Maaza Mengiste on Photography, War, and the Stories History Forgot

00:00:00: What is that force, guides people to do things for other human beings?

00:00:09: I don't think these are monsters.

00:00:12: We have to figure out what enables this so we can begin thinking about how we might be able intervene.

00:00:33: with

00:00:34: chapters bookshop in Berlin, where my colleague Merit Weber talked to the writer Masa Mengiste.

00:00:40: Masa is a novelist essayist and professor of English.

00:00:43: she's written two novels beneath The Lion's Gaze and The Shadow King which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in twenty-twenty.

00:00:51: Both books are set in Ethiopia one during the nineteen thirty five Italian invasion And other during the revolution of the nineteen seventies Which ended Emperor Haile Selassie's reign.

00:01:04: Throughout these novels and her other stories, Maza is often circling one long-standing but urgent question – what makes ordinary decent people do indecent things?

00:01:15: Maza spoke with Merritt about the role photography plays in both her writing process.

00:01:30: Our thanks to Chapter's bookshop in Moabit for hosting the event.

00:01:34: And now here is Mered Weber, In conversation with Masa Mengiste.

00:01:37: Enjoy The Show!

00:01:43: So maybe because some people might not know your work I think that way would summarize it or sort of these books interact with each other Beneath the Lion's Gaze being first one which was set rule and the beginning of the Durg regime, which essentially follows this violent transition.

00:02:02: And then The Shadow King goes back in history to sort-of the beginnings of Halle Selassie in the nineteen thirties and looks at this phase of Italian attempted invasion in Ethiopia.

00:02:13: Both stories work on very similar themes but different temporalities.

00:02:19: I think that shows up also within each book.

00:02:24: Jump and interweave sort of between these time frames.

00:02:26: We have the nineteen thirties, the seventies but then also more contemporary moments.

00:02:31: What can we gain by approaching?

00:02:34: These histories in The way that you do?

00:02:38: Thank You for that.

00:02:39: thank you so much.

00:02:42: Now you make me think of all the books in conversation, including... ...the one that I'm working on right now.

00:02:50: Over the course of my work what i have been trying to figure out and.. ..I've had to think about this as a move into new work or ideas.... ....I really believe whether your writer is doing something else..... have a nagging preoccupation in our lives.

00:03:10: We all had this question that we keep coming back to again and again, that guides the decisions that we make regardless of what they are.

00:03:20: And I've found that... ...I keep coming into moments of conflict the Ethiopian Revolution of the Seventies, The Italian Invasion of nineteen thirty-five and now Berlin in these interwar years as Nazism is rising.

00:03:37: And I'm not so much interested in violence but i think that more concerned with pivotal moment when things began to change.

00:03:51: I'm more interested in these individual decisions that lead to decent people doing indecent things.

00:04:02: How does that happen?

00:04:04: Whether it's on a large scale as militarily or whether its'in the home, what is that force That guides People To do Things to other human beings?

00:04:20: and i think In naive way.

00:04:23: I'm hoping that if...I can figure this out in my writing, If i can figure out That hinge where everything changes for a human being maybe we Can begin to find ways To stop it In someway.

00:04:41: Both books and both stories also speak to historical narratives we're not used to approaching from an African perspective, right?

00:04:49: So on the one hand sort of rise a fascism in the beginnings of Second World War and then also way that speak about Cold War.

00:04:57: Both these novels intervene is what I would hint at but my question actually whether you think about it in this sense.

00:05:05: are those stories supposed to intervene in dominant discourses or they more things should stand?

00:05:12: I

00:05:14: don't know how it's possible for these histories to stand on their own because when we say world history, We often tend to think of European History and yet Africans And people from other parts of the World outside Of Europe have always been pivotal and central To world history.

00:05:35: To global history.

00:05:36: Mussolini deciding to invade Ethiopia.

00:05:41: That invasion was called the

00:05:44: first

00:05:45: real war of World War II.

00:05:48: It's impossible to separate what happened in Ethiopia from What Happened with The Rest Of The World beyond nineteen thirty-five, it is just impossible.

00:05:57: you can't separate it!

00:06:02: It's so deeply connected.

00:06:04: and when I'm writing these books.

00:06:06: I'm not thinking just of that.

00:06:07: i'm really exploring the lives of ordinary people, but i'm also aware Of how pivotal Africans have always been to The existence of Europe.

00:06:17: we have Just always been there And in many ways europe would Not exist the way That it does if not for us.

00:06:24: But We are often confronted with a wall?

00:06:29: That refuses To see beyond their own reflection, but my intent on a quite personal level is trying to draw out the stories of just very ordinary people that history never remembered and trying make them remember.

00:06:45: That's definitely theme we're going come back also in the current project you are working.

00:06:51: one question takes longer.

00:06:53: loop for me explain some background something I found interesting work through super delicately.

00:07:03: The Shadow King and in

00:07:04: the

00:07:05: short story, Destache Flight there's two photographers that are sort of quite central In the shadow king.

00:07:10: the photographer is Italian and Jewish And so at about same time as the attempted invasion was happening you have all these parallel developments within Italy Of the rise fascism and increase anti-Semitic policy.

00:07:25: this character who is sort of part of a military campaign at the same time has to struggle and navigate, respond his own identity being marked or registered.

00:07:40: But in no way does that take away from the complicity he's within that colonial project.

00:07:47: so I'd be really interested.

00:07:51: complicity on one hand, but also being affected by or subject to violence and the other.

00:07:55: And how that threads through your work?

00:07:57: Wow!

00:07:58: That's

00:07:58: a really good question...

00:08:01: That is a fantastic question.

00:08:07: Let me begin with the camera.

00:08:10: One of my characters who is Italian Who was Jewish whose father fled the pogroms in Odessa wanted to get as far away from these memories that he had as possible, which means that He went to Italy settled thinking.

00:08:27: He would get away From the anti-Semitism and violence.

00:08:31: And then he's confronted with Mussolini.

00:08:34: Never expected that he would have a son That goes to war in Ethiopia.

00:08:40: I Wanted to think about the role of The camera in War.

00:08:46: you know the most obvious easy thing is to think of photojournalists making images of violence.

00:08:52: But I wanted to think a bit, not in the sense that professional who goes in deliberately take this but someone gets co-opted against his will make these images.

00:09:04: and it

00:09:05: comes from

00:09:06: having for many years been curious about photographers like Camille Rouge taking photographs prisoners and we know those faces, those portraits.

00:09:20: In Argentina in the dirty wars.

00:09:22: there was a young man at that time who is a prisoner end of photographer And he was forced to take images Of the prisoners.

00:09:32: during The Dirty Wars He managed To smuggle some rolls of film out.

00:09:38: Those were only ways Some members of family knew That their loved one Was imprisoned And there are these stories that come out again and again.

00:09:46: People in Burkinaw that smuggled the roles of film, and buried them in dirt... ...and made a few pictures that came out at the cost their lives!

00:09:59: We have this blurry images now because they were brave enough to do so.

00:10:04: When you're working with a film camera You work in the twenties, thirties or forties.

00:10:10: That camera requires slowing down.

00:10:15: You take an image and you don't know what you have until that film has developed.

00:10:21: How do you begin to see the world through a lens?

00:10:23: And is that different from the world That you're looking at with your bare eyes, and if someone is co-opting you enforcing you To make these images What do you see reflected back at you?

00:10:39: I was writing beneath the lion's gaze when photographs of Abu Ghraib came out.

00:10:45: And those images really started making me think about these photographs that are made, of prisoners and what it does to the photographers.

00:10:59: So i had all this examples at Etore doing things he doesn't necessarily want do taking images because commanded by this commanding officer, does it because he's a soldier and Italian?

00:11:13: And then at some point Italy begins to redefine who an Italian is.

00:11:18: And Italy begins call itself Aryan... ...and suddenly he's no longer Italian.

00:11:25: So what happens when in one moment you are part of the system.. ..and next your enemy that comes after also Both in his case, but also the case of my character Hirut.

00:11:43: She's a soldier and she is fighting an army of Ethiopia.

00:11:50: And yet Kidana who was her commanding officer Is now starting to physically sexually assault her.

00:11:59: So suddenly she has no longer just a soldier?

00:12:09: What am I fighting for if the enemy is suddenly?

00:12:15: Maybe not the man that's a cross from me, but this man.

00:12:18: That's right next to me and so i wanted To think through Through these characters The idea of what we imagine as patriotism But also loyalties betrayals Hiru just fighting her country.

00:12:36: At some point she begins to say, wait a minute am I not my own country?

00:12:40: And Ettore in suddenly being forced to contend with these anti-Semitic laws that's forcing all this Jewish soldiers out of the military now has to think about what is my country but the camera itself.

00:12:59: it's what this person is seeing.

00:13:01: But i'm also curious And whether the world through the lens is actually a safer world, or it's more dangerous than once you put your camera down.

00:13:15: It's interesting because throughout reading there are these moments where I catch myself... A lot of photography especially happens at the border between life and death.

00:13:28: taking an image right before killing that prisoner I kept catching myself just wondering, okay but when do they intervene?

00:13:38: Why are there not changing sides if it's so clear that the photograph is also something violent in a way.

00:13:47: So you would have preferred... That the photographers step-in!

00:13:54: That was what i was wondering.

00:13:55: yeah

00:13:57: Because its'nt like life happens.

00:14:02: People are terrified.

00:14:04: You are standing in front of a commander, an officer.

00:14:08: This is Ettore for example who's telling you take the picture soldato.

00:14:15: What do you do except?

00:14:17: Take the picture and so Ettore has to contend with that.

00:14:23: You know, he has to contend with a father who fled the pogroms.

00:14:27: Who's writing letters to him?

00:14:29: I'm not giving anything away for those that haven't read it but whose writing letter is too him saying My son Don't let them make you into something i don't recognize anymore Don't do That.

00:14:43: and so every photograph He takes in A sense Moves Him Further And further Away from The Sun that he was or is to his father, but it brings him closer and closer to the soldier than this commander needs.

00:14:57: And that tension... That ground-that territory..is something I think Atore throughout the novel has contend with.

00:15:06: He had to grapple with that.

00:15:08: Yeah!I don't know how many of us would intervene.

00:15:12: quite literally The story photographer, the Argentine photographer that I write about in Dust Ash Flight.

00:15:22: If I remember the title it was a long time ago!

00:15:27: In a sense It Was Inspired by an Argentine Photographer That i Had Mentioned to You Before.

00:15:33: and What Happens at The Naval Academy?

00:15:45: brutal building.

00:15:48: What could he do?

00:15:49: And so the fact that, you know He was trying to smuggle these things out at the risk of his life I felt with a kind of intervention Etorei...I won't say very much but etore has To contend with what he does and i often wonder With these photographers for example those soldiers who made Those images in Abu Ghraib What happens after That?

00:16:12: as A novelist I create, in a sense the kind of world that i would like.

00:16:18: And even if wars exist someone might look at these things and say it was wrong but he goes through his own journey.

00:16:30: we don't know whether or not he survives.

00:16:37: The other place where photography is really relevant It's not just within your novels, but also in the actual process as I understood.

00:16:47: We had two announcement images for this event one on sort of a review side and another bookshop site.

00:16:54: The only description that we found from an image used by us was based off the person you built Hirut.

00:17:05: So i would really like to hear about.

00:17:09: where do stories begin?

00:17:11: Is it always with a photo?

00:17:15: The Shadow King, as you are reading now did not begin that way.

00:17:21: It really began with lots of research and intense amounts.

00:17:27: I lived in Italy talk to people, I read academic works memoirs.

00:17:35: I talked a family and people in Ethiopia trying to do work that way And most of the information i was getting were stories about men who had fought in war.

00:17:49: as a child in Ethiopia, my grandfather's generation had these men and when someone would walk into our house somebody will go.

00:17:57: oh you know that is so-and-so he fought here.

00:18:03: This was the grandson of this

00:18:04: person.".

00:18:05: And there were always connections coming up from war.

00:18:09: but at some point I have written many pages Right.

00:18:19: It was flat, that it is a story from beginning to end in the sense just one voice going through and there's this story of men fighting.

00:18:29: on this stories I grew up with what i had researched.

00:18:33: but at some point um... found an article In The New York Times November of nineteen thirty five And wasn't front page Story.

00:18:50: I don't know what page it was, maybe the third.

00:18:53: It's a small article and said woman general leads two thousand men into battle like whoa wait a minute!

00:19:05: And then i started doing more research.

00:19:09: in that story about this women is just short articles saying she was in battle her husband was killed and continue to lead.

00:19:21: So there are two things I want to say for that, one is the traditional Ethiopian style of fighting okay?

00:19:27: The western-style is all the commanders these officers they're too valuable to get killed.

00:19:32: so they stand on a hill or in room giving commands and men are fighting.

00:19:38: That's not how it was done in Ethiopia.

00:19:41: In Ethiopia if you lead your man.

00:19:44: You were in front.

00:19:47: You don't ask anyone to do what you would not do yourself.

00:19:50: So for her, to have picked up her husband's gun and charged let me know oh they're in the front?

00:20:01: Her husband was a leader.

00:20:03: she was already fighting on the front lines And that changed everything.

00:20:10: I started looking at photographs.

00:20:13: What did photojournalists do?

00:20:15: who was making photographs, what was happening.

00:20:17: And I found an image of a woman in uniform and then I found four women in the uniform in front of gun.

00:20:24: And realized oh maybe my work needs to be with photographs?

00:20:31: Maybe this war is not fought all by men.

00:20:36: it completely changed my entire working process and I started going to flea markets, to look for photographs.

00:20:45: And i did not want any photographs made by photojournalists because I realized that they were hired by Mussolini... ...and those images were censored because they are working on newspapers that were censured.

00:20:58: They're taking photographs of battles but there was no battle so they were staged images.

00:21:04: So..I started asking vendors.

00:21:08: every flea market in Italy has a fascist table.

00:21:12: The German ones too as well?

00:21:14: They do, yeah with the bust of Mussolini sometimes usually.

00:21:18: so I would stand somewhere and start looking for Mussolinis head And then I wouldn't go right there But I would go to these tables and ask them Do you have

00:21:28: something?".

00:21:29: uh...and the one's who were kind which bring out their boxes of photographs.

00:21:34: um..And what i started realizing was the photographs that common soldiers were making in Ethiopia and East Africa, we're really revealing a different kind of war than when I had been used to.

00:21:48: The Weimar Republic is first time handheld cameras are used instead those huge things so soldiers actually taking camera's toward they more affordable.

00:21:58: at this point They would takeing photographs their tents Their casual moments the joking at a river, and then the battles where you see clear war crimes.

00:22:15: Obvious atrocities!

00:22:18: And they would sometimes have this same casual smile as if they were in their tent having wine... ...and smoking a cigarette.

00:22:30: This is the tension that started to develop That

00:22:36: moment.

00:22:37: that person who can sit with other fellow soldiers and relax, and joke have a harmonica or guitar.

00:22:51: And then is on the battlefields with bodies.

00:22:56: How does it happen?

00:22:58: Sometimes I would also find albums of these soldiers.

00:23:02: sometimes in those albums will be images And this is after they have been shooting and killing at the people who look just like these villagers.

00:23:18: So, I don't think it's a... What's the word?

00:23:23: It's not a dichotomy!

00:23:25: It exists all in the same person and there-it's not conflict.

00:23:30: All of those things coherein some way that i am trying to make sense of.

00:23:37: Can I find that hinge I was talking about earlier.

00:23:41: That allows somebody to go from this, and so on... because i don't think it's uncommon or these are monsters!

00:23:50: We have to figure out what enables us to intervene in a way we might be able to.

00:23:59: In some ways the act of writing is me letting things play out even when its difficult to do that, even when I want intervene.

00:24:08: But letting it play out and try figure.

00:24:11: how does this happen?

00:24:13: Because we're faced with the same questions now!

00:24:17: Absolutely... It's not uncommon but in a way more pervasive.

00:24:24: right these self stylized soldiers you get constant footage I mean, most famously with sort of IDF soldiers.

00:24:33: but also in Sudan for example you have RSF soldier vlogging their days and being like hi guys welcome to...I'm gonna have breakfast then go to battle.

00:24:43: And come back.

00:24:45: so yeah it stays absolutely In your actual writing process.

00:24:51: how do try stay very close.

00:24:54: the material or much space that the imaginary or speculative, how much do you try to fill with fact?

00:25:05: One of my worst nightmares after while I was writing The Shadow King there would be some old war historian that sends me an email.

00:25:22: did not do this correctly.

00:25:25: So I said, that's not...I cannot do that!

00:25:27: I don't want that email.

00:25:29: so I really worked hard with it and have the same terror in a new book because everyone knows of World War II expert on one way or another you know?

00:25:41: We know much about it yet we don't.

00:25:45: but i dont'want that e-mail either.

00:25:49: for these books.

00:25:51: partly its also respect for people who had to endure and exist in those times.

00:26:00: For those people that did not survive, I need to get it correct.

00:26:10: Sometimes so meticulous...I know this slows me down a lot but just want the structure of my world as close existed, down to the maps and old street names.

00:26:27: And telephone numbers of different characters that I know exist as real life people.

00:26:33: you're doing all about work but at some point in not getting there with this book i just have to let them go and like a story start take over.

00:26:46: so they stop looking for references and information.

00:26:50: And the characters are telling me what their daily lives are like, who they like, Who They Don't Like?

00:26:57: What is Their Biggest Fear?

00:26:59: What jealousies do they have?

00:27:00: How Do They Interact With The Neighbor?

00:27:02: Those things that research doesn't necessarily tell you.

00:27:06: Once I know the neighborhood in a street then work of jealousy's affairs whatever else starts to become real.

00:27:15: I can imagine those things, but it's been interesting to work through that with this book.

00:27:20: I'm trying to get over my fear of the old white man sitting at his computer!

00:27:25: But he exists in my mind... ...but i've almost defeated

00:27:29: him.".

00:27:39: transition to the German context, that there's a lot more historians coming your way.

00:27:45: But so in you're own frame of how much do want expand?

00:27:52: Do you wanna give us very brief overview what we are working

00:27:56: on?

00:27:57: My novel is set in Berlin in the twenties and thirties And I am really looking at lives black Germans, Africans who are living here as well other non-white populations.

00:28:15: Asian what was then called Persian Vietnamese, Chinese all of these different groups of people who were here either as students or business owners or professors teaching Swahili and other languages to Germans.

00:28:33: I'm really interested in what their lives where like the Nazis are establishing power are starting to take effect, as the Nazis become so rabidly anti-Semitic.

00:28:51: How do they navigate encountering a black person?

00:28:56: And I know that the Nazi's racism was flexible enough to include other groups of people too.

00:29:05: and yet there were still ways that Africans Black People or other groups to maneuver around these anti-Semitic laws.

00:29:17: And some of it required collaborations, actions that we might call betrayal.

00:29:23: Some of it involved just individual decisions made by different police, different officers and they could be completely contradictory.

00:29:34: So I'm really interested in how people survived, and maybe the nagging questions that they had to live with as their Jewish friends are being taken.

00:29:45: As... They understand that the camps are now being built.

00:29:50: it's impossible not know what is happening.

00:29:53: How does one person navigate that?

00:29:56: And I think there also this sense That a black person you cannot blend in You just can't hide.

00:30:04: There is no hat or coat, or anything that will camouflage who you are as you go shopping for food.

00:30:12: Or try to find a flat and so I'm also curious about just the very realities of blackness at that time.

00:30:21: What brought you to Germany?

00:30:24: I became very interested in this history while i was on tour And it was probably more than fifteen years ago.

00:30:35: But I was in Stuttgart while speaking about Beneath the Lion's Gaze, and... ...I go to museums whenever i'm in a city….

00:30:46: …and they had an exhibition of Neue Sachlichkeit?

00:30:55: Okay this is the hardest language!

00:30:59: And I really like Otto Dix and George Groschen.

00:31:03: Oh, let me go in here!

00:31:04: And at some point towards the end of this exhibition... ...I saw a painting of white German man then black woman.

00:31:17: And standing there looking was from nineteen twenty-nine Berlin.

00:31:26: Where did she come?

00:31:29: What is she doing in Berlin and nineteen twenty-nine?

00:31:33: Are there more that I have missed?

00:31:36: so, i went back through the entire exhibition again And i started seeing them.

00:31:42: In different paintings by george groesch auto dicks triptych There's a black man right.

00:31:49: In this center i completely Missed him and So as i'm going Through these i started thinking about This sense of being both highly visible, and also invisible.

00:32:03: And I'm holding myself accountable for that too because i missed them in the go around first time... ...and started wondering what does it mean to be both visible and invisible?

00:32:17: In a moment when everything is highly charged into country!

00:32:22: Then I thought this isn't my story....I am not German.

00:32:29: I'm writing another book on Ethiopia.

00:32:31: This will pass, it's just an interest.

00:32:34: but the more i started thinking about this ,the more invested i became.

00:32:39: and who were these people?

00:32:43: And so as i was writing The Shadow King...and The shadow king took almost ten years to write.

00:32:49: So if I still have this interested by the time this book is done.

00:32:53: that's a clue As authoritarianism started rising in the United States.

00:32:59: And, you know... The Trump years and all of this I started thinking of.

00:33:05: This is not a story about Berlin.

00:33:07: It's not really a story About Germany.

00:33:10: it's A Story Of Migrations Of Various Kinds.

00:33:14: Its A Story What It Means To Be A Black Person In A Community Where It Is Becoming More And More Dangerous to Exist information.

00:33:29: in my research or start the writing process and realize that I really might understand what these Africans felt like in nineteen twenties and thirties Germany because this moment,this historic moment we are living right now has made it extremely dangerous you know to be an immigrant.

00:33:50: To black...to a woman.

00:33:53: So I feel like, as I've been writing this history has also become closer and closer.

00:33:59: It's not about geography it is really the landscape of imagination... ...and experiences that bind me to a story.

00:34:08: I think thats so fascinating!

00:34:10: And i asked the question genuinely because I think so much of Black organizing in Germany or perhaps the visible part of it and historical engagement, an attempt of recovery.

00:34:26: An attempt at storytelling and tracing which sometimes feels quite in contrast with the way that like black politics works in many other places.

00:34:39: but you know so much sort of these questions who is named?

00:34:43: Who's remembered?

00:34:44: Who was listed as a victim?

00:34:49: those have been a lot of what the post-World War II Afro-German movement focuses on, but then always in parallel and this is something that I've been working through a lot at one of these tensions.

00:35:05: In parallel you have ongoing migrations You have ongoing restrictions on asylum law And people arriving having to live and exist, survive as black people in this country.

00:35:20: And existing somewhat separate

00:35:22: from

00:35:23: the political movement of Blackness.

00:35:26: It's a super interesting historical lens that you're focusing on.

00:35:31: I'm sure it will come into conversation with other German language work slowly been developing over last years.

00:35:40: Yeah i've completely indebted to those writers that have been doing this work for decades at this point.

00:35:50: I think the work of Mayim, Tiffany Floreville is doing some work on that.

00:35:55: Sharon our good friend who just published a book you know Tina Comte has been writing This.

00:36:01: Robbie Aitken Has provided endless references sources from me and so The Work Of A Novelist cannot exist without Those People.

00:36:11: I need the work that other people are doing in order to do my work.

00:36:15: And what i'm hoping happens is, maybe from MY work it inspires OTHER PEOPLE TO TAKE ON THESE OTHERS STORIES.

00:36:22: THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE FOR JUST ONE WRITER TO DO like these more contemporary stories you know?

00:36:29: So far, I've been doing historical fiction even though after every book.

00:36:35: I swear i'll never do it again But I keep going back to that.

00:36:40: and yet like you said madate there is the contemporary issue.

00:36:45: The writers that are doing that work Are so vital?

00:36:49: And so necessary its worth that I cannot Do um...I had a young man Not long ago Who lives in Finland And he was one of the Ethiopians that not very long ago made a journey from Ethiopia through this Sahara and into, you know across the Mediterranean to be able to survive.

00:37:14: Through all of that is already human feet.

00:37:19: He made it though the Mediterranean finally settled somewhere in Scandinavia then wrote his memoir said, I just want you to read this.

00:37:32: And I read that book and thought oh my god!

00:37:38: Number one there's no way i could write this.

00:37:40: number two he is brilliant.

00:37:43: He a fantastic writer.

00:37:45: The idea of somebody who have experienced everything the gulags in Libya all these things then put into words and into structure form.

00:37:57: It was so inspiring.

00:37:59: I cannot tell you how valuable.

00:38:02: when, um... When-I'm sorry to say his name but when Trump is elected the first time in two thousand sixteen i needed To grab a book and I need it to read something that might help me understand what Was about to come?

00:38:17: And uh one of The First books I picked up was Victor Climper's I Shall Bear Witness.

00:38:25: He was living in Dresden.

00:38:27: He's he is German Jewish a professor and you see from the very beginning just The way that?

00:38:33: The world is starting to close-in on him, but he made this comment As he seeing his friends getting arrested.

00:38:43: as he seen people disappear He said I will bear witness.

00:38:47: these are people who were not supposed to be remembered And I will make them known.

00:38:53: We have now the stories of these people.

00:38:55: because he decided to write it down as journals at risk, you know his own life.

00:39:01: But that simple act just writing a journal on this day makes a difference for those in the future.

00:39:11: For those who are keeping... You don't have to publish!

00:39:17: Just write what's happening a record for the future.

00:39:25: And I have been thinking more and more lately about these small acts of resistance that we have to do, no matter if you feel it's ineffective or not... ...I know in The United States sometimes feels like We are resisting from a space of defeat You Know?

00:39:44: We're doing things already where things have collapsed You know, and every day seems to bring something else.

00:39:53: But I think that we have work even from the ruins And it's not necessarily for us right now.

00:40:01: It is so that future remembers That its possible continue resist.

00:40:08: We still need memory into world.

00:40:11: To me a testament Not just moment but needed today Yeah, and so for all of you who are doing the work that want to write or our writing.

00:40:22: Or if your thinking about getting a journal but you're too lazy just do it please.

00:40:30: We now have time for y'all to ask questions.

00:40:34: There is a microphone But yeah thank you very much.

00:40:38: Are there any thoughts?

00:40:40: Questions?

00:40:44: Yeah, first of all I really like historical novels.

00:40:47: I think they can always learn a lot and it makes history much easier to absorb.

00:40:53: but i would like go back the concept of guilt And what was said before regarding acting or not acting in place.

00:41:03: where on one side you're doing something that you disagree on?

00:41:08: You think its wrong.

00:41:09: maybe your life is at stake.

00:41:12: As humans, we are bound to try and survive.

00:41:17: In a way I feel like you're all guilty but at which point do people navigate that?

00:41:29: That's really good question especially now!

00:41:42: It's at least a point of tension.

00:41:44: And I think that each of us has to figure out, in the way we have within our means... ...to push against it.

00:41:55: You cannot do some things other people can't But you could do something!

00:42:00: Say something!

00:42:02: Help someone who might need help Even conversations that can be sometimes the most difficult and the most awkward, it's a step.

00:42:13: It could be Palestine or Gaza or Sudan... Pick your horror in this world right now!

00:42:24: There are so many things which make you feel overwhelming but I really think we're a community of voices.

00:42:32: We are a chorus of one kind or another.

00:42:35: And you are not going to say the same thing about, The Same Thing as someone else but You can do what your able to Do and I think that That is important!

00:42:45: I really...the work we do now Is Not for us Now It's For the future.

00:42:52: thats Going To come and look back and Say People fought Even if were fighting From within defeat We Were Fighting.

00:43:07: Hi, first of all.

00:43:07: Thanks so much for the conversation I wanted to ask.

00:43:11: both of your books are about.

00:43:13: you know far and past And i feel like even though Of course Your characters show a high levels of complexity if he likes their Histories of it are quite clear in A sense that Like most people can agree on That this has actually happened.

00:43:30: You Know and no because like If I look at if you're paying nowadays, I feel like there are way more multiple truths.

00:43:37: And even though just said that your not writing about current events i'm asking myself If theres a possible way to write about current event.

00:43:50: thats includes all truth?

00:43:52: That is wonderful question and I will tell u that the questions stop you from writing.

00:44:03: really think about that.

00:44:06: There is just no way for a book to do all truths.

00:44:12: You can sit down with your family and tell the family story of something happened to you And somebody will go, That didn't happen that way.

00:44:24: Imagine on a wider scale On larger scales.

00:44:27: So...you can write this story And it is your story, and it's your voice.

00:44:33: You will be surprised at the community you find from that but you'll not able to write a story for everyone.

00:44:41: It just doesn't happen.

00:44:45: I don't know any writer who has done this book because there isn't one person perspective with millions of people.

00:45:05: Thank you again, this is really nice.

00:45:11: I don't have a question...I just wanted to say This is really inspiring because my grandfather's turning a hundred in August.

00:45:20: Happy birthday to him.

00:45:24: It's bad luck to say it beforehand

00:45:29: but we're speaking English so its

00:45:34: fine.

00:45:38: I was just thinking of, for a long time our family has been thinking about collecting a century.

00:45:45: Of his experiences and stories And journey through the world.

00:45:55: This seemed like an enormous task to be able to collect stories about him being a person, going through all of this.

00:46:14: And I feel like there was a lot of humanity in how you're telling stories and... ...I feel very inspired to go see my grandpa on his birthday

00:46:24: party!

00:46:26: And try to collect

00:46:28: these

00:46:28: stories in this way and just through the lens as a person existing throughout it.

00:46:34: so thank-you.

00:46:35: Take a recorder And record

00:46:42: every... Yes, thank you.

00:46:43: Hi!

00:46:44: Thank you for the wonderful talk and generosity of sharing.

00:46:47: I had a question in regards to Etola and kind of like reception that the character received specifically from an European maybe also Jewish audience because i kinda feel like in Germany specifically there's very reductive narrative about what German-Jewishness means.

00:47:08: Jewish people were doing under German colonialism, you know and how many like Jewish People weren't the army back in a day's in the military who are also serving in German colonies.

00:47:18: And I think that kind of like rupture.

00:47:23: the storyline begins in a certain point and ends or kind of like skips at some point, you know citizenship as well as inclusion into the nation.

00:47:31: And the kind of citizenship making I think is really well told in this story of Ettoree how he kind of complicate him.

00:47:38: so i wonder that would...how people reacted to it?

00:47:43: Yeah..I've

00:47:44: had really positive reactions.

00:47:47: if there has been anything the genocide in Gaza, I was outspoken.

00:47:57: I got emails from people that...I didn't know them but they were teaching in different Yeshivas and different schools And they said well we will not assign your book anymore.

00:48:09: That's really my first clue.

00:48:11: Oh, this book's actually finding very direct audiences.

00:48:17: I've had other conversations with people who do Jewish studies that have read the Book and we've really positive conversations... Really good conversation!

00:48:27: A very good friend of mine is Italian-Jewish and born and raised in Venice.

00:48:33: In fact, conversations with him while writing The Book were what inspired this character of Ettore.

00:48:42: grandfather or his uncle was in the military based in Libya during the pacification campaigns there and it was something that he, uh...in conversation with me.

00:48:56: He was embarrassed you know obviously about but we could have a conversation And I thought this is really wonderful.

00:49:07: This grandfather or uncle kept a journal, and he shared the journal with me.

00:49:13: And you know so I yeah in one hand that for me felt like i can begin to deal With this history To complicate people because People are complicated and not to flatten them at all.

00:49:28: this idea also That I think You were saying that you know Jewish people In the military, you know in these campaigns.

00:49:37: I don't think that's not.

00:49:38: That's an indictment against someone because they're Jewish it's they were Italian.

00:49:43: when somebody wants to fulfill like some kind of a life ambition and if that person's ambition is To be in the military Like my friends uncle or grandfather used Italian And this was just something that did.

00:49:59: so.

00:49:59: Yeah, I don't want to place blame on someone.

00:50:05: Extra blame because of like Jewishness or not especially for Ettore.

00:50:11: he was doing something Because he felt so deeply connected to the land where He was born that when the call came To do this all these soldiers were told This is an easy war.

00:50:25: there will Not be a lot Of bloodshed.

00:50:29: The people really want us there.

00:50:32: He went despite his father's warnings, but son's rebel.

00:50:37: But of course he began to understand.

00:50:39: Really?

00:50:40: His position at that time is as the anti-Semitic laws are passing.

00:50:45: yeah Thank you for that question

00:50:47: thank You so much and thank you again And That would be all from my side except for another very big.

00:50:54: thank you So much for being here and speaking with us.

00:51:06: That was the novelist Mazam Aghista in conversation with Merit Vibo, recorded live

00:51:11: at Chapters in Berlin.

00:51:13: Our thanks again to everyone on Chapters and to Mazam Augusta who is a fellow at The American Academy where she's had work about the lives of marginalized communities during Nazi regime.

00:51:26: If you'd like read more about themes from tonights'

00:51:28: conversation

00:51:30: our recent issues include a reflection by the Gazan poet Ala al-Qaisi and an essay on William Gardner Smith's, in the novel The Stone Face.

00:51:41: You can find both at blnreview.de Wherever you're listening.

00:51:46: please take a moment to subscribe to Airlift.

00:51:49: give us like and positive review.

00:51:51: it actually does help!

00:51:53: This episode was edited by Caitlin Roberts.

00:51:57: we'll be back with another episode

00:51:58: soon.

00:51:59: until then I'm Tobias Habakorn editor of Berlin Review.

00:52:03: see you next time.