‘Among the Almond Trees’ is a poignant, lyrical, philosophical reflection on life and death, art and politics, love and hope. This excerpt is about a monastery atop a mountain he used to visit as a child.
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#Gaza #Palestine #Journalism #Journalist #Journocide #Devastation #Loss #HumanitarianCrisis #Military #IsraeliOccupation #Media #GazaGenocide #Israel #Bombing #Violence #Emotions #War #Palestinian #Palestine #WarOnGaza #Oppression #IReadOutlook #ReturnToReading
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the year-ender issue titled "We Bear Witness".
00:06 The issue is dedicated to the people of Gaza and what they went through.
00:10 The Inner Monastery by Hossain Barghouti
00:14 Author, scholar and thinker, Hossain Barghouti, diagnosed with lymphoma,
00:20 returns to his childhood countryside near Ramallah in Palestine in 2004 after 30 years in exile.
00:28 Among the almond trees is a poignant, lyrical, philosophical reflection on life and death,
00:34 art and politics, love and hope. This excerpt is about a monastery atop a mountain
00:43 he used to visit as a child. "My mother was an orphan and for a time
00:48 had danced and sung at the festivals of the local fellaheen. She was adopted by an uncle
00:54 called Kadura, a giant of a man, quite robust. He lived with his brother, I believe, in this
01:00 very monastery. They were armed robbers. Whenever a cow or a mare disappeared, everyone said it was
01:08 at the monastery, where no one dared to go. One moonlit night, as he was riding his donkey
01:15 back home, a rogue snake struck Kadura's right foot. He leapt off at once and jumped about
01:23 until the snake withdrew its fangs. By the time he arrived at the monastery, he was exhausted
01:30 and may have died right where I'm standing at this moment. When I was a child, my mother's soul,
01:37 she had seen that rogue snake flying over the moonlit mountains, trilling with joy for having
01:42 killed Kadura. The Kasaba snake had horns like an old bull, she told me, and its hiss made the dry
01:50 shrubs shiver. The notion of the memory of place came to mind as I stood there among the ruins.
01:56 To the west, at the summit of a mountain covered with a forest of pine, cypress and oak, shine the
02:03 bright halogen lights of the settlement that the Israelis call Halamish, and we, the Nabi Saleh
02:10 settlement. Cold floodlights and barbed wire everywhere. The settlement seems to be afloat
02:16 in space, perhaps because of the bright lights, as though it hasn't yet touched land or history.
02:24 What does a settler from Russia or Estonia, who arrived perhaps no longer than a year ago,
02:30 see when he opens his window and gazes at these mountains where I'm now standing? What will he
02:37 see and comprehend of these mountains, floating over the history out of which they have risen?
02:43 He will certainly not see the snake that flies and trills, hear its cry, nor learn the secret
02:49 that urges the one suffering from cancer to go wandering among the ruins at one o'clock in the
02:55 morning. He will not touch history, even if he were a soothsayer. Not my history, anyway, even
03:03 if he were a god. As I stood there among those ruins, I felt there was an enormous difference
03:09 between the two kinds of light, moonlight and the halogen light flooding out of the settlement.
03:15 The latter is focused and oppressive, its glare extreme, reaching even beyond the barbed wire
03:22 that isolates every such settlement from its environment. It is more like an armed vision,
03:28 an occupation by means of vision, and the visual architect of a state in the delirium
03:35 of armed visions lit by halogens even in its sleep. The settlement as a whole seems like a
03:42 book about the soul or about the relationship between light and power. No one has yet studied
03:50 the relation between light and power. For this and more, read the Year-Ender issue of Outlook.