This reflection is based on Lina Mounzer’s article on “the urgency of telling the stories of conflict”. I chose these specific quotes to annotate on because they all meant something to me or resonated with me in a certain way.
“The women, the writers, range in age from their teens to their sixties and seventies, come from all walks of life, all parts of Syria. They are teachers, activists, seamstresses, farmers, doctors, volunteer paramedics, housewives, writers, aspiring writers, students and revolutionaries.”
What I love about this quote is that it brings women from several cultures and backgrounds, being united in that one specific thing that ties them all together, regardless of their age, job, past, or history.
“I cry a lot while doing this work. It isn’t something I can control. Every time I think I have become hardened to these stories, a moment, an expression, a detail will throw me off the scaffolding of language, away from the structural safety of its grammar and rules and headlong into the wilderness beyond. There is always something unexpected, unimagined, no matter how used to the narrative of loss and displacement and violence I think I have become.”
This part really got to me, it made me empathize with the author, putting myself in her shoes, imagining how awful it must be to be in that position, feeling what she must be feeling.
“All I can think of is my journal, with all the poems I have written over the years.”
A lot of people hide behind their work, they resort to other forms of art and creativity to relieve their stress and create their own imaginary world.
“I have buried seven husbands, three fiancés, fifteen sons and a two-week old daughter I finally agreed to have at 42 for my husband’s sake, to bring life back to his tongue after we laid our two grown, handsome sons to rest, one after the other, and grief took all his words away.”
Mariam Ibrahim: “Such a shocking and heartbreaking situation that reflects this woman’s phenomenal resistance and strength during an unbelievably hard time.”
I agree with Mariam on this quote. It really digs into the unfortunate life of this poor Syrian who had to withstand unbearable circumstances, but to her, burying people she cares about became a norm and just the mere thought of this breaks my heart.
“where her perfect blue body lay among countless others they had not yet found place enough to bury.”
This woman was content, watching her daughter’s body rest in peace, waiting for a place to bury her because there was not enough capacity to supply for the thousands of bodies that need to be buried, because of the horrible mass murdering that was going on in Syria. I cannot even begin to imagine how terrible this woman must be feeling, watching her daughter die from something she could not have controlled.
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