My name is Fawwaz Traboulsi, I am a historian and writer, and long time socialist militant (not exactly like the socialism of Bernie Sanders but still against the 1 percent) and I teach Middle East Studies and Sociology at AUB. I mentioned socialist militant (not activist) because it is in this capacity that I met Jean Chamoun in the seventies and Mai Masri later on. And it is because of my acquaintance with, and admiration for, their person and their work that I immediately accepted Jirji Bshir\u2019s request to introduce Mai\u2019s new film though I am not exactly a film critic.<\/p>\n
Mai and Jean have lived and filmed in the heart of the major conflicts and struggles of our region more particularly of Palestine and Lebanon. It is their courage that one should first salute. A courage sustained by deep human engagement on the side of those who toil, the poor, the uprooted, the displaced, the discarded and those who struggle in life . It is this empathy, that made the substance of their films and drove them to relay to us the collective courage of people resisting but still trying to change their lives and at times change life itself.<\/p>\n
You are not invited to identify with suffering or but to share moments of the life of the everyday struggle of men and women against the hardships of life, finding a job, or coping with war, siege, massacres, displacement and uprooting in their most extreme forms.<\/p>\n
No heroes or bad guys here. But stories of an individual and collective will to live, love, endure, create, play, enjoy life, despite all adversities.<\/p>\n
But mostly Mai\u2019s films are about women and children, not as victims, but as humans who resist, endure and create the most unimaginable ways and means to conquer defeat, submission and death. When simple hope is not enough they are moved by that \u2018undefeated despair\u2019 to use the words of John Berger in talking about the Palestinian intifadas. In the forefront, women, always women, in Palestine, Beirut, South Lebanon, the Camps, younger women like Shaden and Farah or such remarkable older women as Kifah Afifi, Sameeha Khalil, Hanan Ashrawi, Widad Halwani and others.<\/p>\n
But what a strange coincidence to be watching Mai Masri\u2019s film this evening. A few days ago, was the 41st<\/sup> anniversary of the Lebanese civil war. From War Generation to 33 days Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri have recorded the filmed memory of suspended dreams as a massive movement for change mutated into a civil war at the hands of those \u201cwho rose up in arms to give us our rights and ended by depriving us of our rights\u201d (to quote a militant in one of their films) as peace begot the domination of war-lords-cum-mafia-businessmen who presently rule over our lives.<\/p>\n Politically lucid and critical, Mai and Jean filmed with the anti war protesters of the late nineties and the women who launched the movement of the disappeared. They likewise covered the protests at the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in 2005 in downtown Beirut with the same candid eye they filmed Israeli invasion of Lebanon a year later.<\/p>\n But on that occasion, is it enough to simply remember or forget? And what to remember and what to forget? If memory is an obligation doesn\u2019t forgetfulness (not amnesia) becomes a necessity, when it comes to the will to move on. In other words, isn\u2019t there a need to practice a memory of forgetfulness to quote the title of Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s diary on the Palestinian Lebanese tragedy written in Beirut during that fateful August 1982? Hardly academic questions.<\/p>\n Yesterday the world celebrated the Palestinian prisoner day. 800,000 Palestinians passed through Israeli prisons in two decades between 1967 and1988, 20% of the population. The latest statistics would reveal a higher percentage. We know that in one decade between 2000 and 2009, 6700 Palestinian youth between 12 and 18 entered Israeli prisons. What a telling story about Israel as a colonial state when after 68 years of its creation it needs to jail greater and greater numbers of Palestinians with a growing number of women and children among them. What better homage to the resistance of the Palestinian people than they resist behind bars as resolutely as they do in the wider Zionist prison.<\/p>\n Before I join you to watch Mai Masri\u2019s 3000 Nights, this anecdote: a Syrian friend who has been generously hosted quite a few a times in Baathi Syrian jails, was summoned by a jailer to help a woman prisoner with a young child born in prison. The boy was crying wanting his father. Trying to comfort the child, my friend says: do you want me to tell you the story of the little bird? What is a bird? asked the child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My name is Fawwaz Traboulsi, I am a historian and writer, and long time socialist militant (not exactly like the socialism of Bernie Sanders but still against the 1 percent) and I teach Middle East Studies and Sociology at AUB. 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