Summary
Palestinian historian, author of Chapter 9 of From the River to the Sea, “Is the sky crying?” (11 December 2023), an essay on memory, historiography and the ongoing Nakba written through conversations with her fifteen-year-old nephew Omar in Chicago (From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, lines 606-670).
Details
- Palestine’s historiography is marked by numbers — 1919, 1948, 1967, 1994, now 2023 — representing political rupture and the counting of days, bodies and martyrs (line 615).
- Remembering is “an ongoing political, ethical and rigorous praxis”; the question is not whether Palestinians remember but how and why (line 635).
- The violence is not supernatural or divine vengeance: “This is settler colonialism. This is Zionism. This is genocide. This is our ongoing Nakba.” (line 661)
- Omar’s lesson, which she accepts as his challenge: “My anger is less hesitant and I am more sure that Palestine will be free.” (line 665)
Related pages
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, Nakba, Genocide, Settler Colonialism