 Hello everyone, welcome to this event of the Soas Festival of Ideas. I think we are ready to begin in a couple of minutes. So we are very honored today to host author Susan Abulhawa and academic and spoken word artist Rafif Ziada. I'm Ruba Saleh and I'm going to be in conversation with Susan and I am also an academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the Department of Anthropology. Susan Abulhawa is often described as one of Palestine's most accomplished and internationally best-selling novelists. Adaf Suayf, another great writer, has described her work as uncompromising and unapologetic. Her debut novel, Morning's Engineene, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2010, translated into 30 languages, is considered a classic in Anglophile Palestinian literature. Its reach has made Susan Abulhawa one of the most, if not the most widely read Palestinian author. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, published in 2015, was likewise an international bestseller. And her last novel, just published recently against the Loveless World, is what we're all looking forward to, obviously, read and talk about tonight. She's also the author of a poetry collection, My Voice Saw the Wind, which was published in 2013. And she contributes regularly to several outlets, but also ontologies. She's a political commentator and appears as a frequent speaker. Rafif Ziada is a lecturer in comparative politics of the Middle East at SOS. Her research interests are broadly concerned with the political economy of war and humanitarianism, racism, and the security state, with a particular focus on the Middle East. Rafif's research has appeared on several international peer-reviewed journals. And among her recent publications, I would like to mention the co-edited book Revolutionary Feminisms, which has been just published by Verso. In addition to being an academic, Rafif is a renowned artist and poet. She's the author of the spoken word album Hadil and Shades of Anger, and the famous spoken words performances such as We Teach Life, Sir. Angela Davis says of Rafif, the words that she says with such beauty and grace hit you right in the heart. They're more powerful than any weapon. So I'm really lucky tonight to have two incredibly powerful authors, artists to join us in a conversation. The evening will go as follow. I will ask questions to Susan, so we'll engage in a conversation. And after Rafif will read some experts from Susan's books. And we will then offer Susan the opportunity to reply. At the end, we will be collecting comments and questions for Susan on the Q&A function of Zoom. And so I would like to invite the audience to please type in your questions and we will then pose them at the end of the first part of the evening to Susan. And obviously if there are questions to Rafif, these are also welcome. So thank you very much. Susan, one of the most extraordinary aspects of your writing, in my view, is how you make the history of Palestinian displacement be the springboard for reflections on the human and the human condition. Your novels are about exile. They're about death, the violent loss of Palestine. They're stories of Palestine told from the vantage point of the exiled. They're stories of families struggling to rebuild their lives, their world after destruction and dispossession. But they're also and most intensely intimate portrayals of relationships of feminist resistance to patriarchy, as well as their stories of survival from trauma, from abandonment, from rape, from abuse. They're stories of survival or survivance. They're stories of friendships, of gossips, of humor, of spirituality and more. You say at page 193 of Morning's Ingenene, one of my favorite of your work, the Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our own emotions that we cannot feel except in the extreme. So these are universal themes on which we as Palestinians have a lot to say. My question to you is, do you see your novels as functioning, not only as masterful pieces of art, but also as ways of processing the individual and collective traumas that as Palestinians we have been subject to. And also ways to give words to the unspoken sides of, and the unspeakable sides of our history. Rafif. So we're trying to speak because you are on mute. I will mute. Sorry. Yeah, I was just saying thank you, Roba. And it's a joy to be with two Palestinian sisters in this talk. Yes, my novels are set to a backdrop of our collective trauma. As a matter of fact, I think that most writers who come from marginalized societies or oppressed communities often write from the collective wound that binds us. And for Palestinians, that collective wound is, is not just historic, it's ongoing. And it is, it's the thing that it's, it's the place, it's the landscape where we all meet regardless of our background, regardless of our geographic fragmentation, our political outlook, our economic situation. This is, you know, this reality of exile and displacement and erasure is, is the springboard upon which or the scaffolding upon which all of our lives exist, regardless of who we are and where we are in the world. And so naturally, if I'm writing a story about Palestinians, this landscape, this political, spiritual, cultural landscape that binds us is going to be, is going to be the backdrop of all of my stories, no matter what the story is. But the truth is, when I write, I have, I kind of have a one track mind. And it's, it's, it's a singular loyalty to the characters. And nobody else, nothing else, not, I don't think of the readers. I don't think of the publisher, the potential reviews, the money. Anything really, I try to keep a one track mind always to, to faith, to be faithful to the characters and to their story. And so, yeah, that's, and that was especially true with my first two books. It was a little bit harder with the new novel. Because there are a lot of themes in this book that I felt were going to be replete with Orientalist traps that I was a bit terrified of falling into. And so on the one hand, I do, I try to write without, without, you know, giving any consideration to how it's going to be received and whatnot. But I also, with this book, I felt this kind of orient, this Western gaze, because I'm, because I'm writing in English, like if I were writing in Arabic as a first language, this wouldn't even be a consideration. But because I'm writing in English and I'm writing about pretty intense sexual abuse and prostitution and patriarchy and how that translates in the lives of a multitude of characters. I was keenly aware of this Orientalist gaze. And so that, so this book was an exception to that rule, but I nonetheless really tried to remain faithful to the characters no matter what. Thank you so much. So one of the pieces I chose in this conversation was from the book, The Blue Between Sky and Water, to talk about the multiple exiles. And sometimes we think of exile as a singular movement, but if you're Palestinian refugee, you realize it's much more complicated than many families are actually scattered over multiple exiles and multiple populations. So this is the chapter title 15. Suddenly homeless refugees after Israel took everything. Palestinians were ripped from both, were ripe for both pity and exploitation throughout the Arab world, where the brightest Palestinian minds bore fruit for other nations. And once proud farmers chased the call of bread, becoming desperate workers far from their lands. My great Khalu Mamduh was swept up in that stream of cheap labor that kept carrying him further and further away. In Cairo, Mamduh worked with that respite. He lived in a dormitory with other Palestinian laborers. Every day he awoke to the call of the Adhan beckoning the faithful to prayer and performed the morning Salat before heading to his job. And at the end of the day, he would muster the energy for a cup of tea and a light dinner with his comrades before collapsing into bed. Sometimes he stayed awake to count his money, which he kept in a small purse strapped to his body at all times until he could deliver his earnings to Yasmine for safekeeping. He took two days off each month to travel back to Gaza, where the beekeepers Widow Yasmine and Nazmiah would have spent the previous day planning and preparing his favorite foods. They would be waiting for him with water, warming over a flame so he could have a proper bath, the only one he could get each month because only cold water came out of the dormitory cap. A simple cut and dishdashi would have been washed and kissed by the sun on the lines for him. And when he finally arrived by taxi or rickshaw, the three women of his heart would wrap him with kisses and blessings. Each time he brought them small gifts and tales from Cairo. On one such visit, he spoke of news from Kuwait, where oil was pushing up new cities and industries, and a new society of entitled Bedouins was paying Palestinians to do everything from building and staffing their hospitals and schools to cooking their meals and wiping their asses. Several of his Palestinian comrades in Cairo had already moved to Kuwait and spoke fondly of the desert. I was thinking maybe we could all go there, he suggested. Even though he knew his sister Nazmiyeh would never leave Palestine, and he wasn't sure his Yasmine would either. The beekeeper's widow, on the other hand, was ready to soar wherever the wind would take her, except to desert soil where food could not grow from the ground and Kuwait was merely a desert by the sea. Nazmiyeh was in her fifth pregnancy. Fifth pregnancy when Manduha and Yasmine moved to Kuwait before they left Nazmiyeh, held her brother's face, then Yasmine's, she kissed them with tearing eyes and repeated the words that Maryam had deposited in her being. We will always be together. Thank you. So your books are stories of displacement, as we said, and Rafif beautifully brought us in that atmosphere. But exile doesn't always take center stage. It rather represents what I see as a background, the eventful against which ordinary and extraordinary stories of loss, of love, of reconstruction, and their powerful characters come alive. So there's love, there's care, there's compassion, and these are the recurrent themes running through these incredible female figures, not only female figures, but also very poetically drawn male figures in your novels. There is revolutionary love, but there is also love that challenges, and there is love that challenges gender norms, but also there is the calm and less, no less powerful love of traditional relationships. The love for the revolution runs through, and it is not, it is there, it is not obscure, but it's often embodied in the political intensity of mothers and lovers' love. So you give us not the nationalist romanticized love for the homeland that we are so used to read about, but you give us what I would say love for home, the nature, the food, the smell, the scent of different homes that constitute in the memory and the reality of these figures. So this is a precarious, but powerful home. So, and this home is reproduced in your novels across, mainly across and through relationships in the camp, in the garb, in the exile, or elsewhere. There is affection for the refugee camp, for example in Gaza or in Beirut, which becomes also home, al-Bait, again a very precarious one. And these places in your novel become home thanks to the work of love and the relationship that this love produces. And love is also directly proportional to grief in intensity. There is one moment where you make Fatima say to Amal in Morning's Ingenie, something that stayed with me for a long time at page 193. Our sadness can make the stones weep, and the way we love is no exception. So this is a love that commences where grief leaves and melts into spirituality. And I see love in your novels as a social and spiritual muscle. So I wanted to ask you, do you think that love, and obviously the title of your last novel, which is a very powerful and evocative title against the loveless word, does love provide a new framework for thinking about home and about existing in the world? First of all, thank you for recognizing the pervasive elements of love in my books. Because, you know, from my point of view, they are love stories. I think people tend to see my work as far more political. And it's because I'm Palestinian and because I write about stories where the characters have to navigate a tumultuous political reality. But at the heart of it is love. Love of the land, the love between friends, the love between a farmer and his harvest and his animals, a love between a love for books, a love for history, a love for our ancestors, a deep love from which hope and resistance brings. I think Che Guevara is the one who once said that, you know, at the very core of revolution is this very deep love. And I believe that. I do, I also, as you hinted at, really kind of, I reject this notion of romanticized homeland. I think very often we, so one of the things, like in popular imagination, at least in the west, and actually increasingly also in the Arab world, Palestinians are portrayed as this dichotomy of either we are these mad irrational, hateful, violent people, or we are these pitiable, profoundly enduring, you know, that's the first that we can take anything with these pitiable refugees, objects of charity and whatnot. And of course, we know as Palestinians that our society spans the full spectrum of humanity from the most noble individuals to the most corrupt. And you know what, most of these narratives, whether it's from the left or the right, are equally dangerous. They are equally dehumanizing, equally dismissing of our humanity, of the depth of our culture and our society. And sometimes, and also what arises from this dichotomous discourse is that the minute there is something to contradict this romanticized view of Palestinians, then you know, there is this, oh well, you know, you're not who I thought you were, maybe you're not as deserving of liberty. I mean, there's this kind of reaction, right? So the conversation becomes, Palestinians deserve human rights because they're so good, and because they are, and this is what we are doing during Samud. So all of these, you know, this kind of discourse is, it ends up making cartoons of our lives. And this is why art and literature are so powerful in, as corrective measures in that it's really, It's really it's only really through art and literature and film and music and song and dance and food that that the full expression of our humanity can find space. It is, I think, the mandate of the artist to carve out a space wherever we are in this in whatever whatever artistic landscape we stand on, whether it's poetry or literature or whatnot. One of the things that that inspired me to write in the first place was Edward Said lamenting that there were so few Palestinian novels in in the English language. And, you know, when I, it was only when I heard him say that that I realized that I've never really read myself reflected in anything that I that I'd ever read. I've never seen any anything that resembled my life and the literature that I had grown up on, even in the Middle East, even, you know, I didn't grow up entirely in the United States. I was, you know, I grew up in Kuwait for most of my childhood and I lived in Jerusalem for a large part of my childhood. And even there, like the literature that we consumed did not reflect us. And in general, not just for Palestinians. I mean, if you look at any society in the world, when you think of that society, the face of that society is their culture. It's what they wear. It's how they dance. It's their music. It's the books they they produce the films they produce the art they produce. So, and we are no exception. But what makes Palestinian literature and Palestinian art so much more urgent is that we are existence is literally being denied. And, and so when we create whatever we create, we are, we are affirming our existence in the world, not just for others to see but for our children. You know, even though I don't really write for an audience and my major, my only loyalty is to the characters. Because my only loyalty is to the characters. By default, the, my most important audience is Palestinians or Palestinians, especially on Palestinians. Thank you, Susan. Thank you. So the next passage I picked was from against this loveless world and if people haven't had a chance to pick up the book yet, please, please do. I think it's, it's exceptional. But the piece I'm going to read is the wedding piece where you describe the thought. And it was just so beautiful. I felt like I could see the thought in front of me. So I just wanted to read a little bit from that. A little more than four months after Hajji Muhammad passed away, Bilal and I got married in a memorable fellahi wedding. We had wanted only a small celebration with family and friends. In part, it was all we could afford, but mostly it didn't seem proper to have a wedding at the time. The second intifada was in its second year and Israelis had just elected Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Beirut as prime minister, and his brutal legacy was already being felt. But my mother and Bilal's aunts would have none of that. Exactly the opposite. We show those monsters how we will continue to live and love on our land no matter what they do to us. Rastam said to Bilal. Mama Jihad and Shti Wasfiyah made the journey from Jordan. I agreed to get a visa from the sons of Satan at their godforsaken embassy just for you, Shti said. Your mother tried to make me miss the wedding on account of the doctor claiming my heart is too weak, but my heart feels fine. Then she turned to Bilal. Nahir's mother gets jealous because my son's children love me more than they love her. You're a good man for marrying my granddaughter, even though she was married before and couldn't keep her husband very long. He already knows that I assure you. Muhammad is his brother, remember? Yeah, that's right, she said. I forgot. She turned again to Bilal. Nothing is the same without her. I wish we were all still in Kuwait with my son. Or how about if we could all be here forever again? She wiped tears away with her hijab. Mama consoled her. Shti was losing her mind. And these reveries happened often, Mama had told me. Mama had been trying to pull me away all day. When I finally had a moment, she made me close my eyes and guided me into the guest bedroom. Open your eyes, she said. What I saw took my breath away. I flung my arms around my mother's neck and began sobbing, Habib to Mama. May God keep you always. May he extend your life and presence in mind for all our days. This is the best present I have received from anyone ever. Thank you. I'm going to start with a question for you. Layed out on the bed with a stunning elegant embroidered wedding thob and an equally striking headpiece. Come, let's try it on. She said, as I moved to pick up, Mama explained her creation. I thought a lot about this and decided to use the basic patterns of the Jerusalem Thob, because we're being erased from her story and her stone. She said, even the way she described her embroidery was poetic. I would use white silk for this thob, but I found this gorgeous terracotta silk that hearkens to Jericho. You see here on the chest piece, this is a collar worn by Canaanite queens. I added these geometric patterns typical of the Romy thobes from the Ramallah area to show the olive, almond and pomegranate trees. On the sides here is the crucifixion from when the crusaders ruled over us. And here you see is the crescent for the return of Jerusalem to Muslim rule since the time of Salah al-Din. I was in awe. This is a treasure, Mama. You're the treasure, she said. And here, look closely at these shapes. Verse 21 from Surat al-Rum in the Quran, a prayer for marriage. It was hard to make out the convoluted script, but Mama read it to me. And of his wisdom is that he created for you from yourselves mates that may find tranquility in them. And he placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed, for in these are wisdoms of those who think. I ran my fingers over the intricate stitches of terracotta, emerald, maroon and apricot. Life was sweeping me up in an unexpected dream. Really beautiful. Yeah, I was also very, very fixed on that passage of the thought, because it's like it encompasses all kinds of emotions and colors and memories and knowledge, marking a certain type of belonging indigeneity that is passing from one generation to the next. And I thought it was really, really a masterpiece. But I wanted to bring you back to exile and reflect on another theme that is very recurrent across all of your novels. And this is, I think, the fact that what I really find very powerful and not only because I identify like myself, I identify like myself, I think all of the Palestinians who are scattered across multiple dimensions of exile. The exile you talk about and you narrate so powerfully is not just the original exile, the exile propelled by 1948. With the catastrophe in the Nakaba, but it's also the exile of migration of diaspora of feeling exiled from one's culture from one's own language from one's own self. Which we see very, very powerfully in figures like Amal in Morning Injeneen, but also Mamduh and Noor, most notably in the blue between the sky and the water. And I think what you really do in a very remarkable way is to bring together to interwave the political, the cultural and the psychological dimensions of exile, which intertwine in all of your characters, so to speak. But one of the most powerful part for me was the way in which kind of you describe the way in which, for example, Amal arriving at Philadelphia airport, finds herself, and I'm quoting the book here in Amal's words, as an unclassified Arab Western hybrid, uprooted and unknown. So exiled here is very clearly transposed into an idea of another form of uprootedness that comes with migration. But also exiled is transposing the story of Noor, which is a very, very painful story of individual trauma, abandonment of rape, of abuse, and of searching again for love for home and for recognition. But exiled and returned are also however the moments in which these protagonists reflect on their past and particularly on the beauty of Arabic language, which I think is masterfully presented in passages of Mornings Injeneen, for example, in page 169, when again Amal arriving at Philadelphia airport and uttering the words thank you to the host who has come to pick her up, and realises how in Arabic gratitude, as you say, is a language unto itself, may Allah bless the hands that give me this gift, beauty is in your eyes that find me pretty. And then again arriving and returning to Beirut in August on a warm day at page 185, Amal again finds her language, and she says, the guttural silk tones of Arabic crippled through me, as I heard the melodic calls and responses of my language, and she defines it as a dance. So my question is, what is the dance that happens in your pen between Arabic and English. And do you feel as a Palestinian American author that your writing is a synthesis of two identities and melodies, or do you still feel you belong to a space of exile that shape your writing and artistic sensibility. Thank you for that question. That's very astute of you to connect those things. So a lot of, you know, a lot of the, the, sometimes I think as authors we put a little bit of ourselves in the characters. And a lot of these experiences that Amal went through are things that I myself have felt at different times. I, you know, I write in English, because, because exile has quite literally stolen Arabic from me. I, you know, I, I'm literate in Arabic, I speak it fluently, but I have, I don't have the level of sophistication required to write a novel, and to fully, you know, express myself creatively. But when I'm writing, I'm thinking in Arabic, I mean, I'm inhabiting this world where everybody speaks Arabic, where, where the geography is, is the familiar landscape of Palestine of Lebanon, and the other countries in my books. And I think that out of my, you know, my pen or my, my, my keyboard art is in English. And I think that influences the way that I write in English. I've been told more actually as a criticism by, by Anglophile critics, or Western critics in general, not just in English, also in the translations that I write at times, I write a little bit too flowery, or, you know, they've criticized the lack of economy, and in my prose, which is, you know, something that is typical of, of Arabic literature, which tends to be, you know, a little bit more you know, I mean Arabic languages is very poetically charged. And so I think, you know, thinking that way in Arabic, it tends to come out in my writing in English. And the issue of the calls and responses, I, you know, when, when I was a kid, the kind of that kind of stuff used to annoy me, you know, in Arabic, we call it you know, you're trying to, trying to get leave somebody's house and it takes like an hour, you know, to because, because there's all these, you know, there's, it's beautiful, you know, I mean, and, and I think it's, you know, it's annoying to you when you're a kid because you don't really have, you have to become an adult and or somebody who appreciates language to, to realize how, how rich and resonant and beautiful it is. And to come from such a culture where, you know, people trip over themselves in this infinite language of gratitude, I mean really there's no, there's no limits to the way you can say thank you. You know, I mean there's, it's endless and it's all prayer for prayerful appreciation. And so to come from that world and to think in that way to have nothing in English except thank you. It jams you up a little bit. And, and I've also, so what I end up doing sometimes in English is I'll say, thank you, you know, like really emphasize it because that's all I have are those two words no really really thank you. And, you know, that's, that's one of the beauties of Arabic and I think it's important, even if we do as, as Arab writers write in English, it's important for that to be present in, in literature because if you, you know, you're reflecting people's lives the characters and you can't translate a person's life, or a character's life, no matter what language you're speaking in and so, so one of the, one of the challenges for, for Arab writers who write in non-Arabic languages is to, is to represent a culture linguistically in, in another language that is not entirely compatible with, with the language that your characters are speaking. So, yeah, I mean, I don't have any hard rules on how that's done. It's kind of on a sentence by sentence basis or paragraph by paragraph basis. But it has to be done and I think it's important to be mindful of that to, yeah, to, to, to bring the characters language into a prose that's not their language. And sometimes that means not translating certain Arabic words. And so, in all of my books, there's, they're peppered with a lot of Arabic words and Arabic sayings and phrases, because it doesn't, it feels wrong to pervert those phrases in a translation because like when we say inshallah, right, yes, there's a translation, right, God willing. But when you, when you come from a culture that, that says inshallah, you understand how big that word is, how, how, how silly it can be, how annoying, how wonderful. I mean, it has so many different connotations. And when you translate it into English to God willing, it just, it loses, it loses everything, it loses texture, it's sound, it's history. The, the grandmother is the mama saying it and it loses all of that and it becomes bare and, and it's so it feels wrong to translate it so I keep it in Arabic and then I just put a glossary at the end. Yeah, my publishers make me put a glossary. Yeah, we're going against the loveless word, there was a word, wonderful glossary at the beginning. You know, I didn't have a glossary at first and that was something that the publishers wanted me to do. And I didn't realize how many Arabic words there were in this, or phrases there were until I had to pull them out. And I was like, oh my God, I think there were like, I don't know, almost 100 or something crazy. Yes, but yeah. It's so interesting to hear you say that about the language. I remember I learned English much later in life and I remember my high school English teacher taking my essays and writing flowery flowery flowery all across them, wanting me to like change how I wrote. I think it's something we all go through. The piece I wanted to read next was from warnings in Geneva and exactly this moment we're speaking about where she arrives in Philadelphia. Nine o'clock on the morning of May 16 1982 26 hours after I left Beirut, I was in Philadelphia with a cheerless void of not wanting to be there. I've seen the lifetime and past had passed since I had first come to that city, unsure of my step frightened that an escalator would drag me under jealous of Lisa Hadid here. Immediate tasks in hand. I call Dr. Mohamed Mahir, Majid's former mentor in England, settled now in Philadelphia professorship. Amal, I have been expecting your call, he said in a voice husky with age and cheer. Please wait for me in the baggage claim, I'll be there in less than 30 minutes. And known to me, Majid had been corresponding with Dr. Mahir for months making arrangements. Already I had employment, I was to prepare clinical trial reports for federal audits. The pay is good. I'll just need to show them proof of your degree. If you decide for something else, I'll also help you. Majid was like a son to him. So please, I would love it if you call me Ammou or just Mohamed if you'd rather, but none of this doctor business. Touched and without adequate words, thank you, conveying a dearth of gratitude. In Arabic, I said, Allah keep you in grace and bounty of goodness upon you. This kindness of yours, Dr. Ammou, I mean, is humbling. Life was quickened here. I had forgotten that within two weeks, I had been trained on the job, visited an obstetrician and gone five times to the immigration office. My husband was cleared to come to the United States, but a response for Fatimid's visa would require at least another month. With rows of taunt African braids and a kind smile, the INS lady said, I know it's a mess over there. I'll do all I can to push it through. Thank you. May Allah smile on you with plentitude and love. The city seemed to have changed while I was away. West Philadelphia had become a drug infused poverty. I saw the spare now where the authority had been in the faces of the heavy matriarchs still passing the days in the shade of habit on their portions. Old friends, Angela Haddad, Bobo and Jimmy, it's nice to see you again Amal, an apartment in the northeastern part of the city wanting to avoid becoming a burden on the mahal. While I waited to receive my family, biding time with hope and sporadic telephone conversations with my husband or Fatima, Ammoum Ahmed and his wife Elizabeth fashioned themselves into a surrogate family. Ammoum and Elizabeth had married nearly 50 years. They had served as healers, a physician and shea nurse, living on the small salaries of aid organizations in the plains of Africa after leaving Oxford. Now in the United States with a grand compensation of North Americans, their lives had an era of restlessness, a want for children. Though their bodies carried their 70 odd years well, age had eroded bones and carried off a vigor, forcing them to slow their pace where they could recruit young medical skill to carry on the legacy of their work. Medicine without borders, a labor of love, but not enough. My arrival with life swelling in my abdomen steered the sediments of their advanced years, latent and undeniable, the instinctive affinity of the old for babies and children delighted them now and they protected my swollen state. Beautiful. Thank you Rafif. Susan, I want to ask you about something. I'm trying here to kind of ask you questions that I hope nobody has ever asked you to give an opportunity to, or maybe to give us an opportunity to hear you saying, maybe discovering things through our questions that weren't discovered before. I'm very, very intrigued by the way in which nature pops out in all your novels. And nature in across I would say the three books but perhaps most pervasively in the second one is an omnipresent character. There is this constant intermingling between the human and the post human in the novels where nature is not just the background or the framework in which events unfold but it is really part of the way in which the female and the male characters feel and think and leave. In particular, I think the way in which you describe, for example, not only the harvest in pre-40s in 1948 in notably in Mornings and Genine which is very beautifully and poetically presented. I mean we are introduced to the story in Mornings and Genine through this beautiful picture of the olive harvest. Aside from olives, which are like a constant trope of Palestinian literature, there are all kinds of meals or kinds of natural descriptions and all kinds of attachments to these natural words. There is also the presence of the smell of the sense that is constantly reproduced across the novels and that features in the conversations in the settings in the emotions in the identities of the protagonists. And even in the names because the protagonist of your last book against the Loveless Word is Nahar, is River. I will ask you whether this is intentional and whether it aims at marking a kind of indigeneity of the Palestinians to not only to their land but to the memories of this land or to the ways in which this sense of Palestine as home is reproduced also elsewhere. Absolutely intentional. I think that, you know, most indigenous societies, especially those who live off the land and certainly, you know, Fallahein belong in that category and I come from a long line of Fallahein in the Jerusalem district of Palestine. There is a reverence for the natural world. I mean, for example, you know, Palestinian attachment to olive trees is not just, I mean, it's a spiritual attachment. It would be farmer's weep as if they'd lost a family member when these settlers, you know, come and burn down their trees and they do they cut down our trees because they understand how important they are to us, not just economically to think that this is an economic issue would be to misunderstand Palestinians completely. There is a soul connection between individuals and their land and their trees and their animals as there is a connection with us collectively to the trees and the hills. The other thing is, you know, I think humans everywhere have become very disconnected from the natural world. And even in social justice struggles, there is there's never, there is rarely a an analysis of the physical space in which we conduct our struggles. And, you know, this is a this is a conversation that I have with my comrades and socialists and Marxist organizations all the time, which is, you know, our ancestors had always sort of taken for granted that this, you know, this earth was endlessly bountiful and and immutable and it's just always going to be there and, you know, of course, we know that's not true. And we are living in an era where, you know, actually, our, our home, our planet is is burning, you know, it's dying and withering under our thumb. So I think, I think every story stories cannot be disconnected from the natural world, at least not in my mind I mean I'm my nature as a as a as a person is very much an introvert and a loner and I spend a lot of time with my animals my dogs, especially in the woods I am or by the beach. I garden, you know, I plant my my most of my produce now, you know, comes from my garden. I think, you know, sort of reviving this connection I mean actually in doing that here. There's, there's kind of a it feels, you know, it's maybe sounds silly to some people but it feels like a connection with my ancestors. You know, the condition of exile is it pilfer is your heart it pilfer is your soul in ways that you don't even recognize until you know you're much older and you realize. Wow, I've, you know, I've lost, I've lost something profound. You know, sort of this reconnection with with soil with dirt is part of, you know, tying those loose ends, you know, back together however you can. And as an artist as a writer it that's always going to be reflected in in what I what I write and how I write. I'm also, you know, I despair about the condition of our planet and in particular about the state of wildlife, the harrowing exploitation of of animals, not just, you know, for me and dairy consumption. But, you know, for experimentation and and and entertainment, you know, these are, these are things that that caused me really a lot of great despair as much as as much as you know seeing what is becoming of our of our society of our country of our people. So, you know, all I know how to do is to write and to organize and so that's where I deposit. That's where I deposit these, you know, the things that are inside of me when it comes to that so. Yeah, and along those lines, you know, I am vegan for those reasons. And I think, you know, advocating and caring about the liberation of animals and the protection of nature and the protection of wildlife is wholly consistent with our struggle for liberation as Palestinians. So, thank you, Susan. I'm very glad on that note to be reading from warnings and Jeanine again the harvest scene because I think that so well. And it's from this by the way. From 1941 that's how it starts, which I think has its own beauty as well in a distant time before history marched over the hills and shattered present and future before wind grab the land at one corner and shook it of its name and character. Before Amal was born, a small village east of Haifa lived quiet, figs and olives, open frontiers and sunshine. It was still dark, only babies sleeping when the villagers of Amhoud prepared to perform the warnings a lot. The first of five daily prayers. The moon hung low. Like a buckle of like a buckle fastening earth and sky, just a still sliver of promise shy of being full, waking limbs stretched water splashed away sleep, hopeful eyes widened. The ritual cleansing before Salat sent murmurs of the Shahada into the morning fog as hundreds of whispers proclaimed the oneness of Allah and service to his Prophet Muhammad. Today they prayed outdoors and with particular reverence because it was the start of the olive harvest best to climb the rocky hills with a clean conscious on as much on such an important occasion. Thus and so, by the pre-dawn orchestra of small lives, crickets and searing birds and soon roosters, the villagers cast moon shadows from their prayer rugs, most simply asked forgiveness of their sins. Some prayed an extra raka in one way or another. Each said, my Lord Allah, let your will be done on this day. My submission and gratitude is yours. Before setting off westward towards the groves, stepping high to avoid the snags of cactus. Every November, the harvest week brought renewed vigor to anhold and Yahya Abu Hassan could feel it in his bones. He left the house early with his boys, coaxing them with his annual hope of getting a head start on the neighbors, but the neighbors had similar ideas and the harvest always began around five a.m. The harvest in Palestine is going to start soon. So good luck to all our families back home. Brilliant. Thank you, Rafiq. That was really nice. Yes, I agree. And I think it's the harvest has already started to in some places. It's, I've been seeing some videos and it, it, it just makes me homesick and, you know, I wanted to say actually to add one more sentence on nature that but I don't want to spoil the end of the against the loveless word for those who haven't read it, but I wanted to stress that trees and stones basically are among the things that offer reasons for hope at the end of the book and they're part and parcel of the joy that Bilal and Nahar are maybe finally reunited through an invitation to meet under a tree, but we will not go further than that into telling what happens. So I wanted to take you to another feature of your books that I found very, very interesting, very intriguing, very powerful in many ways, which is the issue of how colors feature across your novels, particularly through your female characters. And obviously, the most important is Alouan, who in one of the most important characters of your second novel of your second novel who is named Alouan, which is the Arabic noun for colors. Obviously, there is the color that is on blackness in Mornings and Janine, exactly when Kim and her accent, obviously, but I'm sorry to interrupt but you broke out for most of that I was trying to text you. Okay. The last thing I heard was your mention of Alouan. You obviously have a constant reference to colors, both as skin colors and the way in which identity comes and describing her foreignness appears, but obviously also in the different relationships she establishes with the color of what she describes as the white world and the black community around her. And then of course there is Alouan, who is the color and colorful character par excellence, not only not least because of her name which in Arabic means Alouan is colors, which is a magical figure. I don't know if you can hear me. Am I still breaking. The last thing I heard was magical. And then it's just very short. What was the last thing you said. So I was referring to Miriam and Nur who see colors and associate them with emotions. I see there is this deliberate appending of what these colors means in the novel and I wanted to ask you about that you know what what is it about colors and what does, what does it mean to use color as both a metaphor and an experience of the self. You know you earlier you said you wanted to ask me something no one has ever asked before so this is one of the things and you know no one's ever really picked up on that and I thought they would. But actually in all of my books I really I try to challenge the sort of notion of colors because because so much of our world at least in the United States is built in but also in the Arab world as well is built around race and skin color standards of beauty have everything to do with the tone of your skin and we have all linguistically we categorize black and and the in the most sinister descriptions and white as in the most ethereal you know it's it's almost it's. You know I don't I don't I'm not a linguist and I so I don't know the origin of these. I don't know the origin of these phrases that that make black so ominous and in language. So, like, you know all of these things, all these things that we have in Arabic that denote darkness as something awful and ugly. And we take for granted that that's, you know, I think people never even think about it, you know never even think about where this where these ideas come from or why. They influence the way we see the world. So, so these were, you know the use of colors was a deliberate attempt to kind of up and up and these assumptions. Noor and Meriam in in the blue between sky and water both can see can see colors and it's they call it seeing colors I mean we all see colors but they they see emotions in terms of color and so they have a they have a perception that most of us don't. And actually this is a condition. It's a biological condition called synesthesia where people senses get crossed so that people can see music or hear color. And things like that so so you know the the wires get crossed in their brain somehow and noor and Meriam can have can sense emotions in terms of color around people. And the way they describe in the book is that white whiteness is the most sinister of all, which is, you know diametrically opposed to what we think of white does being you know this, the color of angels or the color of goodness and whatnot or and and in their view black is the purest of all it's the color of babies it's the color of of good intentions and and kind heartedness. And in in warnings in Janine likewise, you know the character when she comes to the United States, she she's always met with suspicion and or you know this kind of curiosity about the other from the white world and she never really finds a place as a person as a friend. But it's it's not that way in in black communities. And this was my experience also in the United States. So I sort of reflected that in her life when she comes to United States, where she finds more of a home in the black community among black families and she finds friendships based on on individual interactions that, you know that don't presuppose she is an other or, or, or something to something less than or anything like that. Yeah. Thank you thank you so much. That was really interesting. I would have so many questions about the issue of colors and it leads to so many other possible ideas and questions and intriguing aspects but I want to leave the floor to Rafiq. I wanted to go back to against the loveless world. Some parts from the beginning and then I'll read a little bit from the end with the next question. This was just really moving to me in its description and the mother daughter relationship as well. I listened realizing I was hearing something from the silent depth of my mother. We were a family with secrets, things that lurked in the corners of our lives unseen unspoken, but felt in the texture of arguments, the extra length of a pause, the focus of a stare. For example, I didn't know until many years later that I was probably conceived before my parents married. My father asked for mama's hand to avoid a scandal and shame. I don't know if the rumor was true, but it might have been the reason we barely knew her family. I met them when my maternal grandmother died in Syria, and we traveled to their refugee camp in Yermouk for the funeral. Everyone was nice to me, my brother and mama, but I could tell from the warmth and love they exchanged with each other, but not with mama that she had somehow always been on the margins of her family. She didn't say, but I thought it was because of me, or because her father, who died when they were all kids, had loved her most. I need a cigarette, Habibi. Go inside, open the third drawer. In the very back, there's a pack rolled in socks. Mama was always between a pack a day habit and trying to quit periods. I was the only girl among my friends who wasn't trying to sneak a smoke at that age. I had read in the comic book how Western companies were using tobacco to kill us slowly and take all our money and resources in the process. Refusing to smoke was an act of rebellion, and I liked to lecture others about the Western conspiracy. But I didn't want to spoil the moment with mama, so I dutifully fetched her Marlboro stash as the tea boiled in the kitchen. May God bless you for all your days, my daughter, she said when I returned with a hot pot, two cups, a cut of fresh mint, sugar, and her stale pack of Marlboro's. Normally we could see kids playing in the narrow street below our balcony, but it was laundry day and our clothes hanging to dry obstructed the view. As mama had taught me, I had hung my brother's jeans and shirts on the outer lines facing the street. Then mama's dish dashes. My pants, dresses, and shirts were in the middle lines hidden from the lustful eyes of adolescent passerby. And finally, on the inner lines close to the edge of the balcony, we hung our underwear. Instead of looking out at the goings on in the street, all we could see were our panties fluttering in the wind under a blue sky. Brilliant. That's so moving. I have to say that these novels are incredible. The first time I actually got in touch with Susan was because my daughter started to read at the age of 10 probably. Mornings in Janine and I couldn't basically, I started to read Mornings in Janine as soon as it appeared and I was on a holiday. And I could basically I didn't participate in the holiday because I didn't want to leave reading the book. And so my daughter since then started to be so obsessed with wanting to read the book and I couldn't let her. I couldn't prevent her even she was possibly a bit too young to understand the depth and the of the stories that are narrated. And I think she, you know, she was inspired by Susan to become to start writing herself. I That really means a lot. And wonderful for you to encourage your kid to read at such a young age. I mean that, you know, that's a good moment. Thank you. I needed to hear that today. I also think that one of the most extraordinary aspects of your novels as Susan is that they speak to so many different audiences and they can be read at so many different levels. And so whenever I want to suggest a book to read to someone who is not knowledgeable about a Palestinian conflict and not even interested. I suggest read Susan I will not to become acquainted to the Palestinian conflict but to understand something about humanity about life about loss about love. And I have to say that all of those who I encouraged to read your books who had no idea about Palestine still have no idea about Palestine but they thoroughly enjoyed and understood at least at the emotional level. What's at stake there. I wanted to ask my last question really. And, which is a bit more political about your sort of your political position. Because the way I read against a loveless word, which I agree I mean is with adults. So if it's probably the most unapologetic and uncompromising of your, of your novels in my view. It's the book where you break taboos. You do break taboos in all of the others but in here it comes about in the most powerful way. You talk about sex work about rape collaboration betrayal. Same sex relations with the enemy. You desacralize the nationalist resistance culture and the culture of martyrdom, where you have passages where you kind of desacralize is still in affectionate way but there is an underlying critique. And you even name the feelings of alienation towards the homeland which for example, betrays Nahr when she goes back to Palestine. When she says Palestine was my mother's word, it belonged to city was figure story. Palestine didn't want me, nor I, nor I hear any longer. I was again and feather and vulnerable, a stranger in a place that I had felt like home. So again there is the theme of where is home which returns very powerfully in this novel. And yet, despite sort of this desacralizing and desacralized portrayals, you still have a lot of sympathy and in the way you describe and portray the creative resistance for example of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories when, for example Bilal and Nahr sabotage the water pipes with the aim of getting rid of the Israel settlement nearby which is an extraordinary. And this is something that happened for real or whether my fantasies. I thought it was a great idea by the way. And yet. So my question to so there is both sort of a desacralizing narrative underlying the novel, but huge sympathy and attention to pay. Gratitude to the resistance that policy ordinary Palestinian women and men have been carrying out since, since 1948 and in the book in particular it's the second intifada that features more prominently. So my question to you is, is whether this signal, something that is more sort of close to a political critique towards the nationalist leadership that has failed us both in the resistance, and in making Palestine home. So I think, you know, novels should be read as a novel and and and the reader gets to make gets to make those critiques and imbue it with the meaning that they find my, my aim is always like I said earlier, was to tell the truth and that's what I mean by loyalty to the characters. The truth is that, you know, we have collaborators among us. Not every so so for example I give you a good example of what I'm talking about and the way that we ourselves fall into these orientalist narratives. And so when we, you know, when we see all these beautiful young guys and men and women go towards the fence knowing that they're going to be shot in the great march of return. Rarely does anybody actually, I mean, there's all there's all manner of fanfare around them. And Rarely does anybody explore their lives to explore who they are, how they lived, and, and why they did that, you know, there, there can be all kinds of reasons. There can be, you know, there can be the reason that everyone celebrates right it can be the reason that that you know this is the ultimate sacrifice for the homeland it's it's extraordinary bravery. And no matter what I mean it's, you know, bravery is, is an important element, but also there is a you know, the reality is that there's there's an extraordinary lack of hope in Gaza. We don't know what their motivations are, and I think we have to we have we owe it to them to know, you know, to know what what what took them there. And it's not, you know, I just I resent this, this sort of constant romanticizing of our suffering, right, there are serious mental health issues in Gaza, after, after over a decade of this barbaric siege by Israel, right by a lack of opportunity by all these beautiful young minds with so much potential, going to waste, and, and, and, and literally having nowhere to go. When you start to contemplate the, the despair that that creates for yourself for your children for your family. You know, then things start to make a little bit more sense. And we owe it. So, so I guess my point is that I don't like romanticizing our suffering. I just don't like it and I, and I'm suspicious of people who do. I'm suspicious of people who have this constant romantic narrative about some mood about us being these superheroes who can take anything about us, you know, we are human we are vulnerable we are fragile we are hurt we are traumatized. We are, we are wonderful we are corrupt we are all of those things and I think it is a writer's job to be honest. It is a writer's job to, to look very deeply into the interior world of the characters we want to present. And, and, and just to be honest. That's, you know, and that's not always easy to do. Because, you know, because sometimes people hate you for it. And, and I, you know, and I'm not somebody with thick skin. I'm, I'm especially when it comes to my people you know, I'm very affected by criticism from my own people but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't that I would temper. What I feel is true, and what I feel is honest. So, so I hope that all of those things, you know, come across in the book. I was, you know, I, it did give me pause before this book was published and I was kind of holding my breath when it came out. Especially, I was concerned that Arab women were going to hate me, you know, like, I know at least, you know, one very dear friend of mine who's a very prominent intellectual and I'm not going to name him. And we're still friends, but he was very upset with me for writing a story about a woman who resorts to prostitution and resorts to sex work. And, you know, in his view, it was, you know, we have so many extraordinary people in our society, why would you focus on somebody like that. I'm not interested in extraordinary people. I mean, that was extraordinary. She I think she was extraordinary but I'm not interested in the conventional kind of narrative of, of who gets romanticized. I'm not interested in the people who that we as a marginalized society, the people that we push to the margins. Those are the people that I whose lives I'm interested in. And I also, and so there was a reason that I that that not had became a freedom fighter, right, because, you know, I wanted to take this person that our society thinks is disposable, and put her in a position that is exalted. And what does that mean. How does society react. How do you move the center to the margins. And that's what I wanted to do and that's. And it was, it, I mean as a writer, I have to say it was deeply gratifying. And in the end, you know, I have this bit of advice, this wonderful advice that I got very early on from. Do you know who Ornette Coleman is. No. So, or not Coleman is a is a, he's a very famous jazz player. He passed away. A few years ago. But I had the great fortune of being in his loft with some friends, years ago, and his son, Leonardo and I was I was a little bit anxious about my second book, you know, the blue between sky and water and I was just in the, you know, writing it in the writing it and he said listen. Now or not Coleman, even though now he's considered one of the greatest jazz musicians ever to have lived in when he first started playing, he, he upended jazz, and he was boot off stage repeatedly. And a lot of the great, the great jazz musicians of the time of his time refused to play with him. Miles Davis, John Coltrane they wouldn't they thought he was ruining just you know making a mockery of jazz. And it took a while before somebody like really listen was like wait a minute this is a kind of genius what he's doing it's musical genius and then. And so what Donato said to me was, you know, listen, all you need to do is make your art and and and let it, let it. Let it be good in your heart, you know, as long as you think you did right by your characters and your art. That's all you need and he said if my dad had listened to those people he would have never continued. That has always stayed in my mind and so that's, I kind of live by that when I'm writing is that okay am I do I feel good about this and is this honest. And so that's, yeah. Really brilliant is that do you think is that the reason why the book was banned in Jordan. The morning's engineer was banned also in Jordan, only the Arabic translation, weirdly the English is allowed so I think only people who read only in Arabic are not allowed to read it. I don't know why it's been I think the only thing I can think of is that you know when when Nahid goes to a man she, you know she really misses Kuwait she grew up in Kuwait she loves Kuwait. She misses it, even though she kind of grew to be very angry at Kuwaiti society but she, you know, she loves that landscape as I do, you know, personally because I was born there and I, and I, um, anyway. But she she says, you know, I'm man is like the asshole of the Middle East. Because she's she's displaced she's exiled her life has been uprooted. There's no mall and she was a very shallow kind of girl and Kuwait and she loved shopping and makeup and things like that and she goes to man and there's no malls and everything is dusty and Yeah, and so she and then suddenly there's all these refugees and I'm man and so she said you know everybody. Exactly, probably it's not about the the transgressive nature of the characters but it's naming a man. I think that's what it is. They didn't want, you know, people to read that somebody thinks I'm man is the asshole of the Middle East. I'm going to say I personally love I'm man I think I think the order is a beautiful landscape. Absolutely. I agree with you. Do you have a piece that you wanted to read on on this or shall we or anything actually you wanted to know I think we're getting on with time so we can take those questions and open the conversation but thank you for the very kind and thank you Susan for a very great conversation, but if you thank you for those excellent readings and for your art and your brilliant poetry and I'm so looking forward to you being at Palestine right soon. Yes. Yeah. So I am just going to to read some of the questions that have appeared here in the Q&A. This is the name is not clear but the surname is Tonsi. Thank you for organizing this panel. My question is, how do you manage to separate your writing from your own trauma and or your own experiences. How do you separate your academic and artistic careers. Thank you. I guess it's a question to both. Yeah, yes. Would you like to answer that. Yeah, I'm not sure why I have to separate the two. It's, it would be strange to try to and I know sometimes in academia we're pushed to say like this is my academic hat. And this is my artistic hat and I work on very different things like when it comes to my academic writing is actually very heavy political economy on like ports and containers. My poetry is quite different but the two seep into each other in very interesting ways. I think we're all multi-dimensional people. That's, that's more interesting and the more you can do work that you really love but have different parts of you seep into the other. I think it makes for better work. And the same goes for activism as well like quite often people said, if you want an academic career you need to be quiet and not speak. But I found actually that my activism strengthened what I write but also my relationship with my students. So that's how I think of them not as like these separate spheres. Thank you. I agree completely with you to FIFA night. It's very much a Western concept really this kind of delineation of our lives, which, which doesn't make sense and I often try and you know sort of analogize like how do, like, how would I separate the woman in me from the mother in me. There's, there's just, you know, they overlap in very profound ways. You know my academic life if you want to call it that is actually in science my my whole education is in, is in the natural sciences and neuroscience. And so, you know, even that even though I probably using a totally different part of my brain when I'm analyzing data and things like that. It's still found its way in in mornings and Jeanine for example that you know when she comes to the US amount that's what she's doing, you know she's working for. She's doing medical writing for drug companies. But, um, Yeah, I'll just leave it at that because I think you you expressed it so well the FIFA night and I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. My question would on this line would be would be to Susan how do you reconcile your scientific writing with your novels that this is an extraordinary aspect of yours that you can write in such different contexts. And I would be really curious to see how poetic they are your. I'm sure you can look some of them up on PubMed. I'm sure you're changing the genre, even there. So there is another question from an anonymous attendee to Susan, can you talk a bit more about how you dealt with the changes in your identity in exile and how did this affect your work and how you resonate with these characters. So I think I kind of hinted at this earlier that, you know, exile is, exile is a thief. It is a tormentor at times. And, and it creeps up on you. But it also gives you distance. It gives you a new lens for which to see this collective trauma that we all stand in. They're, you know, the geographic fragmentation of our society has resulted in this kind of psychological linguistic fragmentation psychological fragmentation and even hierarchy of Palestinianness. And, you know, these are things that that I try to grapple with also in in my literature and what I write. You know, all so again it's it's all intertwined. I can't separate my life experience entirely from my characters maybe some writers can. But because my, my characters move through a milieu that is very similar to to the, the, the historic background that I've had to navigate. I inevitably end up putting some of my own life experiences into into their experiences. If for no other reason than the simple fact that I understand them, you know, I, you have to understand experiences I think on a visceral level. And those that you don't I think. So for example, and against the loveless world. There are, you know, she's imprisoned. And that was a really heavy responsibility that I felt to portray that having never been imprisoned myself. And that's the reason why Nahid was in an entirely fictional kinds of prison. I didn't, I didn't dare trying to try to try to describe a real prison or something that I had no right to to try and depict. But I, you know, it required a tremendous amount of research conversations and delving very deeply into one's imagination as well. Which includes delving into one's own experiences, because again, we're, you know, we're multifaceted and all those facets are are in separate are cannot be delineated from one another. Thank you, Susan. There is a question I wanted to ask you actually another question myself which I don't want to forget, which is. You are one of my favorite writers and the other or contemporary. And I don't know whether it was my bias, because I wanted when I love someone and something I tend to kind of see them in in in other books that I'm reading and vice versa but I couldn't help but seeing some in sort of some influences or some designs of, and I, again, perhaps it was in my own imagination of authors such as Toni Morrison, on the one hand, and on the other hand, authors such as Camila Shamsie, for example, especially in the way in which you, you write about love and and some of your female characters are so could be easily perceived as Palestinian Antigonese with their work of compassion and which is so political and at the same time. And to be honest with you, I couldn't help but seeing a little bit of Elena Ferrante in the way in which sort of the uncanny and the intimate portrayal of the most intimate aspects of your female characters lives are so poetically and masterfully really presented in the book. So I wanted to know whether this was something that you also see and whether you are inspired by these authors or which are the authors that have inspired you now and when you were growing up, I guess. So, first of all, thank you. I mean, it's an honor to even be sort of put in the same breath as Toni Morrison and Camila Shamsie who's a friend of mine and Elena Ferrante as well. Yes, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to tell like if I was influenced by them or not. I, you know, I love their work. I, I, you know, I've read a lot of Arabic novels as well. Some of my favorite novels are include, you know, 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the God of small, of small things, Aaron Dottie Roy, Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of the White Horses and Qanadeel Malik Al-Jaleel. I think it's translated into English as well. I love the books of Huzama Habayib. Isabella Allende. I mean, we have, yeah, so it's hard. I mean, yeah, this, like, I like a lot of, yeah, a lot of books just kind of stick with me. But I mean, I would say actually my probably all time favorite novel is 100 years of solitude for some reason that really resonated with me. But I want to say as a child, I actually didn't have books. And when I came to the United States, I couldn't read or write English, except maybe on like a third grade, I mean, a first grade level. And it was my big secret. I was in eighth grade and I, and I had to hide the fact that I couldn't read or write English. And, and I learned to become literate by copying the entire page of the front page of the Charlotte newspaper. I had no idea what I was writing, but at some point it started to make sense. And I finally, when I, when I finally read a book from cover to cover, I was about 14 years old, 14 or 15 years old. And I hadn't read really prior to that. And I think I must, I had books, small books or something when I was younger, but I just don't remember reading, I remember craving books I remember really wanting to have books, and not having access to them. And the first book that I read cover to cover, there were two actually, the first one was the outsiders by SC Hinton. And then the other one was the color purple by Alice Walker. So, yeah. I have one last question here from the audience before maybe offering also a fifth the opportunity if she wants to ask something. And the time to wrap up, and I know Amina Yakin, who's one of the organizers of the festival wants it wants to announce the next events, and I'm sure that Susan is also very tired but So with the last question from our path. Do both of you feel that you are different to the Palestinians who have lived and fought back in Palestine, who wants to take that. You want to start this time round. So again, this kind of goes back to, you know, this fragmentation of our society, certainly our experiences are different. I mean, you know, for whatever it's worth I did live in Palestine under occupation, but although not my entire life. But without a doubt, our experiences have been different. So we don't I don't have to worry about somebody knocking my door down in the middle of the night and dragging my kid out in her pajamas and arresting me, or her or demolishing our home or bombs falling on us. For sure we don't have to face that. So we also live in a place we are as as immigrants as exiles. That is disconnected from from our families. There is, there is a real sense. There's a real sense of we don't mind the sense of loneliness in exile real sense of just go ahead, they're not going to stop the door. I guess, I guess what I would say is, of course, I feel different to Palestinians, whether they are in the West Bank or Gaza or inside Israel proper, or those in exile, because we're not one monolithic grouping where we're a people like any other people it would be the same as someone asking do you feel similar to someone who's British who grew up outside. And the difference is of course different. And I, I want to go against a little bit this idea of like an authentic Palestinian experience of occupation, or even that there's an authentic experience of fighting. What does it mean to be fighting so the majority of Palestinians are refugees. There's a lot of us in the Shattat. The exile is not just in the West. There's refugee camps where there are now generations of refugees who have born into refugee camps and there was assaults on the camps in Lebanon, which continue to this moment where we look at what happened in the United States. I've worked with Palestinian refugees who had to leave Syria become refugees for a third time Iraq Palestinian refugees from Iraq. And that's why I think the focus on the ongoing neck but and how that first moment of ethnic cleansing is actually continuous and stays with us is really important so I would, I would stand against this idea of putting Palestinians in a hierarchy of authenticity according to what form of occupation, they suffer. And of course we are different and if we weren't different and if anybody tries to say no we're all the same I would find that extremely suspicious. Thank you Rafiq that was brilliant answer. I, there is really one last question which I think is a really nice one if you can take it. Otherwise we will. Are you very, are you able to take the last question. I'm fine I have my tea here and I, I, it's, it's a it's a real joy to be with with Palestinian women. So, same for for us. So this is a source students union, which says thank you so much for such a beautiful discussion. I feel so empowered and happy to see three Palestinian women speak about art and life. Could you elaborate more about this third space that isn't smooth pity, or the terrorist violent people and do you think it was intentional, or was it your reality and experience that created that through your writing. I don't think it's a third space. I, it's not. And again, this is kind of, you can't sort of put a whole society into these little boxes. We are, we're a society like any other, like if you if you just substitute Palestinians in that sentence with any other group. Right. It would seem absurd to say, Okay, if you're not awful and you're not good. Who are you then what is your third space. It sounds absurd to to apply that logic, maybe to to to to Egyptians or to French people or Americans and whatnot. We are society, an ancient society with an extraordinarily rich and varied and diverse heritage heritage that was that that was dynamic that changed over time that changed linguistically it changed culturally it was an it was an organic evolution of culture of food and and and rituals and religions and pilgrimages and conquest and and all of that. And it produced an extensive and varied society. So we, we exist as every society exists, spanning the full spectrum of humanity. With all kinds of thoughts and political orientations sexual orientations, economic orientations I mean whatever every whatever you whatever exists in any society exists in us. So we are, we are, we are not a dichotomy. And, and we're not a, what's the trichotomy is that a word. We're not, you know, we don't we're not divided into three categories either. We're the full spectrum of humanity like everybody else is that's what I'm trying to say, and that is what art communicates. That's what, you know, Rafif's poems communicate. Selim Haddad's books I mean, you know, Malak Matar's arts I mean, you can find this huge spectrum of human beings and lived life experiences in, in the art that we produce, which is why artistic expression is is vital to our survival as a people. And I think on this really important note. We should start wrapping up and thanking Susan for really wonderful conversation wonderful reflections and for a thief to a thief for reading and performing some of the beautiful writing of Susan and for. Thank you so much until so late. And I would just then offer you Amina Amina are you there. Yes, I'm here. Thank you Amina also for hosting this event in the festival of ideas. Oh, thank you. That's the exit note isn't it. Thank you. All of you for such an amazing inspiring conversation I've been mesmerized listening to it and learning so much without everybody who has contributed to this festival of ideas it wouldn't be what it it has been so warm heartfelt thanks to all of you. I just want to remind you tomorrow is the last day of the festival and it's been. It's been pretty amazing and inspiring in terms of the contributions and we have our big debate so I wanted to remind you to join in it's an Oxford style debate and you will be asked. The audience will be asked to register their position before and after the debate. We've had a whole week on decolonizing knowledge. This is a moment where we will be discussing the theme and we have four speakers professors. Margot Ocasava Ray and Jamila Hussein Shanan, who will be for decolonizing with a special message from Professor Linda to have a Smith and Dr. Cahinde Andrews and Dr. Brian Allen will be against decolonizing higher education. So we hope you will join us from three to five be a British summertime and from five to seven we will be screening the play decolonizing not just a buzzword with a panel discussion with butcher Boulevard. You've you've read the campus novel come and see the campus play. This is about decolonizing conversations at the university. Thank you so much there's a lot more happening tomorrow I won't go into all of it so it starts the program starts at 11 but those are the highlights for tomorrow so please join in. And thank you so much to Susan, to Rafif, to Ruba and the tech support team who've been absolutely brilliant. Thank you. And a very good evening. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. Good night. Good night.