75 years from now. This demand is not a wish, a hope, or an ideal vision, but a precondition for human survival, adding that our sadness tells us something vital, and we must now listen to it.
