The Book of Sumud is the fruit of my participation in Youmein Festival 2024 in the city of Tanger, Morocco. Here’s some reflections on this experience:
“It’s spiritual love. Since we were kids, we always dreamt about Palestine”, said one of the participants in the writing workshop “From Tangier to Palestine: writing our Sumud”, held on the 26h of July, 2024 as part of the Youmein festival. Indeed, as a Palestinian who visited Morocco for the first time, I had a glimpse of what is meant by spiritual love: whenever someone spotted my Palestinian dialect, I was met with hugs, kisses, strong handshakes and bittersweet smiles.
Traveling to Morocco to participate in the festival wasn’t an easy decision. I asked myself: what is the use of making art during this period? What difference does art make if we can’t halt an ongoing genocide of my people? Having these bouts of despondency is not uncommon, especially as I have been witnessing the horror unfold for the past months. However, in retrospect, I believe my decision to participate is in itself an act of sumud: to keep going despite the circumstances.
There’s no one exclusive definition of sumud. It’s a dynamic concept that was born with the birth of the Palestinian Nakba and developed over the years. It stands for the Palestinian people’s ability to stay in their lands and to live, despite the relentless harassment and brutal offenses. Though sumud can take different shapes or forms depending on the situation, it is always based on the foundation of resisting erasure. It means that we have to pick ourselves up and find inner strength to keep going with an unquenchable hope that oppression must come to an end. Another possible definition is provided by the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh when he says:
“sumud is a state of mind, a “third way”…[it] should thus not be understood as an alternative position between “active” and “passive” sumud, but rather as a form of resistance that differs both from violent resistance as represented by the fedayeen (Palestinian freedom fighters) and submission to Israeli power.”
There’s an implicit understanding of what is sumud among us Palestinians: It’s not a normalization of an abnormal state of oppression and humiliation nor is it a capitulation to the status quo, it rather means to find a way to live despite the difficult circumstances, until you gather strength to change these same circumstances. Although sumud’s etymology in Arabic comes from the verb صمد [sa ma da] meaning to endure, causing one to assume the passive nature of staying the same, sumud allows for change and progress while safeguarding the essence of the cause: the struggle over the land.
Moreover, participating in the festival felt like a duty as a Palestinian poet and human to use every platform to raise the Palestinian voice and to put the Palestinian cause on the table. Not that Palestine needs this effort right now, as evident in every encounter I had in Morocco was met with: the Palestinian people are in our heart- Gaza ghalia [is precious]. But perhaps it’s a question of building real solidarity beyond sharing social media posts and donating money to relief aids. It’s a question of looking inwards; of experiencing real empathy that provides us with strength to fight; of reflecting on our own struggles; of listening and connecting our forms of sumud so we can be stronger together.
To contextualize the Book of Sumud, it started with 48-hours of art and performance as part of the Youmein festival (youmein means two days in Arabic). Undertaking such a task was a venture to me, and it forced me out of my comfortable zone of writing and editing texts. The idea of creating a Book of Sumud was born out of the necessity to process the current situation in Palestine and to connect it to struggles elsewhere. The tools that I used to connect these struggles are the poem and the space. Space as conceptualized by Lefebvre in his book The Production of Space (1974): it is conceived, perceived and lived. In other words, there are three facets of a space: the psychological/mental space, the social space and the physical space. The second tool is the poem. The poems that were employed include: I Belong there by our national poet Mahmoud Darwish, Gaza, Habibti by Rashid Hussien, Sleeping in Gaza by Najwan Darwish and What I Will by Suheir Hammad.
The conversation about sumud, both personal and collective, took place in the space using the poem as material. Collective analysis of the poems and creative writing exercises were the words that comprised this conversation, allowing for discussions about the register, musicality and context of each poem. In addition, the writing exercises directed the participants towards reflection on the space they’re found in; their relationship to it; their struggles in it; and their forms of sumud or resistance.
For example, one participant wrote when describing his home city of Tanja:
A friendly face
When the Cherqi is not around….
Being back after so many years….
The city reminds me of who I was
…
The city changed also, a lot,
or not so much, I still can’t decide.
I learnt that cherqi refers to the Eastern wind (شرقي) that forces people into their homes due to the intense heat and humidity. This is an example of the social aspect of a space; that is the way a space is perceived by the people, and it’s known to the people who dwell there. Personally, hearing the participants writing about their own hometown made me perceive the place differently.
Pushed to contemplate these questions and write their contemplations down, one Palestinian participant wrote in description of Gaza:
Over there
un
speakable
un
conscionable
dystopian
intentional
un
mentionable
reprehensible.
This poem uses line break in an attempt to describe the indescribable horror imposed on the people of Gaza, and it allows for criticism of the UN (un), an entity that is supposed to uphold universal human values, yet fails to protect the lives of Palestinians till this moment as I type these words.
The use of Palestinian embroidery to connect the poems in the installation is not only aesthetic, but it is also symbolic for Palestine uniting us and bringing us together. The color red was chosen because it’s the traditional color used in Tatreez, and because it symbolizes blood and sacrifice that the Palestinian sumud has offered so far to maintain its cause and protect the land. In addition, each embroidery pattern represents a different region in Palestine, including patterns from Gaza, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Hebron (al Khalil).
Lastly, I contributed to the installation with my own poem, which ends with the following verse:
To witness a string of butterflies
From طنجة
to فلسطين
This verse was inspired by the final writing exercise in the workshop, which tried to challenge the imagination of participants to write down their own itinerary from Tangier to Palestine. That is, instead of occupying the mental sphere of writing our sumud metaphorically, we imagine an actual trip from Tangier to Palestine- what would that look like? Someone mentioned taking an express train that crosses the North African plain all the way to Jerusalem, making a stop in Gaza on the way (Gaza being the last Mediterranean stop before going inland). Another participant suggested something similar to the Green March, but all the way to Palestine. These scenarios might be illogical or crazy even, but perhaps our liberation lies in our ability to imagine a reality that doesn’t yet exist; a reality deemed illogical by the current system of erasure and exploitation; a reality in which we are all free and equal.
AICHA BINT YUSIF 