Memory Pictures #7
Hadeel Abu Johar offers a reductive view, fiercely poetic, of a surreal reality – the relationship of the colonialist with the concept of banality in the face of shame. Salma, the house, the memory, the universe, the reader, the ordinary viewer confronted with the colonialist, shameless to the point of banality. Surrealism is the name of the game here, and reality is ruled by countless questions that are no less surreal.
… and as to whoever said to you, my friend, that this had been a random event – he is a liar. This is not a random occurrence, nor is it a ditty I used to hear in my childhood. It has been like doses of emotion in the face of the routine that is killing you daily. You are seeing me right now as I write to you and my heart dreams about a house made of Salma.
Would Salma become a house for which gold and silver bracelets had been sold?
Dead people, O Salma, sometimes die before they find a name that holds on to the memory like their mothers’ names.
Let it be!
That void, O Salma…
For God’s sake! All I see in the universe is invisible pain, leaking from every nook and cranny. I wanted to lean on it, but it collapsed on top of me!
Some people tire of reading this gloomy literature, and some are embarrassed to go to the movies by themselves, while the Occupier is not ashamed to present all the banalities.
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