17. Your Freedom is a Figment of Your Imagination.

Some things I've been thinking and some books I've been reading.

Hello again,

I hadn’t intended for so much time to pass between letters but by the end of last year I was so thoroughly exhausted that sifting through my many thoughts to determine what to say and how to say it was a task I just didn’t feel up to. I can’t quite believe we’re already a whole two months into the new year but I am very glad to be back and I hope this letter finds you as well as the current state of the world might allow.

If you’re new here, or it’s been so long since you’ve heard from me that you’re wondering who on earth I am and why this letter has landed in your inbox, allow me to reintroduce myself.

My name is Tasnim and reading is pretty much my only hobby, which is why you can usually find me either here or on Instagram talking all things books.

This Substack offers me a little more room to share in-depth thoughts on the books I’ve been reading and any associated musings as well as anything and everything else I feel like writing about.

If you’re new here, I’d love it if you’d consider subscribing. It’s free to do so but if you ever wanted to buy me a coffee, it would definitely be appreciated. If you’ve been around for a while, thank you for hanging in there!

Now, let’s move onto the thoughts that finally brought me back here, shall we?

In one way or another, I spend a lot of time listening to the stories other people choose to tell and, while I wouldn’t want to make assumptions, I imagine that if you’ve found your way to this letter it’s because the same could be said for you, too.

However, lately, I’ve been preoccupied with how it might feel to be left with no choice but to speak of your most painful experiences and expose your worst moments to a world of strangers, and the additional pain that unwilling exposure must cause. For months, the people of Gaza have had to do this in the hope that it might move the rest of us to useful action and they are not alone in this- there are others who share stories of the death and destruction that surrounds them, knowing that their plight won’t garner even a fraction of the outrage it demands: the people of Sudan, Syria, the Congo and so many other places.

I’ve done my best not to concern myself too much with the jarring silence of those who have created entire businesses and platforms off of other people’s stories: the publishers who make money selling them, the writers and academics who wax lyrical about decolonisation but only when they can apply this knowledge retrospectively, the content creators who effusively praise books (and other media) about the suffering of others but have remained shockingly silent in the face of it, the literary organisations, the academic institutions, the authors, the poets, the artists, the educators… Silent.

I’ve tried, instead, to turn towards those who are loudly and fiercely objecting to what we are seeing but, still, there is a sense of urgency and panic that has taken root in the pit of my stomach along with a vivid awareness that none of this can be undone. There’s no bringing back those who have been killed, no returning the mother to the child who cries out in the hopes of summoning her, nor the children to the parents who spent years praying so desperately for them, nor the entire family to the grandfather who went in search of food and returned to find no mouths left to feed. There can be no reattaching of limbs, no rebuilding of ancient monuments, no rewriting of historical texts; words long ago written and the powerful ideas that might have been formed by so many brilliant minds are now lost to us all and, when I consider all of this, what remains so unfathomable to me is how we, as a people, can so easily destroy that which is most difficult so build.

I fully appreciate that it can be hard to strike a balance between seeing and sharing enough that we remain informed and attentive but not so much that we become numb to it, but what does it actually mean for any of us that so many can choose to turn so eagerly towards distraction and away from the unconscionable violence being inflicted upon others with a genuine belief that it doesn’t concern them, too?

So many people remain under the illusion that that their silence will protect whatever freedoms they believe they have when, in actual fact, whatever peaceful existence they imagine might be maintained by their denial is nothing but a highly polished facade.

While some people, by virtue of who they are or where they are in the world, face far greater oppression than others, true freedom is something we are all denied, evidence of which lies in the fact that millions all over the world can take to the streets in protest and their cries can be ignored without consequence. Evidence of which lies in the fact that we are required to take to the streets in protest at all. Evidence of which lies in the fact that not all of us even have the right to protest and, for those of us who still do, these rights are increasingly under threat. This should concern us all.

I don’t say any of this with an expectation that we should absorb nothing but the pain and suffering of others. On the contrary, I believe that while it is imperative that we bear witness to the injustices of our time, we must also go out of our way to experience the beauty of the world, to be awestruck whenever possible, and to find love and joy in the company we keep, so that our activism is driven not only by the fury and outrage we feel but just as fervently by a desire that everyone is able to experience the very best of this existence and no-one should be actively prevented from doing so.

However, first and foremost, this requires us to recognise that if we are willing to look past the oppression of others for the sake of whatever freedoms we wish to maintain, it really is no freedom at all.

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Before I share a couple of rather excellent books with you, I did want to highlight a quick and easy action for anyone looking to support people in Gaza. e-sims are a lifeline for people facing internet blackouts and they are so easy to send. Below are instructions for how to do so:

Step 1: Download the relevant app: Nomad , Holafly, or Simly

Step 2: Select the region and choose a plan

Step 3: Purchase your plan

Step 4: Send a screenshot of the QR code to Gazaesims@gmail.com

It really is that simple.

You can also follow Mirna El Helbawi and Connecting Humanity to keep up to date with which eSIMs are in demand and when supplies are running low.

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Onto the Books

I realise that it is customary for people who talk about books on the internet to share their favourite books of the previous year at the start of every new one, however, I haven’t given it a whole of thought just yet. If you’re interested to know which of the books I read in 2023 are really worth reading (in my not so humble opinion) I’d be happy to turn my attention to it when the time is right.

In the meantime, I did want to share a couple of the books I’ve read so far this year that are both relevant but also quite excellent.

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad.

If you follow me on Instagram and you’re tired of hearing me go on about how pleased I am for finally reading this almost 600-page novel, I’m sorry but please allow me to mention it just once more…

The Parisian follows a man named Midhat Kamal from Nablus who, in 1914, leaves Palestine to train as a doctor in France where he falls in love with a young French woman, Jeanette. However, their romance comes to an abrupt end for reasons I won’t divulge so as not to spoil it for you if you haven’t read it yet. After a few years in Paris, Midhat eventually makes his way back to Nablus and, as the reader follows his attempts to settle into the life expected of him, we see the many ways in which the lives of the Palestinian people change from the fall of the Ottoman Empire, to life under the British mandate, drawing to a close as WWII looms and Zionism takes hold.

One of the many things I loved about this story was the intimate depiction of Palestinian life and Isabella Hammad’s decision to invite the reader into this world through the eyes of a man who is actually rather self-absorbed and, at times, seemingly oblivious to the realities and complexities of the world around him. Wherever he resides, he is someone who always seems to exist outside of the majority - in Paris, he is the Arab to be studied and back in Palestine he is The Parisian or Al-Barisi and, in both instances, he is quite set apart. However, the fact that this feels so unintentional on his part makes him quite endearing, if not a little infuriating at times.

There is a wealth of modern literature about the lives of Palestinian people after the Nakba of 1948 but the choice to write such a substantial novel about Palestine before this Catastrophe is an important one- a reminder that Palestine was never ‘a land without a people’, and a reminder of who and what what was intentionally destroyed in order to bring about the creation of the state of Israel.

There is something quietly harrowing about this novel when it is read with an understanding of what was to come. Even those characters who sense the impending doom and do their best to fight against it, would have no way of knowing what their people would face right up until this very moment and, in this way, it is incredibly tragic.

If you, too, have put off reading The Parisian because of its size, now is as good a time as any to finally give it a read- I have a feeling you won’t regret it.

The second book I wanted to share with you is The Singularity by Balsam Karam (translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel)

Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions just last month, The Singularity is Karam’s first English language publication– a short, three-part novel centring the experiences of migrants, refugees, mothers and their children.

The novel primarily takes place in an unnamed coastal city which is ‘home’ to many refugees, one of whom is a mother in search of her daughter, known only as The Missing One. Weighed down by grief and the unbearable reality of her daughter’s absence, this unnamed woman eventually throws herself into the sea. Bearing witness to this tragic moment is a heavily pregnant woman who happens to be on a work-trip from another unnamed country and who, in the second part of the novel, goes on to give birth to a stillborn child.

Considering The Singularity is only 180 or so pages long, it is thoroughly demanding. It is bursting with the traumas of living a life full of countless losses: loss of life, loss of country, loss of language. The sections themselves, while semi-interwoven, alter so significantly in narrative structure that when I reached the second section, The Singularity, I was surprised to find myself almost-but-not-quite losing my footing while attempting to keep track of who was speaking and whose story I was attending to, which experiences were real and what was dreamed or imagined, what was present and what was past.

The final section, The Losses, is written as a series of vignettes and these scenes really hammer home the brutal, repetitive injury caused by what we’d likely call ‘microagressions’ and the ways in which these characters are forced to swallow the insults so casually directed at them because to respond as they’d truly like to is a risk they can’t afford to take.

While Karam, who is Swedish and of Iranian-Kurdish descent, could’ve very intentionally named the places and people or offered obvious identifiers, the choice not to do so is so effective here: who is it you think of? Which people come to mind? Where are they travelling to or from? The list is long, the options endless and that is, in itself, the point.

It took a moment for this book to sink in but it is striking and beautifully written and it has stayed with me in a way that so few novels have managed to in recent months. I really won’t be surprised if we’re hearing a lot more about this one in the coming months.

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I have a few more books I’d love to share with you but I think I should probably pause here and save those for another time. If you made it this far, I’m impressed and I thank you.

Until next time,

Tasnim