by B. NIMRI AZIZ
“Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” is the title of a soon-to-be-released film featuring photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, the most recent of more than 208 assassinated Gazan journalists.
With no prior knowledge of that film’s content, I knew it emanated from Palestine. These eight words embodied reiterations of a portrait that for many months incessantly haunts me, a photo that had become too routine, and to most of the world, a fleeting image. Even the few who catch glimpses of those slowing moving tributaries of walkers with no destination turn silent.
The Gazans walk on, steadily, seemingly willingly. Away from everything they loved and what each of them is – a soul, a sentient being, a history. They walk on obediently, now perhaps less by fear than from habit and dissolution. They walk without a terminus.
Most refugees worldwide have some geographic objective, however murky, unrealistic and adaptable. Not Gaza’s Palestinians. They are simply vacating a place that they have been warned is unsafe. Their objective is simply to get out of the paths of cordons of ‘predators’ stalking them from all directions, including the sky. If not to save themselves, they are compelled to help their elders, their sick and their children.
The number of displaced people and refugees today is of a staggering magnitude never recorded in any era of world history. Most often war and military occupation is the motive for their uprooting. Or famine, or economic sanctions stemming from conflict. From all across Europe to the Americas; from Tibet to India; from Uganda to the U.K.; from Vietnam in all directions; from Africa northwards through destroyed Libya; from Afghanistan east into Pakistan or westwards anywhere; from Myanmar to Bangladesh; from Iraq and Syria to the Gulf States, Iran and Turkey; from Rwanda to Congo or Congo to Uganda and Tanzania; from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Australia; from Bhutan to Nepal; from Cuba and Venezuela, mostly forced into penury by U.S. sanctions.
They sleep on the road and huddle with strangers in camps. They thrash around capsized boats, hide in city or forest, then set off to reach a temporary safe haven where they might file papers to secure asylum somewhere along a route through several nations. Resourcefully, they gather fragments about the safest crossing point, the most trustworthy smugglers, where temporary succor might be found.
Barbara Nimri for more