Who Are We?

 Four friends, book and film buffs, who strive to do better and be better, and who, like millions of others around the world, steadfastly support the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Between the four of us we are: a writer, a researcher, a teacher and a bookshop owner.

As Arab women (one Palestinian and three Moroccans)—we don’t like putting ourselves or others in boxes, but we recognize that this is part of our identity, and the one that is visible to the world at the moment—we also understand that what is done to the Palestinians, and now to the Lebanese, what was done to the Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Afghanis and Libyans, was made possible by the complex interplay of physical power and the symbolic control of the narratives.

We recognize that this could be done to us, our children, or, beyond ethnicity or religion or region, to anyone who refuses to submit. We recognize the urgency of our times and we refuse to remain silent. Reading and writing, thinking and asking questions, are what we know how to do best, and what we can offer you. Through literature and film, through art and creativity, we can delve into the most human part of ourselves, the part where sensitive intelligence shelters, that feels pain for others, that grieves for others, that sees others as mirrors of ourselves. The part that knows that what hurts one, hurts all, that “the children are always ours, every single one of them (James Baldwin); the part that instinctively understands that we are connected, that it’s only by an accident of birth that we are here and not there, and that no-one can be safe in a world that has lost all regard for human life and basic human rights.

We believe that, together, by gathering, exchanging and deepening our understanding, we can have an impact, we can resist. We may even bring hope to others and to ourselves. Finally, we may even change a mind or two.

Drops become oceans.