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Images of man’s cruelty to man

Rehnuma Sazzad revisits a dead author and a living conflict
CONSIDER some headlines in newspapers at home and abroad regarding the recent humanitarian crisis in Gaza: Prothom-Alo alarms: 'Phosphorus bombs into Gaza'; the Daily Star writes: 'Fighting rages in Gaza'; the BBC reports: 'UN fails to make progress on Gaza'; and the Independent says it all: 'Welcome to hell: Gaza's unending misery’.
I wish Edward Said were alive. As always, Said would have stood up against the present bloodbath by reminding the world of a humanity that applies to all the victims of the present crisis. Tagore's hopeful vision poetically unfolds a picture where our common humanity creates a melody in the midst of our souls. Being in tune with Tagore, Said asserts in this book that the oppressed Palestinians are very much part of the same human world; and so they have a right to exist as a nation of the world. Therefore, he joins his voice with his people, the resisting Palestinians, against their inhumandeprivations.
It is interesting how Said took up the project of writing this book as a photo-history of Palestinian people who were (to some extent, still are) virtually non-existent in the Western discourse because of various propagandas. In 1983, Said was acting as a consultant to one of those UN conferences trying to find a solution to the 'Palestine Problem'. Swiss photographer Jean Mohr was sent to the Occupied Territories to bring in some photo-proofs for the conference in order to illustrate that contrary to the official' propaganda, the Palestinians do exist.
Let's hear from Said what happened next:
The photographs he (Mohr) brought back were indeed wonderful; the official response, however, was puzzling... You can hang them up (in the conference hall), we were told, but no writing can be displayed with them. No legends, no explanations.
Hence, Said endeavours in this book to present some of those photos through his explanations and commentaries. It is intimate writing. In the last interview with Charles Glass, Said describes it as an 'exile's book.' Ttuly, Said's passionate but brilliant narrative mixed with Mohr's powerful photos makes us encounter an extraordinary saga of a victimized people who simply refuse to be wiped out from the face of the earth. I must add at this point that there is no brouhaha in Said's account of the Palestinian tragedy. Rather he writes with a sense of remorse that the Palestinian themselves have victimized their victimizer on several occasions, even though their root cause remains helpless desperation.
The book captures the stateless people through whatever has remained of their uprooted life. The first chapter called 'States' starts with a 'normal-looking' wedding photograph in the back-drop of a refugee camp in Lebanon. As soon as we are given some background information, an 'abnormal' aspect of the photograph is revealed: 'A few months after this picture was taken their camp was ravaged by intraPalestinian fighting.' To me, this is characteristic of the Palestinian
saga: life and death, normal and abnormal, inside and outside and so on are inextricably intermixed and fixed in a perpetual limbo, so to say. Two happy children wearing charity clothes are seen through a ravaged car at a desolate field where some flower plants still raise their heads near a greasy white car to announce that it is spring. A small boy wearing a T-shirt with movie stars' photos on it makes
Said comments: ‘You sec it in our children who seem to have... achieved an out-of-season maturity in one part of their body or mind while the rest remains childlike'. Last but not at all the least, a view of Arab Nazareth from upper Nazareth symbolises that the original city is now split into two
parts: inside and outside or 'the self and the 'other'. Mohr's photographs frame them during active participation in teaching, collecting indigenous crafts, dressmaking, farming and their presences are seen at groceries, home, hospital everywhere. Said does address the issue of male domination and how it is sometimes made worse under Israeli occupation. However, as Said comments on one of the familiar-looking portrait-photo of a middle-aged lady, 'The smile in adversity continues, nevertheless.' The pure joy seems contagious. You take your hats off to these people for their persisting hope and energy, despite their uncertain future and everyday tribulation.
Palestinians' life of work is significant from another perspective as well. It forms a crucial part of their worldly existence. Said never forgets that his land is steeped in religiosity. In 'Past and Future', therefore, Mohr's camera focuses on pilgrims, priests, devotees and even a lonely clergy on a sanctuary near Jerusalem. You might ask, where else would it be? Said's commentaries sharpen at this point to stress that being a 'holy land' for three main monotheistic religions or the cradle of history (e.g. the mosque of Omar is one of the landmarks of firing history) has not been a boon for the people. The reasons for this feeling are comprehensible. And so Said does not delve Into diem. Rather, aided by Mohr's camera, he illustrates the unprivileged people's life and firing in the here and now in order to oppose their elimination.
Understandably, these indefati-
gable people simply will not give up their humane struggle to exist. Though Mohr's camera docs not (by no account can) fail to record sites of destructions and ugly settlements, there are also a few impressive views of an expansive land. We have an open view of a desert touching the horizon along with an aerial view of a locality where 'The foreground drops away, leaving only the Arab village, its mosque and houses surrounded by fruit trees, olive trees, and stone walls.' The term 'Arab' is recurrent but jarring, though not without a purpose: the above comment implies that this 'Arab' locality has so far survived the 'Israeli' aggression. Clearly, it is the question of survival in an 'us' versus 'them' condition. Said takes the tide of the entire book from one of the verses of Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine's National Poet, who puts the disheartening condition in perspective:
The earth is closing on us. pushing us drrough the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through... Where should we go after die last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Neither Said nor Darwish has an answer to this, just as we do not know how the present violence in die 'holy land' is going to end. But do we not after all? Has Tagore not shown a great faitii in a humane music? Should It not sound against the tyranny now? Let us just hope tiiat die human heart prevails.
Rehnuma Sazzad Is doing her PhD at Nottingham Trent University and teaches EFL/ESOL In Cambridge.