 the Soas Middle East Institute, which is hosting this event. And I also welcome Nargis Fersat, who is the chair of the Centre for Iranian Study, who helps arrange the talks on Tuesday evening. But most importantly, I'm looking forward to hearing Victoria from Britain to talk about her book, which I have a copy of, which is Love and Resistance in the Films of Neymar It's a very exciting book and I really recommend anyone who is interested in questions related to Palestine to women, to film production, to media production in and about Palestine to read it. Without further ado, I just want to briefly introduce Victoria. She's a British journalist author. She has lived and worked in Africa, in the U.S. and Asia, and she has worked for the Guardian for 20 years as an associate foreign editor. She's a campaigner for human rights throughout the developing world, and she has contributed widely to many other international publications writing particularly on Africa and the U.S. and the Middle East. In the 1980s, she worked closely with the anti-apartheid movement, integrating activists from the United Democratic Front and the Southern African Liberation movements. She has written many books and she has co-authored some books with other writers. She also was a consultant to the United Nations on the impact of conflict on women, also the subject of research paper for the London School of Economics. She has written plays, which I did not know that or just discovered that about Victoria. She is a woman of many secrets and many talents. It's really exciting to have her here, and she was a founder member of the annual Palestine Festival of Literature in 2008. And importantly, she is a trustee of the Palestine Book Awards, when I had the pleasure to be with her on a couple of panels. As of 2020, Victoria is chair of Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organisation focusing on UK foreign military and intelligence policies. We welcome you here, Victoria, and thank you so much for giving us your time. And I hope you know you're going to talk for about 10 to 15 minutes, and then I invite all the attendees to send questions via the chat box, and we can collect them and we can answer them. I might have a couple of questions to ask Victoria. But welcome, and thank you so much. We're looking forward to your, you know, brief introduction about the book and over to you. Thank you very much, Dina, and thank you everyone for coming to this evening's discussion. And thank you, of course, to the Soras Middle East Institute and Narges for hosting us, and especially Dina for discussing the book and having the idea, and of course to Aki for all the technology and links, which is such a challenge to some of us who don't do it all the time. I want to say that I owe Dina, actually, another debt. I later discovered that she was one of the four anonymous peer reviewers of my proposal to the publishers, and I'm quite sure she was that very warm and enthusiastic one who said, I would certainly want my students to read this book, and that may have persuaded the publishers they wanted to do it. But I want to start with the genesis of the book because it was not my idea. It's more than three and a half years since I received an email from somebody unknown to me asking me if I'd like to write a book about main mastery. I said yes, immediately. I didn't stop to think about how I was actually going to do it or what it would mean to be working for an academic publisher. My previous publishers had been very different style, much more cosy, Faber and Faber and Fluto. And my books were based in a wholly different world, a world of 10 years of living and working in Africa in the dying years of the Cold War and of the apartheid regime in South Africa. But why did I say yes so quickly? Because I knew May and I'd seen four of her indelible films over a 30-year period, which was in fact about the same time span as I had been gradually more and more often visiting and writing about Palestine and the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. So I just knew this was my perfect project and I was right. It's been a very rich three more plus nearly four years. I feel I've been living inside these dozen films and alongside their brave and impressive protagonists and inside this long tragic and dramatic history. And most importantly, living inside May's mind, which I learned in our long, long walks and talks in Beirut and in London. So I owe a great debt of thanks to the two filmmakers and academics, Samira Al-Qassim and Nezah Andari, for asking me a complete stranger to them to write this book as part of their important series on Arab filmmakers. theirs was the first book and mine is number three. And I think two more may be in production now. And we've never met us three. But from their different worlds in the United States and the UAE, me in London, they couldn't have given me more generous support with critiques and ideas and an important friendship for me. Of course, I really wish tonight that we were all together, everyone who's who's listening to this and Samira and May, of course, and Nezah. And we were watching one of May's films here and then we were going to have a discussion and share our thoughts and maybe go for dinner. Maybe it will happen another time. But what I can do for now, I hope is that I can give you a taste of these really beautiful, meticulous original works of art. So I want to start with the themes which attracted me to writing about these body of unusual documents which span more than 40 years. And of course, as well as the documentaries, the award winning feature film, which came out in 2015, 3000 Nights, some of you might have seen it, it opened the London Film Festival that year. All May's work is related and it's linked. I think of it being like a quilt or a collage or a tapestry with many different layers. And as you watch them, you begin to recognize individual women and you see them age in different films and appearing in different contexts. And the four themes I want to highlight are these. First of all, inspirational women. Who doesn't love them? Secondly, the resistance by communities of seemingly ordinary people to injustice. Third, the surviving of incarceration. And lastly and above all, memory. Memory and its precious role in building identity. And in the face of more than 100 years of the attempted destruction of Palestine and Palestinian identity, memory is the most important thing. And on this last point, these films of May's have a very poignant importance given the looting by the Israeli army of the Palestine Cinema Institute in Beirut and the seizing of the entire archive by the army during the 82 invasion. In fact, this was just part of a policy of rubbing out of Palestinian history, which goes back to 1948. And it was revealed in detail by Dr. Rona Salah, talking of inspiring women, of Tel Aviv University, who put 10 years of research and efforts into declassifying Palestinian material, which was being held as inaccessible as Israeli military material. Anyway, May's films cannot replace what's lost. But they do highlight that loss in the way that they reveal, taken all together, a historical documentation of these years, which is of absolutely unique value. So, May and her dear late husband and close colleague, the Lebanese film director Jean Chamon, they were on the ground filming in almost all the key moments of this period. And so the films span both political and personal experiences, actually of indescribable horror. Of course, most of you are all probably far too familiar, but I'll just give you the span from the siege and bombing of Beirut by Israel in 82, and then the massacre of 2000 Palestinian civilians in the camps of Saber and Shatila, then on to 87, and the first in Tafada, and the uprising in Gaza and the West Bank of children and Palestinian youth armed with stones against the Israeli army. And alongside this, we have to remember Israel's 22 year occupation of South Lebanon, all in the films, and the liberation from it in the year 2000. And then of course, there's the next Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 2006. And throughout all these years, there's a background, which is the normalization of torture, of exile, of disappearances, of assassinations. These are the inescapable background of Palestinian life. But exceptionally, in these films, all this overwhelming in violence is actually seen through the eyes of children and the lives of children, and through these iconic women. And for me, love, kindness, and beauty are the hallmarks of these people and of these scenes. And hence my title, Love and Resistance in the Films of Me and Mastery. I have to tell you, I thought of that title in Beirut before I'd written a word, but I'd been talking to Me and meeting people and so on. And I rather shyly tried it out on one of Me's daughters. And she said, oh, that's brilliant. I thought, right, I'm done. It's often difficult to think of a title, but I was so happy with it. And I'm still happy with it. Now, one of Me's running themes, which it's so important to register in the unity of her work, is the transmission of oral history to Palestinian children from older generations, elderly neighbors, shrewd wounded fighters, parents released from years, decades in prison. And the children she chose for the films are revealed living in their childish dreams and imagination, reading from their private dairies and sometimes painting together a brilliant panorama of Palestine filled with birds and flowers. And then a brilliant touch by Me, filming each other, filming their hopes and ambitions on digital cameras, which she gave to them. This is very patient work. And in the long, long gestation of many of these films, what that patience was building was trust. The word trust, trust of Me and Jean was emphasized to me by so many people I listened to, not only participants in the films, but Lebanese and Palestinian critics and observers over the years. Me as an insider in these lives and the intimacy of the Palestinian family scenes she shows is absolutely unique. I remember the Lebanese critic Me Hamadi, one of the first people I interviewed when I was trying to get started and how I was going to do it. I was researching it. And she said to me, no one, no one has opened the camp experience to the outside world as Me has done. Never forget that is unique. Well, I sure know that now. Anyway, the participants in the films, I met them in the camps in Beirut, all over south Lebanon, and then weirdly on Skype in all sorts of different countries, like, well, all sorts of places inside Palestine, but also places like Germany, France, Switzerland. And all of them almost always told me that they've never thought of wanting to be in any kind of a film. But if it was Me and Jean, it wasn't like being interviewed, it was like chatting with friends. And decades later, these people wanted to talk to me about the book because I came to their houses with Me, or Me got them on the phone while I was there. She's completely in their lives even now. And I want to give you one example of this. One of the little girls, school girls, from the 2005 film Frontiers of Dreams and Fears, or Tamara, went on to become a filmmaker because of Me. And she told me once that she had actually filmed some images for Me to use in 3000 nights, the prisoner release in Ramallah, the Makata. And she said to me, you know, for Me, it touched me so deeply to do this because my father had been 18 years in prison, so going to film him to be in a film of Me was like a dream. Anyway, it's a mark of how Me and her work is valued by so many people that the book has got photographs and paintings and poetry donated for inclusion by some of the most distinguished of Palestinian and Lebanese artists, Samir Halabi and Ayman Balveke, then the poet Natalie Handel, and the Lebanese photographers Ramsey Haider and Marwan Tata. And I'm enormously grateful for these gifts. I hope I'm not going to show you a few photos from the book, because it will give you a taste of the films and also how they overlap with these powerful work by artists working in another genre. So here I go with my share screen, I hope. Oh, I don't think I've shared it, have I? Yeah. Yes, you have. Have I? Oh, good. Yeah, you've just called to the room. Yeah, thank you. Oh, there's the first one. Okay, this is from 3000 Nights. I'm sure some of you have seen it, and this is, oh, it says that sharing is paused. Is it okay? Are you seeing it? No, we can't. Okay, you are viewing. Can you try again? Okay, it says bring your shared window to the front. Resume share. Let me try. Can you see my screen now? Yeah, we can't see the screen, but we can see it. When I press the picture. We can see your desktop. I think if you, you know, open the film, and then if you go to share screen, and you should see a thumbnail of that. So if you come out of share, if you're in it. I am in, should I come out of share? Yes, come out of share. Stop share. Yeah. Okay. And then, and then I think maybe open what you're going to show. If you can, and then click on share screen again. And then you should see a thumbnail of, you know, everything on your desktop, etc. And then click on it and click share. Okay. But you don't want me to share a screen now. We do. Yeah. Or you can do that. Go to share screen. Press share screen. I've done that. Okay. What do you see on your computer? Now that you have, you see a little range of stuff on your. Yes, I do. Okay. And then click on what you want. The untitled photo folder. Okay. I'm clicking on the folder, right? Okay. And that's it. There we are. And now open it or whatever. I mean, you can now double click or whatever you're going to do on it. Exactly. I think that's what I did. Let me try it again. Okay. Yeah. So double click on it. I did double click on it. I can see it, but you can't. And no, we can't see. Is it an image? Is it a moving image or is it just photographs? It's photographs. And it says this sharing is paused. Oh, my gosh. Bring your shared window to the front. I'm not sure what that means. It worked when I did it with Akage. Yes, I know. Well, maybe. I mean, can you, before you go out of share again, can you open that image? You know, double click on the image. So it's, you know, the full size that you want to show us. Okay. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to show you some different images, which yeah. Okay. Let me give up my very ambitious. Just give you. Okay. I'm going to give you this one. Can you see that? If you try sharing the screen again, I've stopped recording from the cloud. So it should work now. Yeah. So shall I make this small again? If you go to share screen. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm going to show you this now. Yeah. It's working perfectly. Okay. Okay. So you can see, you can see Leal and Noor in prison. And can you hear me all right? Yeah, we can see that. And you can see the film. Okay. So this is from the feature film, 3000 Nights. And Leal is a school teacher who, for complicated reasons, nothing to do with politics, ends up completely wrongly serving an eight-year sentence. She has this baby, Noor. And he is indeed the light of her life. And at the two years old, he's taken away from her. And she spends the next eight years, the next six years in prison until she's out. Let me show you, I hope I can then show you the next one. Sorry to be a bit rubbish at this. No problem at all. Okay. So I hope this is going to work. Can you see that? Yes, we can. Yes. So this is the, forget the London Film Festival. This was the most important showing of 3000 Nights. It took place in Shatila Camp. And that's beautiful May on the right, the taller person. And the, the showing was, it was absolutely packed. And the person on the left is called Kiffar Afifi, who is a complete heroine of all sorts in Shatila and all over Palestine, in fact. And she's one of these recurring women in many of May's films. And I hope I'm going to show you a very different, see that, remember that face of Kiffar. Sorry, I'm a bit slow. Yes. Now, do you see this? This is Kiffar in the actual prison cell that she spent so many years in, in Qiam prison in south Lebanon, while it was occupied by the Israelis. And there's this unforgettable line that she, she says in the film, when she says, I died 100 deaths every day in this prison. Anyway, she, she's just a complete heroine. I won't say more. That's Kiffar. As I'm taking a long time, I'm going to show you less films, less pictures. But I'm going to show you, I want to show you this one. I can't not show you this one. This is the year 2000, when the Israeli army has just withdrawn. And this is the barbed wire between Lebanon, this side, and Palestine. And you can see the Israeli watchtower at the back. And this is a brother and sister who haven't seen each other for 52 years. And they're meeting that day. This is such a fantastic film, Frontiers. And I'm going to show you one more, rather similar to that, but totally different. I hope I've got it. Yes. This is the same day, and the same place. And you have got children, Palestinian children who've come down from Shatila. And on the other side, you've got children who've come from Duhesha camp outside of Bethlehem. And they had been pen pals and had also been linked by seeing each other on Skype and things like that, but had never ever imagined for a second that they were going to meet. And it was just a day of absolutely overwhelming joy, emotion, completely extraordinary captured in this film. And I want to show you one more thing, if I get my act together. I want to show you this. This is a painting, a monumentally huge painting, by the Lebanese artist Aiman Balbaki. And it's a painting of the Barakat buildings, also sometimes known as Beirut, which is on Damascus Road, just on the green line of the 15-year civil war. And it's just an amazing evocation of what happened to Beirut in that period. And it's now called a Museum of Memory. So I keep bringing up memory. And it's in May's 2005 film called Beirut Diaries. It's very, very central to the film. And I just want to tell you that the first ever exhibition that was held in this museum was on the 17,000 disappeared civilians of the Lebanese civil war. And if you've got the patience to just see one more thing, which is another painting, this is a painting by Samir Halabi, the totally revered Palestinian painter. And it's a painting that she did in 2017 of Gasan Canafani. As I'm sure most of you know, he was assassinated by the Israelis on the 8th of July in 72. And he was a poet and a writer. And I think the way she's done it, you've got this peaceful but determined face in this sea of poppies and different Palestinians of all ages and all sorts. And I love looking at this picture. And I love the fact that in his obit in Lebanon's Daily Star it said, he was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ballpoint pen, and his arena was the newspaper pages. I think these are perfect words. And on that note, I'll stop sharing and go over to Dina. Okay, thank you very much. So if you kind of come back to the screen. I hope I have. Okay. All right. So, oops, hold on just one second. I just was very intrigued by your talk because it kind of opened more questions in my mind that I had originally thought I wanted to ask you. And one of the questions was around the question of memory. You talked about memory. And you talked about the films as being a form of maybe memory or an archive of memory. And I want you to kind of talk about that and talk about the selection of films that you chose for this book. And how you see that kind of coming through the question of memory and why it is important to talk about memory in the Palestinian case. Oh, hard question, Dina. Well, I mean, so many things that I learned listening to people made me realize how much memory is what Palestinians of all different age groups thrive on and live on. And the more I learned about the terrible story of the archive, and I realized that it was like a it was like a wound for people that that kind of heroic period of the 60s, 70s, that was on those quite rough films, because actually some reels of those films were taken out during 82 in people's handbags and some were actually in Italy where they were being they were being worked on at the time. So you can see some little fragments of those films. But it's like a that somebody tried to rub out the history. And it's such an incredibly dramatic and outrageous thing that to try to understand its emotional impact. And there's a scene in Children of Shatila, just often may have given them these little digital cameras. And there's this bunch of kids and they go down to an elderly neighbor. And they're kidding around and filming each other. And then they get to him. And he's very old mountain and they say to him, tell us, what was it like when you left Palestine? And he's really serious with them. And he says, we were very poor and shabby lot and lots we had no shoes. It was terrible. And then, then they say to him, you know, the little kids they said to him, so when you go back to Palestine, what's the first thing that you will do? And he very seriously says, well, of course, I look after my land. It's the most important thing. And you look at the faces of the kids, because some of the kids are filming him. And some of the kids are filming each other. And in the film, she very cleverly shows all these different things. And then he says to them at the end, he says, I want you to promise me one thing, that however long it takes, and however old you are, when you're old like me, you'll still remember that Palestine is your life. And you know, I mean, it's like as for an outsider, it's so poignant and so strong. And then when I try to explain about how I feel that her films are all interlinked. And they're interlinked with her life. And they're interlinked with the lives of so many of these protagonists who come back. You know, they have babies and they ring her up and say, Oh, I'm having I own, I've got a new baby, or I've done my PhD, or I'm doing and it's like that they have formed a kind of living Palestine, even when they're in exile. I may be not being very clear and maybe to any Palestinian listening, it's so bleeding obvious what I'm saying. But I'm just trying to answer the question. You've answered it. But I've got another quick question in relation to that, which is, again, the title Love and Resistance in a way. Because, you know, in a sense, you bring that out very nicely in the chapters and the way you write. And it comes through the narrative very clearly. And also, of course, the love and resistance in the films, you know, what is what are the films about? But one way I was trying to think about it is also about life. So in a sense, I, you know, and it links to the idea of memory and about lived lives and about lived experiences and remembering and so on. And I wondered whether that was something you thought about as you were looking at those films, and you're trying to, you know, speak with them and speak with other people about them. And of course, my features really very well through your eloquent different chapters, you know, each chapter sits on its own somehow. But they're all interlinked by this, you know, by the theme that you go through, which is love and resistance. But for me, it was, you know, it's about life, you know, and I wondered whether you thought about that in a way, or as you kind of look back at the films and so on. How does that? Yeah, I mean, that's just a complete description of what I felt. And I mean, you know, Kiffar is such an example of that. And, you know, when you're sitting with her in her room and she's talking about all these experiences, which you know about because you've seen the films, or you've, you know, you've read the books of other prisoners. And there she is, this jolly woman, you know, talking about teenagers and life. And then, you know, joking about her husband. And there was another title I thought about for half a second, because I thought it was funny. She's talking about her husband. She said, of course, he was in the men's part of Hian. And we had put this black cloth behind the window. And so we could kind of get reflected to each other. And you know, there was I in my handcuffs, flirting away with him in my handcuffs. And I thought, you know, this is a woman who is so amazingly indomitable. And all the women who speak about that time. And then you see them playing with their children and talking about family, life and friends and love. And it's, it's the whole, the whole ensemble of the books is an affirmation of life against, against everything that's being done to precious. So can I ask a more general question? So it's really important that we have books like this out. And it's really important that we have, you know, a reflection or kind of a, you know, to bring to outside audiences lives of Palestinians and the need to make the voices visible. And I think May has done that through all her films. And it's, it's very important. But I wanted to ask, you know, having, you know, been involved in South Africa and kind of anti-apartheid and so on. Do you have, you know, you know, looking at the lives and the kind of the, the ways in which Palestinians have lived through different stages and different experiences and different necropiles or whatever we can call them, we want to call them. Do you see, do you see some, you know, do you kind of somehow, do you feel that there is some similarity or do you think that's a very simplistic way of looking at it? No, it's not simplistic at all. There are some, definitely a lot of similarities. And there are also a lot of very obviously very, very different things. But I think in a way, my incredible luck was that I had had the Southern African experience. And I staying always in Angola, which was a country completely crushed by the American and to Zaire as the Democratic Republic of Congo, then and white South Africa had really brought this country to its knees. And what I had seen there, I think of resilience is always the wrong word because it's too small, but of people who embraced beauty, whether they were artists or poets, or one particular family who were assassinated by by Unita, who run a research agricultural research center, which was full of the most amazing, beautiful, beautiful flowers. And it was that what beauty gives you. And and also I would have to say that from the experience of the Cuban doctors in particular and school teachers, who who often did two or three tours in Angola, when goodness it was tough. But they, they were just exuberant. They just managed to be exuberant. And I am around and keep far and many other mayors or friends. I found that and I thought, you know, this this is the secret of how you don't lose your humanity, however much somebody with a boot on your head is trying to make you lose it. So I mean, as far as say these rich years lucky me. Yes, I can say that. I want to see whether there seems to be a question in the question and answer. And it's a question from Aliya Zayed. She's asking, how can the Western world, particularly the media highlight the agony, the deliberate erasing of memories apart from the obvious everyday terror, terror of living under an occupation without being labeled anti-Semitic? It's a kind of a, you know, a big question. But I think just to put it in a nutshell, she's she is what that question is asking is, have you ever faced or maybe by writing this book or something will you be faced? Do you think that you might be facing questions around you being anti-Semitic? I think it's a difficult topic to bring in the discussion because it's so broad. But it was one of the questions that was put there. And I just feel I I have to ask you because I haven't seen other questions coming up. Okay. Well, what can I say? You know, I'm not a communist, but I spent years being described as a communist in the Thatcher time because I was, you know, I wasn't because I'm a reporter. I was reporting what I saw in Southern Angola and Mozambique, which was being done by the apartheid regime. And, you know, people sling around these extremely damaging kind of, well, they're kind of, well, the insults, you know, something that's meant to be damaging. But, you know, my job is I'm a reporter. And I've been a reporter in this in this book. All these things happened. And, and, and what I what I want to just to students to see is that it's it's a pattern. It's all of a thing together. And it's this this is a kind of strand of life you have to know about. And there's a lot of there's a lot of overwhelmingly negative, as I have said, but through these films, you can see the overwhelmingly positive that is human beings, which links to another question just come up, which is asking about the demographic, you know, the main demographic in my Muslim films, but also how effective do you think film is in raising awareness of the conflicts that are currently going on, particularly in the case of Palestine, as opposed to other media. So, whether you can comment, do you think that film, you know, in particular, can can make visible hidden conflicts. So what is your Yeah, I absolutely do think it can. But of course, I mean, the main thing is, is that films have to be seen. And films, I mean, that may open the London Film Festival was fabulous. But you know, which British cinema, then run that film. And I think that it's the film is so powerful. And when I see the kind of reception that maze films get all over the world, you know, whether it's Tunisia or India or Egypt, you know, she's like a rock star, they think, Oh, my God, this woman has shown us this amazing things. And, and in France, actually, one of her producers is French. And although there's been some opposition to our films being shown, she has film festivals in France, where people queue to get in. And people, it opens people's minds and people's hearts, they love it. So yes, I mean, I wish I wasn't a writer in a way, I wish I was a filmmaker because, unless you're Daouish or somebody, you know, Daouish on 1982, that amazing book that he wrote, you know, their words really work. But for most people to just most journalists or ordinary writers to describe these things has nothing like the impact of what you see in these films. Yeah, that's true. I don't know that there are any questions. Actually, can you give us some questions? Are you getting any questions from elsewhere? No, there's nothing else on on on Facebook. And I'm waiting here on the question and answer to see whether there are any questions. This is a, you know, a difficult way of kind of having a discussion because you have to wait until something comes up. And maybe people are unable to to pose their questions. Can I ask you a question, Dina? Yes. Well, while we're waiting for another question, I want to ask you that, you know, you're a teacher in so as so. And I'm sure that in your classes, you have a cross section of students who are who know a lot, maybe they're Palestinian or from the region, and then students from all over the world who don't know much and are just there for curiosity. How do you think that these films would would play in in that kind of student group, which is something I'm very, very interested in? Well, it's a good question. But I think so as is, you know, I teach postgraduate students. So they would have had they would probably have had an interest in understanding and analyzing film and media in different ways. And that's why they come and do the courses at SOAS. And they're also interested in the voices coming from what we call the Global South, the voices and the images and the representations coming from Asia, Africa and the East. So we have a lot of, you know, kind of material. I think, you know, if we it's a very good, first of all, your book is really good for kind of making people think about issues in a different way. So you can say, why don't we use a classroom situation where we can see one of those films and then have them kind of comment on what are the angles, what are the themes that come up. And I think it's for me as a teacher, it is important to have such material, particularly related to woman, Palestinian woman kind of showing the lives of Palestinians as they are. I myself, you know, would love to be able to write a sequel to my first book, in a sense about Palestinian memory and, you know, kind of lived experiences of particular events in Palestinian lives. But if you come to the question of, again, what type of questions does it trace, and particularly in the current moment, which is the COVID moment where we have, you know, a situation where that, you know, what is happening in Palestine as in many other parts of the world is almost invisible right now, because we have the concentration on, you know, the big picture and also the little picture, which is the national picture, well, how are we dealing with the crisis that we are in? And the bigger picture, which is the politics of, you know, whatever is happening in the American elections. But I can see I've got some questions coming up, which is a good question, which is what is the most challenging part of writing this book? Oh, that's not a difficult question. The most difficult thing was feeling that it's so overwhelmingly complex and serious and important. Can I possibly do it justice? And have I understood enough to be able to impart to readers what I really feel about it? And, you know, of course, I don't really know the answer to that. At least I sort of do know, because the book has had two wonderful reviews, one in French, very long one in what's it called Oréan 21 by a Brazilian woman and who has loved May's work for years. And she wrote this long, long appreciation of May. And then she wrote to me saying, you know, I've learned a lot of new things. So I thought, well, phew, I've got it over to somebody. And then the one in Arabic was, you know, written by a wonderful Iraqi writer. But I can't tell until I see maybe some English people making a response, whether they people have have learned something, have enjoyed it, have but, you know, with COVID how it is, and not meeting people. I think I just have to be patient to know whether I, whether I did what I did, whether I did what I meant to do. So the challenge is still there. Did I pull it off? So I've got a couple of more questions. One is asking why, you know, why did you choose May Must be and why her films and then asking what where can they find a book in the Middle East, whether you have any idea of whether it's being sold in parts of the Middle East. And the other question that is quite challenging is is a question related to, you know, the cap, you know, in a sense, is there a difference between men's and women's memories? And did you, and I have a question related to that, which I will ask later. But the question coming from the audience also said that they watched a film once, and there was a palpable sense of shame coming through in the discussion around Palestinian history and so on. So maybe you could contrast that with what you have seen in, what you think May showed in the film. So the sense of shame, or the sense of pride, or whatever. But that's a question coming from the audience. So you may want to not answer it, but basically you've got a couple of questions to answer. Okay, well, let me answer the easier ones. Why May? Well, as I said, I was not the one who had the brilliant idea to do this book. I was just the one who got the lucky chance of writing it. And I suppose why I never thought of doing it myself was I didn't think, you know, I really had the background, you know, all my years in Africa, and all the times I went to Palestine and had been in Lebanon and so on. I felt there were many people with much better qualifications to do that kind of something so big. And then I think it was a question about where you can get the book. Well, you can, people have got it from Amazon, but it takes quite a long time. And then there is a link, maybe I could, maybe I can send you, Dina or Aki, a link to Palgrave where you can get it. But then the third option is that we're doing an event on the 13th of November in, you know, Doc House. They're doing an event in which they're showing a film. And then they're having a discussion with May and myself. And I know that Palgrave are making the book available through that at a 20% discount. So that's another thing you could do. But I will give the Palgrave link to Dina and to Aki, and maybe they can give it to whoever is asking that question. And then there was a question, is there a difference between men's and women's memories? Did I get that right? Well, yes, I would say there is. But when we're specifically talking about war, you know, I was a war correspondent for quite a long time in Vietnam, and then a lot, a lot in different places in Africa, even before I went to Angola and Southern Africa. And I was always struck by the different ways that reporters related to different protagonists in the war. And many of the reporters that I knew, male reporters, liked working in groups, liked socializing in groups, liked being embedded in a military unit. And all of those things, I would rather have died than involve myself in any of that. And there were only a few women reporters when I was there, and they were all older than me and worked for the New York Times and such like. So I didn't really know what I can say about myself is that I had a completely different life. The memories I was listening to and experiences I were listening to were usually women, like I would take my son to school, and I would chat with the teachers and the other moms. So the whole different slice of life during a war was available to me. And actually, you know, in those days, of course, men were more daring in being patronizing to women. And often people say, oh, do you do nice stories about orphans? Well, actually, yes, I did. Because that was the texture of life that I was interested in and going and being in a helicopter with a whole lot of American servicemen and then writing about that. It's just not my bag. So I think there's a huge difference in sensibility and memory as part of that. And then I didn't quite understand the question about shame. Who is ashamed? I think the question was that they saw a film that the person was asking. So a film that somehow seemed to reflect the fact that some Palestinians are ashamed. But it might not be, I don't think it's a question that might be relevant to our discussion now. But in terms of the films of my mastery, you know, there is a sense, I myself did not see a sense of shame coming out in those films. But I don't know whether you could. Okay, I think I get the question. I've already, I've read it now. I didn't look at it. Yeah. I don't know which film it was that you saw about released Palestinian prisoners. But let me tell you what I think this may be related to. One of my early big Palestinian influences was Dr. Ayad Sir Sarash, Gaza's first and most distinguished psychiatrist. And I was fortunate enough to work with him for quite a lot. And one time I stayed there for a while. And he told me about how difficult it is for men prisoners to come back into their families. And they're ashamed because they haven't been there when the kids were growing up, especially the boys. They have quite often lost their livelihood. And so they can't support their families. They have to see their wives doing it. And then in some cases, they had been left very humiliated by the way that they had been treated in front of other people. And so a lot of his work was about he himself, Ayad, was actually at one point arrested by the Palestinian police and those soldiers and beaten up and generally. And he describing this, he would say, you know, you are trying to humiliate me, but actually you are humiliating yourself. So when he was talking to me about this whole area, it was something that is deliberately part of the tactics to try to make people, particularly men, feel that their manliness is somehow diminished. But on the other hand, if you've only got to see any of the footage of of men being released, like after the Gilad Shalit, you see these bus loads of Palestinian men arriving. And you know, every granny and auntie and small child is adoring them and thanking them for their steadfastness and so on. So I wouldn't emphasize the shame. It's a part of the whole very complex pattern about prisoners. But you're right that prisoners is, as May's films definitely demonstrate, an enormous part of the Palestinian experience. I hope that's answered the question of I think it was Paul. Yeah, yeah, I think Paul says yes. And I've got a question from Ronny Clinton, which is a really good question. She says that she hasn't seen, she hasn't read the book, but she's seen many mysterious films. And she's asking the question is how does this relate, you know, how does all the discussion that we're having today, how does the production of the films and the stories, how do they relate to the ongoing racialization and colonization by Israel? What that there is a connection? Well, I think everything, everything relates to itself and to everything else. And in the present circumstances of of what's happening in Palestine and what's happening to Palestinian refugees in the region, and think of this, the Palestinians who've come from Syria and the conditions they're living in in Lebanon. Every affirmation of strength and beauty within very, very tough experiences is life enhancing and incredibly important. And, you know, that's why I would love Mayer's films. I mean, I know they're shown a lot in the Arab world, a lot, a lot. But, you know, I always hope that they're shown even more and that the students discuss with their teachers the very subtle layers of what's, of what's going on and people's responses to it. And I think, you know, the main thing, I mean, I mentioned, the main thing is like, you know, you read Derwish and you feel not defeated. And there's actually there's a chapter I wrote about a film of Mayer's that's different. It's a film about Hanan Ashrawi. And I called the film, go call the chapter, I think I called it Keeping Going. And, you know, that's all part of what's so great about these films being out there and available for people to see and discuss and think about. But just to continue the comment of, you know, comment in relation to that question, in a sense, the fact that, you know, there is a Palestinian story to keep talking about relating to the ongoing kind of events and what some people call the ongoing Mecca, the ongoing catastrophe of the Palestinians, in a sense, what, in a sense, the films also reflect on the continued really racialization and colonization of Palestine, which is not talked about in the mainstream media in much at all. And it's kind of pushed under the rug in different ways. And I think, you know, sort of writing a book like this and reflecting on the work of my master, again, is a timely reminder of this continuous process of colonization, which I hope was what the intention of the question was, but perhaps I kind of contributed it. But maybe we can have Ronit send us another comment later on. But it's a very interesting question, which says, would you describe Masry's portrayal of Palestinian women's issues as a feminist one? Is this a feminist position? You know, the fact that you'll have a, you know, a focus on women, can you, is it a feminist question? Well, there are so many different layers of feminism. I'm definitely a feminist. And May is what I would, I've never actually had this conversation with her, but I'm sure she would probably also describe herself as a feminist in the sense that she's a very, and certainly all the young women who have worked with her as children in these films, and then as her allies as they as they grow up, have been empowered by May's example. And I think that's what feminism is all about. And I, at the same about Hanam, I would certainly say that she, again, I've not had the conversation, but in my definition of what is a feminist, wow, both of them, you know, really stand out. And I think it's very, very important role models. Yeah, thank you for that comment. I wondered whether there are any questions. I think we've answered most of the questions that came Q&A. Aki, if you can send me a message to say whether we have any questions coming via Facebook? Not on Facebook, we haven't got any questions. But in a sense, if we go back to this idea of, you know, I wanted to push you a bit further on the feminist question or the question of whether, you know, this is a feminist stance. And I want, in a sense, to think about that question that says are men's memories different than women's? Because from my own perspective, you know, my own perspective, and Hanam cannot be right, is that because you have a particular situation that is an overarching situation that involves all Palestinians whether it's men, women, children, young, old, whatever, that it can, you know, that the question of being a feminist activist or an activist becomes blurred. So I wondered whether you could talk about that in a sense. So you're an activist, you know, you're an activist, but thus for a situation, you know, a settler colonial situation that affects everyone in the same way. So I wondered whether you could perhaps, you know, push put yourself back a little bit and think about yourself as a woman activist or as an activist. You know, do I make any sense in my question? Yeah, yeah, yes, you do. But leaving me to one side for a moment. I think there's something very particular about the the role of women in the Palestinian situation, which is to do with incarceration. That's such a very, very large quantity of proportion of Palestinian men have spent years or decades in prison. The shape of the family is a weight on women. And that's been the case all all along, all along. And I think that it's it's produced a kind of normalization of strong independent coping women, which is completely different from the trajectory of in a Western bourgeois society. And I find among the young Palestinian women that I know, and an ease with taking responsibility for themselves and their incredibly complicated logistics of their lives, everybody's life is so complicated. Can you live here? Can you marry someone who has a different identity card from you? Can you drive your car here? Can you get permission to go abroad to study all of these things? Palestinian women and young women take up a weight of responsibility that is more than in a certainly in the in the West. We really appreciate and I think that's important. But I think of another thing that of conversation that I had with May once about, she was saying how very struck she was that in the in the rash of post Vietnam films, they're so blokey, you know, they're all about men. And, and, and, you know, where are where are the women? And, and so it's, it's definitely part of her perception that in, in, in artistic work, women need to be heard much more than they, they are, although things are obviously much, much better than they used to be. You know, they're not, they're not, not easy. And she had, well, in the course of that conversation, I remember something else that she said about how amazing and wonderful it is that among Palestinian filmmakers, women make up 40% of filmmakers. And in Hollywood or Western Europe, it's more like 10% or 3%. And, and this is a is a kind of example of what I mean about the, the very special qualities of, of Palestinian women, which arise from not just the situation they're in now, but the situation as it's been since, since Balfour, if you like, but certainly since 48. That's true. So we've got a comment from Ronit that we've answered the question and she, she gave a very good statement, which is, you know, examples like this and production of film and, and then writing books about Palestine means that, you know, the Palestinian native will not disappear, so to speak, against the colonizer, you know, the language of postcolonial studies. But we're coming almost to the end of our time. If you want to say something that you want to end this with, and I wonder whether Nargis wants to come in or is you okay? Do you, do you have any question? Just mesmerize, it's such a new world. I mean, I see parallels of that with Iran in a different angle. The fact that the poets and increasingly filmmakers are the voice of the oppressed, and so it's a very different situation to Palestine. Obviously, this is a self-inflicted atrocity, but the camera is an extraordinary tribute for bringing the, you know, voice of just, you know, not physically necessarily oppressed in camps, but in isolation that artists and invariably women face. And it's, and there's a dignity with which they present their work. It is, this is not outrageous. There might be seizing frustrations and anger, but it's power to reflect and to hold back. And it's not immediately subjective, but it's very potent. So I'm amazed, my, I am rushing to get your book and I'm rushing to certainly see this film. It's been inspiring. Thank you so much. Really, it's been such a pleasure listening to this. Thank you, Nagas. And do you want to say something, Victoria, to end this? Yeah, I'd just like to end with somebody else's words. The Palestinian filmmaker, very successful filmmaker, Hani Abu-Assad said about May, I love May's work. In fact, she's one of the reasons I became a director myself. And I just think that's so perfect. Good for him. We want to thank you for, you know, writing this book, for bringing it to the attempt, bringing May's work to the attention of, you know, different audiences. It's really important to have stuff like this. And also for the style that you followed in writing the book. I noticed that each chapter starts with an abstract. And then you have the, you know, the discussion about the film. And you interweave a little bit of May's life story into the discussion. And it makes it both kind of intimate, but also easy to follow. But also raises all these questions that we talked about today, the question of, you know, the need to talk about lives, the need to keep talking, and the need to make visible the voices of women, of men, and of people who are living under very difficult situations. So thank you very much. Thank you for joining us and for being so, you know, wonderful in your discussion. Thank you, Deena, very much for hosting me. Thanks for the audience. We're sorry we cannot see you. Yes, we're sorry. This is the nature of technologies. And hopefully we will see you at the next event, which will be next week. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Deena. Thank you. Bye.