I write this blog for what seems months, even years too late.
But are we ever too late to acknowledge our limitations? I was already too late before the bombing of Southern Israel by Hamas on October 7th, 2023. I was already working with a group of actor-journalists living and working in West Bank, researching their theatre reportage representations of the daily abuses they suffer under occupation that was already devastating. But, still I could not write.
For that word…devastating…it is not enough, it wasn’t then, and it certainly isn’t now, one year (almost) later. I am too late. But it was already too late. We were already too late.
I wonder now, what is next for Palestine. What is next for what is left? What of West Bank? I urge us not to be too late.
One of the artists I work with messaged me at 05.29 this morning.
He has been working with the Palestinian group for many years and represents, through theatre, the ordinary lives of those who live the consequences of war. His theatre is one of reportage, a distinct mixture of journalism and theatre (using what I call non-theatre aesthetics). The work is being shown in a small theatre to Europeans as I write. He wrote this morning that:
“I am going to change things in the performance”.
A performance workshopped and rehearsed for months, but he knows these last days hold even more to tell. It doesn't stop. I was due to join the group, but I have been ill…I have been ill? Nothing I could do is enough and maybe it can’t be. But if we accept this ‘not enough-ness’ in the wake of terrible war and atrocities then maybe we will accept it all the more.
‘Not enough’ is something and something, means something. I will start here, for it is all I have and will use my voice and my platform to share the words of those who live this life. In my 'not enough lateness' I will write this, and I hope in your not feeling enough…you will read it and talk about it and say how you feel in its imperfectness, in its horror, in its value as being just a human response.
I fear we are all globally scared “to get it wrong”. And in that …we say nothing. Not all are rendered silent and dumb with the gravity of it all…and I thank you to those brave voices. I hope to join you as I teeter on the edge of “wrong”. I feel that part of my inability to act, to create, to realise words has been that they have not been my experiences, they are not 'my' words. They need to be honoured and spoken by those cut off from the world and its media stage. Words from those who know what is happening to them and of those who are not heard and have not been heard for years, before it’s been too late.
The messages continue: 06:17.
“There have been so many massacres on schools the last one yesterday. More than a hundred, without warning they bombed people who were praying and in school, bombed to pieces. Unrecognisable people in plastic bags.
I am crying and feel so bad even to do the performance.”
How do artists continue? How can we continue to create or re-create or represent amidst such debilitating horror.
I recall how Polish author, Zofia Nalkowska (1946) was commissioned to journalistically investigate the devastating acts of Nazi Germany against the Jews. She deliberated how to present the eight stories of witness accounts she had sourced. The resulting book, Medaliony (1946) (Medallions, in English) is astounding.
Nalkowska resits the temptation to emote. The temptation to humanise the inhumane and sets out the actions as what happened in bare stark fact. The result is Medaliony and it is considered a testament to the trauma of the Holocaust:
"Considered a masterpiece of antifascist world literature, Medallions (written in 1945 and first published in 1946) stands as the culmination of Nalkowska's literary style, a style that the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz once described as "the iron capital of her art and one of the very few exportables in our national literature." More than mere historical record, Medallions offers the reader startling immediacy, the repetition of an event as it persists in the testimonial present, in the scars on the consciousness and conscience of individuals."
— Northwestern University Press (2006)
But can we do it again? Can the artist community do this again and create a historical record of the scars, or are we simply overwhelmed with judgements. Deliberating on what constitutes as a “just war” is an oxymoron surely? Who deserves to be blown up or not? Who started it and who didn’t? Does that matter now when the removal of a whole people is at risk?
I urge our community of writers, artists, dancers, theatre makers and journalists to come away from the concern over who is wrong and who is right, whether we are too late or enough. Does that matter? Or can we as Nalkowska does, mark make the actions, the ‘things’ that are happening and forget for the moment the reasons. Reasons are distracting. Reasoning is procrastination.
What does reason do but position our empathy and portion it towards binaries of ‘just’ and the so called ‘unjust’ by finding reasons to reason the unreasonable.
Perhaps this is human nature? To determine from a safe distance of social media [blackouts] what is happening?
What is happening is children are being blown apart at school whilst praying.
Children are blown apart at school whilst praying.
Children are blown apart at school whilst playing.
Parents pick up the scraps of their child's face. A little piece of their child’s heart. A severed hand clutching another child's hand.
And they must put these pieces, these medallions, into plastic bags.
That is what is happening.
There is no fair in love and war. Fair left this ‘war’ decades ago …for it started a long time before October 7th, 2023. How fair can a war be when one side has been denied all resource to defend itself? All resource to live a life has been denied. The stripping of identity, the stripping of homes, the bombardment and systematic removal of livelihood and basic needs is the beginning of annihilation. It started here in Gaza. What next for West Bank?
For West Bank the abuses, the ‘things that have been happening for decades’ have maintained a steady oppression and many of these actors are young, only knowing this their whole lives.
I didn't start working with this group on October 7th, 2023. I have been working with them for years. Years, of updates on life under occupation, domestic abuses on a macro level, humiliations and intimidation, brutalities and destructions. The switching off of the electricity which powers not only of the light, but access to the outside world and abilities to cry out for help and not only that but basic water supplies. The group of actor-journalists training together rehearse when they can. Many times they do so as they hear drones and bombs overhead. Many times, I have joined them remotely on Zoom meetings or in rehearsals as they stop performing, or talking and are listening and waiting. Always on edge. A few weeks back they had a visitor from Gaza who tries to call his family, there is no answer. The day before the army stormed past the community hall they are working from, threatening to enter but on this occasion do not. All of these actors know what could happen at any moment, but still they try and work to represent the truth of their daily, everyday experiences.
For years. In pattern recognition, I worry for West Bank.
As promised, I will share the words of those experiencing these consequences. Those who live and work in West Bank.
One person (not named due to the danger of being so) tells me of how this systematic domestic abuse strips Palestine of hope.
“In this situation here, where also I am psychologically surrendering in the daily less and less hope that things here are getting better, but will be getting, worse; with the world knowing, seeing... it seems nothing can be done, nor to stop the war, nor the daily ongoing annihilation of the West Bank.
I am afraid that soon soon there will be less or maybe no Palestine anymore.
Day by day they kill, take the land, the houses, the money of the people here and they are so violent, shooting, imprisoning, (more than nine thousand people are imprisoned since the war). People don't dare to speak anymore, the ones who live here, don't share their real thoughts and erase everything before leaving to go to another city - anything from their phone that could be a reason to get blocked at a checkpoint, arrested, or for me…to be thrown out of the country. A wrong "like" on social media, a thrown stone, expression of your opinion - all can lead you to prison, or to your death.
My motivation to be here, to bring the voice and to have to hide my work, our work... To have so little money, and not being able to give them a salary or a little contribution and hope for their desperate economic in this situation, NO WORK here. The frustration of that, the becoming depressive. I have to find a way. Please help me Carrie not to surrender to all this.
The people here are also strong and go on with their lives. Moments of joy, they are also there, but honestly less and less and less.
No parties, no festivals, no football, no going to visit the people in another city, no going out easily in the night to sit by the fire, no big demonstrations. Life is changing more and more to this. Trying not to get in trouble. We speak later Carrie. As soon as you can. Please help me to fight, to find private funding of the people, maybe to send around this writing, maybe, maybe, there must be roads, let's think.
And let's speak about everything.
Sometimes I became numb. I speak with people in Europe, but it is so difficult to tell everything. Because they will get so worried.
Shooting in the street just near my door, while they are passing the little city with their military jeeps, the war in Gaza... when I sit with my Gazan friends, who hide here in our work place not to be arrested and who cannot join their families in Gaza, and we drink our Arabic coffee, we enjoy, such a simple moments, but… we can only be forgetting this so horrible life of their wives and children, never knowing if they are still alive… if they have food, or in worse cases, where they are.
When I don't get an answer of my new friend there, the daughter of M, while I know she got ill, and there are no medicines, when I see she has no internet, while the horrible images from there invade my Instagram, images many people in the world cannot see anymore because… so, so cruel, but they/ we are living it minute after minute. When she doesn’t answer me I think the worst…”
I share this with you today to please read and feel and connect and it doesn't feel enough
This is blog 1. I hope I have the ability to continue to remove the block of not being able to do enough and do a little more of something. I cannot promise , but I will try and share what I can safely for my friends.
For more information and to find out about an upcoming event where the company will be sharing their work in the UK please contact me.
If you feel you can help financially, any small amount goes a long way. The group struggle to pay for flights and accomodation to tell their stories. I will send you a direct Pay Pal account for the company. This work is important. Its not too late.
My contact email is carriewestwater@gmail.com / www.carriewestwater.com
References:
"Medallions by Zofia Nalkowska, Paperback, February 25, 2000". Indigo Books. 2018. Retrieved 2018-02-07.
"Medallions, Zofia Nalkowska, Considered a masterpiece of antifascist world literature". Northwestern University Press. 2006. Archived from the original on 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
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