Middle East; A snapshot

2009-12-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

What is the purpose of this blog?

2009-09-15T08:48:00.001-07:00

All the fellows in the Middle East and all the members of the Montreal group are invited to be contributors to this space that is for continuing the conversation that we all started.

What is the purpose of the blog? Some of our ideas:

-Forum for discussion/story-telling and reacting to each other's stories (Every month a different person could invite everyone with a topic/question that is relevant to them, eg. Like at our workshop all together in Jordan: "When did you feel a sense of community?")
-Expressing our stories through different mediums (film, audio, poems, photo-essay...)
-A place for people we work with to share THEIR stories and join the conversation
-Sharing workshop ideas/lesson plans/experiments
-A nice way to continue getting to know each other, cause it was all so fast!
-...Any other ideas on how this blog could be useful to you?

Cross-border Smuggling

2009-09-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is an email I wrote to everyone in the Montreal group earlier, with some up-dating. I would love to hear what other people's thoughts are on the topic...

I learned SO much from our trip, and feel incredibly lucky to have gone, and I think our workshops also provided people with a great opportunity to talk about their work and to celebrate and reflect. However, we didn’t get to do so much sharing stories across communities, which I greatly regretted, and felt was an important missing part of our side of the project.

We were warned not to mention affiliation between the centers in certain places, but we could find out on a case-by-case basis, and that it should be okay to mention the location that a story was from.

In the end, I think we collected many stories but transferred so few during the workshops firstly because we only had a few workshops in which to figure it out, but I also think it happened because we were afraid. We didn’t want to impose, we didn’t want to be insensitive, but I think we also didn’t want to breach the topic of “the other(s).” At the Beer Sheva workshop we had planned to share the drawing and gesture from Nablus, but had to cut short just before; in retrospect, I wish we'd made it more of a priority. I felt a bit like if there's someone who can breach this topic without permanent reprecussions on their place in the community, it's us, as visitors. Even if it makes people uncomfortable, even if nobody is ready to hear them, even if nobody thinks any differently afterwards, people grapple with themselves. Everyone present witnesses something.

I think of a particular evening on my first trip to the region in 2006; the war with Lebanon was well underway. It was a reunion of the Israeli students from my set of highschools, which prides itself on supposedly creating "agents of change towards international understanding."It was a nice enough evening of getting-to-know-yous over the bounties of potluck goods, and we had gathered in a circle, and were doing names. My friend Raz was getting bored, so he prodded me and whispered "Why don't we liven things up a bit... why don't you play the stupid foreigner, and ask, 'So what are you all doing about the genocide that is happening in Lebanon right now?'" I shrank in horror at the idea and smacked him. Even if there were gross numbers of people being killed only a few kilometers north of us, under the same humid night sky that we were sitting around in basking in candle light, what did I know as an outsider to judge the morality of this war? What right did I have to accuse these people of being complicit in killing?

However, as the names went on, I started to wonder where people DID stand on what was going on. My heart started pounding just imagining myself asking. They would eat me alive. Suddenly I piped up, raising my hand, and asked. I even used the word "genocide." A low, disapproving chorus of "wooooo..." slowly rose up ...and the night had begun.

The circle broke up for want of releasing tension, and people started coming up to me one at a time: some wanting to talk, some wanting to explain, some wanting to accuse me right back. I heard about the text messages that are sent to households before missiles drop. I heard about the comparatively outstanding precision of Israeli military equipment. I heard about the number of Israeli soldiers who have been taken hostage or disappeared over the years. I was angrily told to find out a little more next time before I judge others of anything. I wanted to retract my statement, crawl into a plant pot, assure people it had all just been a dare. But other people overheard what other people were saying to me. So then I heard about the protest attended by thousands. I heard about helplessness. I heard about split loyalties. I heard about regret, sorrow, mourning, I heard, I heard, I heard, and I was exhausted by the end of the night.

But I'm glad I asked. Perhaps now I would have chosen a different way of asking, but part of me also thinks perhaps not. I put a view-point out there, even if I wasn't sure it was quite mine yet or that I had the conviction to back it up with, and people heard each other react to it. A mirror of sorts was held up.

There are lots of ways of holding up mirrors, and some ways are riskier than others, but I do believe you only find out by trying.

And then hang the same mirror on your own bathroom wall.

Shopkeepers Who Look Like Their Produce

2009-09-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

Stories from Jerusalem , by Rihab

2009-09-13T02:55:00.000-07:00

Stories in Nablus

2009-09-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

Stories Without Borders Collective

2009-09-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

Stories Without Borders Collective (SWBC): A community to community project linking Canada and the Middle East through lived experiences about transforming conflict through artistic expression. With McGills MMEP program, MCM and in collaboration with several GrassRoots organizations in the Middle East. The SWBC traveled to Jordan, Palestine and Israel.

Each participant of Stories Without Borders has created an "impression" on one day of their time in the Middle East:

Bethlehem, Palestine. By Shalak

2009-09-01T20:18:00.000-07:00