{"id":3373,"date":"2024-03-25T09:35:25","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T09:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/?page_id=3373"},"modified":"2024-05-01T10:03:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T09:03:47","slug":"mona-benyamin-april-2024","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/mona-benyamin-april-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Mona Benyamin, April 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What I am Reading Now\u2026
Mona Benyamin<\/strong>
April 2024<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I<\/span>
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We, Palestinians, are born into a world that announces us dead before we even take our first breath. Therefore, the only logical thing for us to do in the eyes of such a world\u2014is die. To depart silently, interrupting no one. We live in this world not as human beings but as ghosts who accidentally made their way into the realm of the living, and so, anything we do that draws attention to our existence is deemed a violent disruption. It is not terror we inflict upon this world but horror. Terror is the feeling of dread that\u00a0<\/span>precedes\u00a0<\/em>the horrifying experience, but how can anyone anticipate us if we don\u2019t exist? Horror, on the other hand, usually\u00a0<\/span>follows<\/em>\u00a0the frightening sight, and what could be scarier than hearing the corpse you stumbled against suddenly scream in pain?<\/span><\/p>

The only way for us to live is by haunting you, the living.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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***<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The first book I open is\u00a0Jalal Toufic<\/strong>\u2019s\u00a0(Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film<\/em><\/strong>; it tells me that ‘The ghost does not have a memory; he is rather the spectral embodiment of a memory, that of his unjust, untimely death and the consequent need to redress it and settle some unfinished business: he is really like an audiovisual record that each time plays back the same message.’<\/p>

I think of\u00a0this little girl<\/a>\u00a0from Gaza, who is maybe 8 or 9 years old; she assertively declares to the camera recording her:<\/p>

\u201cI will remain steadfast on my land, until the last blood drop in my soul, until my very last breath [\u2026] The children of Palestine do not abandon her [the land]\u201d.<\/p>

I also think of the words of the late Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayyad: ‘Here, we shall remain \/ A wall on your chests. \/ We starve, \/ go naked, \/ sing songs \/ and fill the streets \/ with demonstrations \/ and the jails with pride. \/ We breed rebellions \/ one after another. \/ Like twenty impossibles we remain \/ in Lydda, Ramlah, and Galilee’. and how they linger in the shadow of that little girl\u2019s voice.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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‘For Death must be somewhere in a society [\u2026] perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life.’ Writes\u00a0<\/span>Roland Barthes<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0<\/span>Camera Lucida<\/em><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>

Doctors at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza hold a press conference amidst the bodies of some of the hundreds of victims of Israel’s bombing on October 17; 19-year-old Shehab Omar Abu al-Hanud embraces his mother Ghada\u2019s wrapped body on a hospital bed in Rafah on February 19; a bag of flour covered in blood on February 29; limbs scattered in the streets. Every day we see an image from Gaza that could end all images.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In 1988, at the age of twenty, <\/span>Souha B\u00e9chara<\/strong> attempted to assassinate Antoine Lahad, the head of the militia that administered the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s. After the attempted assassination, B\u00e9chara was locked up in the notorious Khiam prison, where she was subjected to 12 years of torture and solitary confinement. In her memoir, <\/span>Resistance: My Life for Lebanon<\/strong>, <\/em>she recalls being asked by one of the men present at the scene, \u201cWhy did you do it? Why did you kill him?\u201d to which she responded, \u201cHe\u2019s the one killing us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Two years ago, I lent my mom the first volume of\u00a0Bassam Hajjar<\/strong>\u2019s\u00a0Complete Poetical Works<\/em><\/strong>; when she gave it back to me, I found that she\u2019d used a pencil to underline her favorite verses and lines. When I\u2019m lonely, I read the book again in search of my mother:*<\/span><\/p>

What shall we do with so much loss \/ and very little heart?<\/u>\u00a0(I continue reading)\u00a0The more I love you\/the more you die\/ maybe<\/u>\u00a0(she does not underline the following line).\u00a0and I was afraid. Where do all the faces we love go? Will they return?<\/u>\u00a0(The world is no longer the same once you discover your mother has fears.)<\/p>

* Unfortunately, Bassam Hajjar\u2019s work was never translated into English; the lines presented here are my own translation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A Hen <\/em><\/strong><\/a>by\u00a0Clarice Lispector<\/strong>; my own words are not needed here.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But if you must read anything today\u2014let it be the news.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Mona Benyamin<\/strong><\/a> is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Palestine. In her works, she explores intergenerational outlooks on hope, trauma, and questions of identity, using humor and irony as political tools of resistance and reflection; through appropriating formats from mass media and popular media and tampering with their apparatuses, she raises questions about the value of authenticity and the tension between truth and fiction. Her films have been screened internationally in venues, festivals, and platforms which include\u2014among others\u2014MoMA, REDCAT, CUNY, Sheffield DocFest, and Columbia University.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Reading<\/p>

(Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film<\/em>, Jalal Toufic (Station Hill Press, 2014)<\/div>
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Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography<\/em>, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Vintage Classics, 1993)<\/div>
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Resistance My life for Lebanon<\/em>, Souha B\u00e9chara, trans. Gabriel Levine (Catapult, 2003)<\/div>
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Bassam Hajjar: Complete Poetical Works<\/em> (Takween Publishing, 2018)<\/div>
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A Hen<\/em>, Clarice Lispector, trans. Elizabeth Bishop (The Kenyon Review, 1964)<\/a><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Please note the views published in <\/span>What I am Reading Now…<\/em> are personal reflections of the contributors.
These may not necessarily represent the views of the University of Dundee.<\/span>
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Readers who wish to make a donation to support Medical Aid for Palestinians can do so <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.
<\/span>\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Home<\/a><\/p>\n

Previous Issue: Nh\u00e3 Thuy\u00ean, March 2024<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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about projects What I am Reading Now\u2026Mona BenyaminApril 2024 I We, Palestinians, are born into a world that announces us dead before we even take our first breath. Therefore, the only logical thing for us to do in the eyes of such a world\u2014is die. To depart silently, interrupting no one. We live in this …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3373","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3776,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3373\/revisions\/3776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}