An inventory of what I do not wish to write and of which I must still catalogue
By Micaela Sahhar
Micaela Sahhar responds to Language Under Occupation with sharp reflections on the written word and ongoing genocide.
[A response to Language Under Occupation ①]
i.
I cannot think of a heavier question than what language might be under occupation and I do not have an answer although I think it is important to talk about and go on saying. While what is happening goes on happening what language can mean under occupation cannot be wholly available even if I skewer my words on a pike on the old city walls language is sheer and unscalable.
Hasib begins with an acknowledgement and a reference to an acknowledgment in a poem he appreciates but nor does he read it and nor will he read his own [poem]. In a few weeks I will get an email with one of his poems and it is called you can start anywhere, you’ll still hit all the service stations ② and I suppose that this is a testimony to what language means under occupation.
Evelyn will read her Acknowledgement ③ she reads remind everyone how sad it is/ you all died each poet echoing to speak the unpronounceable/ To say your name your nation again again this laughable obsequious yet where I am from these things are unthinkable and essential.
ii.
Because I am stuck on this question I will write to Mahmoud, and Mahmoud will reply I’m glad to know that my updates have inspired you. Please feel free to use any of my words for your article on “Language Under Occupation”.
Mahmoud has written forty updates since January, we are still here ④ [update thirty-four] the application of international instruments of law that govern an occupation are peripheral in their content and in their effect to what it means to live in a tent. ⑤
iii.
Dismantling concepts of colonial time is one strategy for refuting occupation which Hasib frames with a reference to Taking Our Time ⑥ thick with idiom and framed by a woman whose heartbeat is the rhythm of the solar system who kept the seasons in her body, ⑦ who is what we will be again when everything [we wish was gone] was gone.⑧ Mykaela says colonial time-keeping instruments are energetic fences and Hasib says time is a shorthand for linguistic fluency and when I think about time I always think about Dylan Thomas. Listen. Time passes. ⑨
In Gaza time does not pass but writing is one of the few tools people have [for what exactly]. One man will write I write lest I succumb to savagery ⑩ and another will write (who not unrelatedly writes for a blog called Passages Through Genocide ⑪) that boredom is killing me ⑫ and another (who not unrelatedly writes for a blog called Passages Through Genocide ⑬) dressed in a blue-check blazer and cream 80s earrings for her headshot will write, how will we die? In one piece, two pieces ⑭ and so this marks time and the shape of a dream in Gaza.
iv.
Storytelling, Mykaela will say, is a thing that can occur on a page and also in the ear of your mind where family who are no longer with us above all are the voices that are worth pleasing. Hasib says writing is a test of stamina and Evelyn directs the audience to Glissant and when I arrive there I read [the image of reality] is the product of a disguised apology. ⑮
Mahmoud will write with Mohammed we do not want to forget who we are ⑯ and they edit a journal beneath a genocide about what Gaza is and who they are and what Gaza was and who they were and what Palestine was when it was not under occupation and what Palestine will be when it is not under occupation and all these things are unthinkable and essential.
v.
When the conversation turns to the use of the upper case and to its urgency Evelyn will say the poetry of the rally or the riot appears as a less sophisticated poetry than of the academy but that they are for their spaces and there is nothing like a lot of capitalisation to build adrenalin or to communicate that your words were written to be shouted.
This reflects pandemics and lock downs and Naarm and Black Lives Matter and when bodies are not present All Caps Matter like THIS BURNT-OUT NEON THRONE IS A CABINET OF CODES FROM THE SECOND-HAND FIRESELLER TO THE SEA ⑰ and perhaps this has a literal meaning but the screaming and the imagery I am fighting to picture stay with me.
vi.
The second-hand fireseller to the sea is a map of how Mahmoud and Mohammed will write about what it is like to live in zones of confiscation, destruction, exclusion and genocide they say now, in our tents, we migrate to public spaces ⑱ and in update thirty-six Mahmoud will say I write in search of meaning and in update thirty-three Mahmoud will say Every evening, as I return to the tent after a long day, the oppressive heat and the stark surroundings remind me and in update thirty-three he will also say I find myself longing for the smallest respite even as I am surrounded by the remnants of what used to be. ⑲
vii.
The tents may be on the shoreline but not on the beachfront where under occupation beachfront has no real meaning.
viii.
A reader, Hasib observes, needs to be able to discern a reader needs to be able to tell the difference between the page and the person and sometimes language is too small to say what is happening. For instance: one) a four-year-old girl dies at Nuseirat camp of a heart attack; ⑳ two) a boy named Osama is killed with his green parrot; three) I am haunted by a line in an email from Mahmoud, remember us; four) in the unseasonable warm lavender blooms early beneath my window.
ix.
To ask a writer to interpret their work is a futile business for instance: one) how does a four-year-old girl succumb to a heart exploding with not a drop of blood to show for it; two) there was never a bird who loved a boy as much as Osama’s green parrot loved Osama nor a boy named Osama who loved a green parrot as much as Osama loved his [green parrot]; three) mercifully Osama’s mum also dies along with her son and his parrot; ㉑ four) succumbing killing and dying are anodyne terms for genocide but I am hoarse from shouting.
Climate catastrophe makes no difference to lavender.
x.
My friend who sends me the image of a boy and his parrot writes [not as a caption] I honestly don’t know how to explain I love him without knowing him.
No language is bloody enough to describe occupation.
xi.
No language is big enough to explain our love for a boy or a parrot or a mum or for twenty-three family members all dead in Gaza. It makes sense to shout these things but even Mahmoud Darwish whose father shouted does not use all caps when [he is] shouting. ㉒
xii.
In no particular order, Evelyn, Hasib and Mykaela are in accord that to publish is to let language go; and sometimes to let language go is just to write it. Mahmoud [update thirty-nine] ends I am not sharing these words anywhere else. You are free to use and publish them, in full or in part. If you are a journalist or know one, please direct them to my story. ㉓
A young journalist I meet from Gaza says if you go to the hospital you will find that all the stories are equally worthy but still you have to choose one ㉔ [a story]. Stories fall out of Gaza like explosives fall out of the sky and explosives and stories are unexpectedly similar since no one in power much cares about either. In all of Gaza there are no hospitals left to find stories in.
xiii.
A collection tells a story that is organised into the fixed closure of a book but other arrangements are possible other arrangements remain if you know how to look. There is nothing better than poetry and literature more broadly that has registered the depth of the [ ] experience. ㉕
A hundred years from now when we will all be stars.
✷✷✷
FOOTNOTES
✷ 1. Language Under Occupation, Panel for Liminal Festival at The Wheeler Centre, 3 August 2024. Unreferenced and italicised fragments attributed to the speakers are drawn from in-session notetaking.
✷ 2. Hasib Hourani, “you can start anywhere, you’ll still hit all the service stations,” Red Room Poetry, 2024.
✷ 3. Evelyn Araluen, “Acknowledgement of Cuntery,” Drop Bear, University of Queensland Press, 2021.
✷ 4, Mahmoud Al-Shaer, Aid for Mahmoud’s Family Amidst Ongoing War, GoFundMe, 2024.
✷ 5. United Nations. Geneva Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons In Time of War, 12 August 1949. Marginalia at Article 60: “II. Responsibilities of the Occupying Power”. II is the second in a series of items titled in the marginalia “Relief”.
✷ 6. Mykaela Saunders, “Taking Our Time,” Always Will Be, University of Queensland Press, 2024.
✷ 7. Saunders, “Taking Our Time,” 2024.
✷ 8. Saunders, “Taking Our Time,” 2024.
✷ 9. Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, Phoenix, 2000.
✷ 10. Mohammed Zaqzooq, “This Moment: I Write Lest I Succumb to Savagery”, ArabLit Quarterly, Vol. 6:1, 2024.
✷ 11. Ahmed Mortaja, Passages Through Genocide, 2023.
✷ 12. Ahmed Mortaja, “This Moment: January 29, 2024,” ArabLit Quarterly, Vol.6:1, 2024.
✷ 13. Beesan Nateel, Passages Through Genocide, 2023.
✷ 14. Beesan Nateel, “This Moment: February 15, 2024,” ArabLit Quarterly, Vol.6:1, 2024.
✷ 15. Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing, University of Michigan Press, 1997.
✷ 16. Mohammed Zaqzooq and Mahmoud Al-Shaer,“Introduction,” ArabLit Quarterly Vol.6:1, 2024.
✷ 17. Araluen, “With Hidden Noise”, Drop Bear, University of Queensland Press, 2021.
✷ 18. Zaqzooq and Al-Shaer, “Introduction,” ArabLit Quarterly, Vol.6:1, 2024.
✷ 19. Al-Shaer, Aid for Mahmoud’s Family Amidst Ongoing War, GoFundMe, 2024.
✷ 20. HER NAME WAS RAHAF ABU SWEIREH. Her death is documented on social media such as by Fadi Quran on Instagram 30 August 2024.
✷ 21. HIS NAME WAS OSAMA MAGHARY, HIS MOTHER YASMEEN, NO NAME IS KNOWN FOR HIS LOVED GREEN PARROT. Their deaths are documented on social media such as by @disorientalizing on 29 February 2024; such as by @palestinianmartyrs on 8 March 2024.
✷ 22. Mahmoud Darwish, “Take Care of the Stags, Father,” If I Were Another, translated by Fady Joudah, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
✷ 23. Al-Shaer, Aid for Mahmoud’s Family Amidst Ongoing War, GoFundMe, 2024.
✷ 24. Plestia Alaqad, “Gaza Speaks: Media and Reporting of Gaza,” Symposium Panel, Murdoch University, 25 July 2024.
✷ 25. Atef Alshaer, “A Form of Refuge—in conversation with Ursula Lindsey,” ArabLit Quarterly Vol 6.1, 2024.
Micaela Sahhar is an Australian-Palestinian writer and educator. Her essays, poetry and commentary have appeared in The Sydney Review of Books, Griffith Review, Overland and Meanjin among others. Micaela is a Next Chapter Fellow (2021) was shortlisted for the Peter Blazey Fellowship (2024) and recipient of a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund Grant (2022). Her first book, Find me at the Jaffa Gate, will be published with NewSouth in 2025.
The Liminal Festival took place 2–4 August 2024, in partnership with The Wheeler Centre. This collection of work is in concert with, and responds to, the panels, conversations and provocations put forth by some of the nation’s most talented writers, artists and thinkers. Find out more about the Liminal Festival here.