Writers Read: Alaa Al-Qaisi on Gaza, Berlin, and the Reading That Was Cancelled

00:00:04: Hi, I'm Fabias Haberkorn.

00:00:06: You're listening to Airlift from Berlin Review In September of the year in which the Palestinian writer Alar al-Qaizi was able to leave Gaza on a student visa.

00:00:19: In January this year, Alar arrived in Berlin for residency in Wanzi as part of a program for writers and exile.

00:00:28: It's been the first time in Berlin that war and crackdown on Palestinian lives continued.

00:00:33: back home writing became a way for her to track the passing days.

00:00:39: At the end of the residency, there was a scheduled reading where Allah along with other Palestinian

00:00:44: writers

00:00:45: would present her work publicly.

00:00:48: that Reading did not take place as planned and The exile program that had invited Allah Was entirely defunded and dismantled.

00:00:58: All of this unfolds in a wider moment.

00:01:00: in Germany were public space for Palestinian voices has become increasingly restrictive With events cancelled, invitations withdrawn and conditions of speech narrowed.

00:01:11: As this was happening, Alaa still writing her Berlin diary which absorbed the cancellation in atmosphere around it became not only a reflection on Gaza or Berlin but also record what means to write when possibility being heard is no longer certain.

00:01:32: Berlin Review published Alas text This Spring But we wanted to create a moment where her words could not only be read but also heard in Her own voice.

00:01:44: Today, We're sharing our last diary of the reading that never took place.

00:01:50: Here is Allah al-Qaizi.

00:01:56: The Last time life revealed To me its most destitute and defying face.

00:02:02: I didn't know how i would ever learn to inhabit the quiet Of other cities.

00:02:07: How can one?

00:02:08: A dwell incultivated stillness after one's eyes have been filled with dust, trouble and the anatomy for one.

00:02:16: The scenes that once forced themselves into my vision walls collapsed mid-sentence straights opened like wands still linger just behind my gaze And before me now stretches an orderly horizon of trees water undisciplined silence.

00:02:38: I often ask myself whether all the cities of earth gathered in their civility and grace could erase what my eyes have witnessed.

00:02:48: Whether they're calm, could soften the noise that continues to crumble inside my head like an underground current?

00:02:58: I smile often... ...I offer a careful English round it and polite.. ..I watch faces shift when i say that im Palestinian That Im from Gaza.

00:03:15: I reside now in a grecious villa that feels brutal from another century.

00:03:21: At times, i imagine im inhabiting the house of some childhood fiction.

00:03:27: Judy Aput and Sally might have raced through these corridors lit by afternoon dust.

00:03:35: My room overlooks Lake Vansi.

00:03:38: The view returns me to another window.

00:03:42: Another body falter...I once lived beside the Mediterranean.

00:03:48: My room opened into Gaza's restless, salt-heavy sea stretching out to horizon.

00:03:54: I never understood.

00:03:58: I didn't know what lay beyond that blue line where safe fastened itself to sky.

00:04:04: Gaza for all its warmth was a vast ineclosure.

00:04:13: Children grew beside the waves without knowing What The Waves Concealed.

00:04:19: There Was Nothing Visible Beyond That Line Only a thin blue seam binding heaven to water.

00:04:27: And now I stand beyond the edge, far beyond it Between me and other shore-like continents Seas entire oceans.

00:04:42: There is an irony in admitting that The only place i ever felt An unbroken sense of safety was Gaza... ...and now Vanzi!

00:04:51: I do not feel safe here.. ..I feel suspended observing Present, but unrooted.

00:04:59: The quiet does not settle inside me.

00:05:02: It hovers around like something borrowed.

00:05:06: When I wake up in the night... ...I don't hear waves... ...pressing against dark.

00:05:11: No salt entering the lungs.

00:05:14: The lake lies frozen and moving Its surface sealed.

00:05:19: I find myself rushing for a disturbance Some trembling into water.

00:05:25: That would answer the unrest on my chest.

00:05:28: The immopility feels unnatural, almost accusatory.

00:05:34: I used to wonder why writers lamented January in Gaza.

00:05:39: January was tender.

00:05:41: people will come drain as a guest then prayed for it.

00:05:44: when they delayed even in security there was gratitude for clouds.

00:05:51: only here did i understand what january means.

00:05:54: and the western world a long corridor of night A cold that enters the ponds, a darkness that encourages solitude and writing.

00:06:05: In Gaza... The month that stretches like this is July Not merciless as in the Gulf but heavy, prolonged, lingering.

00:06:17: I've not yet lived the full summer here…I don't know what this land escape will ask of me when it burns.

00:06:27: On my second day in Vonsie i met a Belgian writer at the kitchen while making coffee.

00:06:32: She writes a children's literature.

00:06:35: She told me she had once visited Palestine with her Palestinian friend and as he spoke I saw in her eyes Nablus and Hybron, Akka's shore.

00:06:46: Jerusalem's stone washed an afternoon light.

00:06:51: She showed me photographs of marches Of the flags raised on country streets Her mother chanting in Arabic words She didn't fully understand but cared faithfully.

00:07:27: Her pronunciation uneven, her feeling intact.

00:07:37: She may not have known every meaning yet she carried the Mediterranean salt in her voice.

00:07:44: We rolled the grape leaves together lemon and olive oil perfuming the kitchen.

00:07:50: we exchanged confidences.

00:07:52: I give here my stories on those of my people.

00:07:59: We whipped it through Hamnet perhaps alone in that dark cinema.

00:08:05: She told me of translating testimonies from children during the war of two thousand eight The other side of the word, with a virgin that rarely reaches us We who were living inside the obliteration.

00:08:23: she told Me how Gaza unsettled their moral ground.

00:08:27: How three arranged there understanding of distance and responsibility?

00:08:32: Gaza so small that it could be mistaken for a modest poor-onside villain, and yet fast enough to hold generations of waiting.

00:08:48: A Ukrainian writer once told me we share much.

00:08:51: She said that for four years her country has endured what refuses to end.

00:08:58: That for two years mine had been suffering.

00:09:02: I told her more firmly than i intended that we have been in the home of this suffering since nineteen eighty-four.

00:09:11: She looked at me and didn't answer, I wondered later if my words sounded harsh.

00:09:18: what good comes from layering grief as if sorrow were a sureed garment?

00:09:24: If i spoke plainly it was because simplification has always been the first act of a rager!

00:09:38: It was a book of photographs.

00:09:40: I found it in small book shop by chance, on the first page at Reed.

00:09:46: you can't go home

00:09:47: again.".

00:09:48: I remember standing there staring as a sentence to assemble into an almost casual.

00:09:56: something inside me broke when i read it.

00:10:02: Brilliant gathers the scattered.

00:10:04: with acquired efficiency It assembled the fragments of continents into one geography.

00:10:11: It brought me to rooms with Afghans, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Syrians.

00:10:18: Palestine was both my introduction and major.

00:10:23: A middle-aged Afghan woman once asked where I came from.

00:10:34: I was brilliant.

00:10:40: I smiled,

00:10:41: beautiful.".

00:10:43: She told us about her homeland—her language, her children.

00:10:49: Her English was fragile but her warmth wasn't.

00:10:52: She said she had taught her children.

00:10:54: Dari then placed their hand over the hurt and said… the mouth of a shark.

00:11:16: One rainy afternoon, the weather led me to into a Palestinian restaurant or perhaps memory dead inside The airport appeared in fragments paintings, plates status photographs.

00:11:28: Palestine was present everywhere.

00:11:31: on the door that Kofia Hanzala Najal al child still turned away from a word That has not yet earned his gaze.

00:11:40: Thayluz played then Abdul Halim and suddenly a familiar song leaped forward.

00:11:48: The house of dignity of our house, the word House struck me like a reopened wound.

00:11:57: We didn't lose only a house we lost the entire city.

00:12:04: Burden is my first true meeting with a big city Big in space, big in people.

00:12:10: A song by the Palestinian singer Faraj Selayman Walks with me.

00:12:14: every time I walk Berlin's streets Berlin hurts a little.

00:12:19: It's a beautiful and full of people, but I miss some Sabri And I miss you most of all.

00:12:25: Only now do i understand why a city like berlin can hurt A city.

00:12:31: this fast gives longing room to grow.

00:12:34: it lets homesickness take over palestinian far from Palestine?

00:12:39: It makes him miss the woman he loves kept aboard by exile The small talk of neighbors and the habit following news from everyone he left behind.

00:12:52: Asking about them one by one with urgency and love, And their stand to why Berlin can feel like an open wound.

00:13:05: I remember how Gaza a small city once it closed in around us The occupation turned into separate blocks and scattered neighborhoods North & South and east, and west.

00:13:20: Until even directions felt like fences.

00:13:23: I remember how often my peripheral city felt too tight for me And that it was turned into rubble in dust.

00:13:33: Now i'm here again In this large City.

00:13:36: I walk and feel the spatchiness of time & place.

00:13:40: Space I once thought Was normal Space I Once believed Belong to The word... ...And I Feel what is inside Me.

00:13:49: I touched the emptiness that lives here.

00:13:53: I touch the scars of the genocide left in me, I touch things i used to take as certain how they have changed...I touch ideas.

00:14:03: this catastrophe has reshaped and understand why Berlin hurt even when the Palestinian stories are not the same different paths.

00:14:15: but the ache is familiar.

00:14:21: Berlin is a set of contralections, maybe it's the city or everything.

00:14:26: Something is always happening something is always beginning.

00:14:31: It's a set if simulation off movement asset before starting over.

00:14:36: People come here to reinvent themselves To lose an old name and try on a new one.

00:14:43: Many seem to find themselves in berlin where at least Find a version of themselves they can live with.

00:14:50: It's a place where you cannot remain exactly as your were.

00:14:55: At times it feels gentle, almost magical As if life is trying to comfort you.

00:15:02: You see signs everywhere small messages from fate.

00:15:06: I felt them every day In Berlin.

00:15:09: i find the kind of forms among friends Something off the Arab spirit.

00:15:15: But there was also darkness that does not look away for me And six weeks I slipped through the night only two or three times, out of a pure exhaustion.

00:15:28: The rest of that time long nights came at me like a blue.

00:15:32: Perhaps that is why this country sometimes you grow him in my chest Its politics feels like hand-pressing down even when no one speaks.

00:15:43: i felt the weight from My first public reading At the Free University Of Berlin.

00:15:49: A Palestinian friend invited me to read and speak.

00:15:53: The reading was called Gaza Speaks, but how can Gaza Speak alone?

00:15:59: They seem to ask without her executioner the Executioner who has lived for years inside a proud, polished guilt I said there in blessing to us push of its unholicast writing speaking about the similarities between holocaust writing and writing.

00:16:18: coming out of Gaza She read passages written by holocaust victims and dear reader, I don't deny the horror of that history.

00:16:29: But why must i persuade a German audience That what we lived through is like The Holocaust A genocide?

00:16:39: When What Is Happening Has Already Crossed Human Limits?

00:16:44: The Genocide in Gaza Even What has Been Documented Is Enough To Prove Itself And there is more than was never documented.

00:16:55: What we carry inside us like fire, memories of people and the stones broken together.

00:17:01: Numbers are not the midger.

00:17:03: Population counts do not decide who's pin is real... ...and while I'm writing this text now People in Gaza are still intense that have fled with rain With no safe walls While Israeli palms still fall.

00:17:22: Do I really need to be inside that scene again for what i say, to be treated as real?

00:17:29: Those who were once casted as victims those whose suffering became a moral shield now use that shield as power.

00:17:39: That power is practiced with forest and land.

00:17:43: It's not theirs against an indigenous people.

00:17:47: How many times Must a Palestinian tell their story before this word finally listens?

00:17:55: This word that pretends it has standards, while it keeps changing the rules.

00:18:05: Later I learned even placing the Holocaust and Gaza in same sentence was not possible until one year ago so maybe as far as many Germans can go When they tried to approach living in human equations today, placed beside the tidy files of gender self-determination.

00:18:27: Woman's right!

00:18:29: Migrants' rights... Someone gave me a plain white book and English no cover No design Only one bold line.

00:18:45: We have chosen life.

00:18:46: Students speeches for Palestine collected it from Berlin's courtrooms.

00:18:54: I read that same night.

00:18:56: It was short, and it is the most honest thing I have ever read here.

00:19:03: It also showed me something i needed to see A new generation stemming out of old blind frames that pushed Palestinian into a forgotten corner of history.

00:19:15: They are asking... they're searching.. they're noticing!

00:19:19: I cried when I read about one student who recited a poem by writer from Gaza before court And how that was turned into a charge?

00:19:30: I cried when i saw the words Hiba Kamp on campus.

00:19:35: Referring to Hiba Abu Nada, The Palestinian food.

00:19:39: It became my reason for arrest student.

00:19:43: They didn't even say her full name.

00:19:46: it Was only Hiba camp.

00:19:49: But when hand is stained with blood Names do not stay quiet they follow like a curse.

00:19:58: I keep asking myself When will Germany step out of the mud of its past and recognize what may be a second transformation of guilt?

00:20:08: Arming those ones cast as it's victims after its first turn Transformation when guilt itself became The country's foundation?

00:20:19: or is good?

00:20:19: not with the point at all.

00:20:21: Is that only power?

00:20:23: I don't know.

00:20:24: And honestly, I don' t care anymore to understand the mind of the killer.

00:20:30: I'm not the stevesky studying the souls of criminals.

00:20:34: I'm not a saint, who forgives!

00:20:37: I am a Palestinian woman.

00:20:39: I lived under siege and pumping for at least thirty years... ...I lived under genocide and constant pumping.. ..for atleast seven hundred days almost two years….

00:20:51: …I've lived every kind of fear produced by Israel's tools of extermination….

00:20:56: And even the word tools feels too gentle.

00:21:00: Some of these tools were supplied or safeguarded by countries like Germany, the same country that hosts me now through one its cultural institutions.

00:21:11: So tell me... What is the danger in three Palestinians sitting on a stage where we're reading entitled The Sea Is There But We Earn Not A Literature From Palestine?

00:21:23: What a threat!

00:21:24: Does such a scene

00:21:25: pose?!

00:21:27: Is it forbidden

00:21:28: here?...

00:21:28: to utter the word Palestinian alongside land and sea without adding a counterweight.

00:21:36: Or is it that absence of the executioner from victims' story that defies them, so much as cultural institutions must be defunded an entire programme erased?

00:21:53: Vanzi's bidding me for wool has at first received me beneath a lucid sky.

00:22:00: Today, I noticed a faint movement on the lake.

00:22:04: A subtle trembling of though as if the surface were reconsidering its stillness.

00:22:12: This room this house season They belong to a journey that is beautiful and better in equal measure.

00:22:21: Perhaps The word has always arranged itself this way.

00:22:26: perhaps the Palestinian enters her own As a question before entering.

00:22:31: as a person I sometimes feel i encounter this truth too early, collided with it before i had fully learned how to stand.

00:23:03: But then once again transit.

00:23:06: Carrying more than I arrived with, leaving with the questions... ...I cannot yet

00:23:11: answer.".

00:23:33: That was Alar al-Qaisi

00:23:35: reading

00:23:36: Better Than Berlin her essay for Berlin Review.

00:23:39: You can read Alar's work at BLNReview.de.

00:23:43: If you enjoyed this reading please consider supporting our work.

00:23:46: A subscription starts just five euros a month and gives your access to an entire archive of essays, reviews and all of our iLift episodes at BLNReview.de.

00:23:57: Our audio producer is Caitlyn Roberts, my name is Tobias Harbocorn editor of BLN Review.

00:24:03: thanks for listening.