CN
Let’s talk first about the excerpt we have chosen for this special issue of Rowayat, “Connect and Sustain.” I think that Chapters One, Two, and Three are a good choice for this because in them we really see these themes come through. There are so many points of connection, like how when migrating as an asylum seeker the main character, Asmaa, has to connect with the lawyer from Amnesty International, Nathalie. And then later in the chapters we see her different kinds of connection with José and Jean-Jacques and the different kinds of sustenance these different connections do and don’t bring.
I wanted to talk especially about the scenes with the lawyer Nathalie. It’s so important how the novel details the whole process of having to go to the Préfecture at 4 AM to renew papers. It shows the choices you have to make sometimes. There is that scene where she hopes that the guard doesn’t hear Nathalie complaining, because she is worried about what they will do. She also compares her treatment in France to that she experienced from Israeli soldiers at checkpoints. It shows the loops that you get stuck in because of how the world works–people who experience oppression and leave those spaces because of it, but then you face new kinds of oppression and have to make choices as to which is the lesser of two evils, now, for you.
MH
I remember working together on that passage of the translation. Even as we were doing it, we were discussing these dynamics in detail–the kinds of impossible choices you are forced to make. We discussed being stuck in an impossible choice–how do you choose one terrible situation over another, as if they are not both bad, as if somehow you are not stuck. The scene with Nathalie, where Asmaa is sort of silently wishing to herself and hoping she won’t be “too loud” and at the same time feels grateful that she is sticking up for her is really moving and feels viscerally so real–it’s another good example of how this novel complicates the concept of connections.
At the same time that the relationship between Nathalie and Asmaa the character is a very real connection and shows important solidarity when she comes to France, it also demonstrates how complex these relationships can be. Nathalie is doing a good thing, she’s standing up for what is right, but it still feels awkward and difficult for Asmaa. Her lived experience tells her that this could go terribly wrong and have repercussions on her.
CN
I have a question for Asmaa, about this specific point–about the evil of each system and how the physical oppression and violence that one–the occupation–imposes on your body seems infinitely more harmful and immediate than the evils of an “immigration” system that forces you into its endless bureaucracy that is also violent in its own way.
How does this affect the narrator’s ability to find peace in Toulouse, while she holds the awareness of both of these systems of oppression in her body and mind? Does it mean that she is doomed to feeling scattered because of her past but also her present?
AA
This is a very important point, one that reflects the current political situation in France, the rise of the fascists, who just won the European elections and who very well might become the majority in the Assemblée nationale. So it’s a really good allusion to what’s happening in France today. The novel really addresses issues that we still unfortunately suffer from.
CN
100%. The political situation in Europe, in France, globally really, is getting scary, and it makes these questions more relevant in light of the ways we somehow find ourselves forced into exile in these countries. Our situations are totally different but with you in Toulouse and me in Montréal, we can both understand the difficulties and complexities of this cycle. Do you think that this means life will forever feel scattered, dispersed, does it create a permanent sense of despondency and powerlessness? Or does it instead urge you to continue working, feeding your drive to fight for justice?
AA
We both know this, as people living between two places–people tend to think that okay, now you’re in Europe, you’re doing well. But as you said, the oppression exists in both places. It just feels like one is easier to deal with than the other. Under one of them, at least you’re alive–there are no bombs, no war, no social pressure that comes with living in a conservative society. But then again, if there weren’t war where we’re from, had we not been colonized, had no one ever taken over–not the French, not the British, no Europeans–would we still have moved to Europe? Definitely not. We have everything already. There’s no difference between our countries and theirs.
Also, there is some level of peace you need to reach with yourself. I’m not sure how you feel, but I think you reach a point where you understand that you’re like a bird–and your place, your country, the geographical point at which you’re located, any space you’re in at all, whether I’m in France or Palestine or the Emirates at my parents’–I am perched on the tree branch that I have chosen. It’s the branch, not any specific place. I don’t belong to any place. I don’t belong to France, nor to the Emirates. You’re just landing on a branch, and you settle on that branch for a while… I don’t know how to describe this to you, but somehow wherever you find yourself becomes your place for now, and as you keep moving, even within the same place, you are constantly trying to find a little corner that you can create for yourself.
What makes finding peace difficult is the fact that you aren’t happy anywhere. In any of these places. I don’t feel that I belong to any parts of them. And that means that the second you step outside your house, you automatically go into struggle mode. Tu luttes. That’s what’s so hard, the personal struggle. I wish I could find peace. I wish I could find peace and just do nothing. Just be at peace. I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to struggle–but you can’t. You can’t, because the moment you give up is the moment they win. They’ll devour you. And they can be anyone. So you need to constantly be alert, in a state of constant awareness, wherever you are, wherever you go. Expecting anything: there might be a strike, you might get killed, assaulted, anything. Because you chose to speak your mind, and you refuse to be assimilated into society. That’s really the heart of it.
CN
You also come to feel that this constant, endless, eternal struggle is the only path you can take. You can’t picture any other path because it also becomes your way to connect with this notion of “home.” You spoke of a tree with branches, and if every place is its own branch, what does that make of the roots? Where are these roots? Perhaps the struggle is the truest way to connect to the roots that sprouted the tree that is taking you to all these places. I’m thinking of the theme of this conversation, “Connect and Sustain.” Do you think there is any way we can remain connected to who we are on the inside, to our convictions, to the way we see the world, to our desire to return to our homes and have them look like us? In A Long Walk from Gaza, you speak of the difficulty of life under occupation but also under internal patriarchal systems within Palestinian society… Is the struggle–even if only within the scope of our own personal lives–the only way? I’m also asking this question for myself, because I know it can be very tiring. But comfort is forever out of reach because you are constantly hounded by the need to act, to do something.
AA
It’s exactly as you say, Caline. I know you feel what I do, the difficulty of having multiple nationalities or identities, despite all the ease that might bring. Constant adaptation is difficult. When you’re always trying to adapt, it’s like you’re never whole. How can I be fully myself without having to adapt and modify things every time? In your case, you wonder: Why can’t I be Lebanese, the way I perceive that identity to be, in Beirut, and have society accept me for who I am? Why can’t they accept me for who I am in Canada without pigeonholing me into their definition of an Arab, without having to render me legible to their assumptions? I feel the same way. I feel the only space in which I find my resources, the spring that nurtures me and my energy, is in my own head. In my head I have the space for my memories. Remembering is almost a form of meditation. I close my eyes and try to remember a place of intimacy that makes me feel happy and safe. It is from this space that I can renew my struggle every day. It’s a daily effort. Every day, in France, in Palestine, wherever I go, I struggle. But I try to find time for myself. Just a tiny moment to return to that place within myself, a geography in the mind–an abstract geography–to tap into my own energy, to recharge. I know you know what I mean.
But physicality, real geography, where my body is physically located, the political geography of my existence–where I come from, the color of my skin, my thoughts, how my life shaped me into who I am–this is what constantly urges readaptation. Finding ways not to fall into the trap of French colonialism, the trap of patriarchy, the marginalization of women in our Arab societies… As a woman, a woman who is divorced, living her life without paying any mind to what people will say, this is more difficult. The more you try to be yourself and be true to your values, your revolutionary ideas, the more attacked you are. But of course it’s impossible to give up. If you do, you submit totally and end up miserable. Miserable because you are not yourself, you are killing the revolutionary spirit within you. Being revolutionary is living how you want to live, not how people think you should. The daily, permanent struggle stems from here.
MH
What you are saying holds so much meaning. Picking up on your last point Asmaa, what do you think, and Caline too, where are the connections between where you feel out of place, different, you don’t quite fit, you have all of these feelings inside of yourself, your identity being split up… and then when you’re in this kind of place, how do you then make connections to other people? Where are the connections? What are the things that sustain you? How do you sustain yourself? I mean, we see it in the book with the narrator finding different friends, different men, some people she connects to, some she doesn’t… How do we find those connections? The ones that sustain us?
AA
Connections are likely to not last because of change. I mean, I work on myself a lot. I could be with someone for twenty years, but as I continue to evolve mentally, intellectually, emotionally, as I move forward to develop myself, if the other person is not living by the same dynamic, if they are not doing the same for themselves, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t last. The way we think, see life, experience life, becomes too different. That’s what makes a connection break.
For me, the people with whom my connections last are people who work on themselves. Even if they are far away, I could only see them once a month, it lasts. These kinds of people don’t judge. They are humble, open-minded, in the sense that they can absorb the ways in which others are different from them.
It’s interesting when a connection with someone teaches me how to be humble, how to have a better sense of myself. It’s stimulating. This is the way I see things. Of course I’m very open-minded, but my intimate circle of friends is very limited. Because a lot of people don’t work on themselves. They don’t have the courage to leave things, or leave ideas, destroy everything they know and their comfort zone… they can’t let go of the way their parents or grandparents see life. You need to have courage to let people down and become free. You have to make sacrifices. You could lose your memories, your country, your family… this is the price I had to pay.
Most of the connections I made here in France are with people who are very open-minded, who are empathetic: they know what exile means, they know what it means to be a refugee… Things are easy with these kinds of people; you don’t have to go on explaining why you’re crying, why you’re not talking anymore, why you’re mad, or sad… You don’t have to justify anything. Because they already know what’s going on. Even if they haven’t experienced something similar themselves.
So really being yourself narrows the circle down. I can only be myself, without any defenses, no justifications, explanations, no sense of threat, with very few people. I’ve been through a lot of trauma. And with this kind of trauma, it is hard to not always be in self-defense mode. Wondering why people are saying things or acting certain ways. Trauma creates another person who has to constantly protect herself, someone who is always reactive. Thinking of what’s going on today in Gaza, and in Palestine more generally, the murder and displacement, the clear will to annihilate Palestinian existence–body, mind, culture, language–it affects me a lot. It’s like someone trying to shut you up, beating you, killing you, raping you, this is what’s happening. And I live all this as a Gazan woman. The connection exists by itself, in my case. My personal case is like the general case of Palestinians. Because Palestinians as people want to be free. They want to have equal rights. They want to liberate themselves from occupation. From the oppressors, from oppression. I did the same thing in my personal life. When something happens to them, it’s happening to me personally too. This is a connection that creates itself without any effort of my own.
CN
I love what you’re saying, Asmaa, and I totally agree with you, especially with the personal being political. This manifests itself in life through you living and being, in yourself and in your life, the way that you would want the world to be. You start with small steps in your own life, with the people around you, by being true to yourself and your convictions. It starts there. This is how you resist and tap into sustenance: standing up for yourself and watching the shedding but also seeing what remains. There’s a sort of continuum–Michelle, you were asking about split identities, and I can only speak for myself, but going back and forth between Montréal and Beirut is so odd, feeling like there are only specific parts of you that can be understood in these spaces, you can’t be understood fully in each of them, which means you live your life on this spectrum of (un)reality… but I think if you look at it as a continuum, not as a pause-resume type of thing, you can have a global vision of all the parts of yourself that are all true at the same time. Then you go back to the tree branches and what leaves can grow on what branches and when… maybe in Beirut they can bloom because it’s sunny and warm… there are different things that sustain you depending on where you are. And different people, too, which is sad because a split existence means they are not always around, but it’s hopeful too because it opens up the possibility of the other.
I know you work on preserving Palestinian documentaries and visual history, but with your first novel, you also did something very important. Unfortunately, heartbreakingly, the novel is now like a map of the past, and Michelle and I wrote this in our afterword, it’s a document for history now… Building on what you said about memory, about how it helps you to connect to yourself and sustain yourself, with these memories in your book, do you think you’d write another? If you were, what would be different? I wonder what your approach would be.
AA
The experience you describe is something common to all people who were colonized, the people whose countries have been destroyed and who therefore have to live in other places. We understand each other. And my next book will not be a book, it’s going to be a movie!
MH
We want to watch that movie, I can’t wait! And I also wanted to ask you Asmaa: What’s it like to read your book in translation? You wrote in Arabic, you think in Arabic, you wrote about Gaza but also about Europe… and thinking of the split, or the continuum, the different ways you live and feel in the different places… how does that relate to reading your book in English? Because it’s different words, and it’s a different language. Caline and I have talked about this a lot, and we can go deeper into how we worked, how we debated and discussed the different words and how we thought about the different ideas, which things worked and which things didn’t… but I thought it would be interesting to hear Asmaa’s perspective on this question because it’s your book, it’s your story, but now it’s in a totally different language.
AA
When something is said in a language other than Arabic, there is automatically some distance between me and what is being expressed. But it’s a beautiful thing for people to be able to read it in multiple languages, for the voice, for personal experience to reach others after–and through–translation. It is very important at this moment in time for Palestinian and specifically Gazan voices to reach the world, in multiple languages too. In all honesty, I have not read my story in any of its translations. I did hear it being read in German, though, and it felt very strange, different from me. As if someone were talking about me. I remember the German translator was having difficulty rendering the local dialect, and I also remember with you two, Caline and Michelle, the difficulties you faced when trying to translate the way in which the Black community is depicted in the novel. In Arabic, the words we use to talk about everyday racism in society are direct and matter-of-fact, and this itself implicitly critiques racism and calls it out. But this is different in English. Through our conversations about the best way to convey these passages in English, I knew you had understood me. I feel comfortable with the translation of my work when the people engaging with it are highly sensitive and delicate, and with you two I really felt that the novel was in safe hands, I sensed it through the questions you would ask me throughout. I can tell that you really captured what I was trying to say and rendered my voice with the utmost credibility and professionalism. You really did it justice.
And I didn’t feel like someone else was talking about me. On the contrary, I felt close to myself, I accepted myself even further through your translation.
CN
Thank you so much for saying that. You can’t imagine how important, and beautiful, it is for us to hear this from you. Translation is usually such lonely work, which is why Michelle and I love to work together so much. We get each other, and the work becomes a lot less lonely.
We sometimes have the same questions and run into the same obstacles, and often our solutions are the same, but we also do pick up on totally different things that end up making the translation a lot richer. The most important thing, though, is for you, the writer, to feel comfortable and safe throughout because this is your work at the end of the day, despite how close and involved we might feel, translation being such an intimate process.
There are words and expressions that are difficult to faithfully render in translation, but I think that this is the crux of our work, the most important part of it, on a personal level at least. The process of thinking through the ways in which we could best convey the message, without any ambiguity or unwanted connotations, allows us as translators to connect with what’s inside us and ultimately makes us more empathetic, more understanding of others and their worlds, simply by virtue of trying to put ourselves in the other’s shoes to deliver their message.
I deeply believe that translation is such expansive work. Thank you for trusting us.
This conversation was held in Arabic, French, and English, between Beirut, Montréal, and Toulouse, in June 2024.
