what does it mean for your blood to sing without borders?
By: Fatima-Zohra Alaoui
Tags: Collective Memory, Palestinian Film Festival, Documentary Review, Palestine, Humanity

Impression on “You Come From Far Away” by Amal Ramsis

(Trailer: https://vimeo.com/277536600)

It only took a few seconds into the documentary for my heart to get warm and for my even warmer tears to flood my face, apprehending the unwinding of the story and that of a different meaning of the words identity, family, feeling of belonging…

I could not stop the flow, but of course I did not want to. It always feels like I am connected to those people, although I do not know them… like I could be them and they could be me, except we are not.

After a while, I started crying for and from his heart, as he was sitting next to me. This heart I cherish and value so much more than I could tell, this heart I have been diving into, where streams, flows, currents, floods, tides, and even droughts all have the same meaning.

I know he understands this feeling of belonging as being abnormal and somewhat surreal, just like Said explained in the movie. They have yearned for it as much as they have given up on it. I do not know how hurt he is and how much sorrow found a home in his blood, but I get to see glimpses of it, and those already feel bigger than I was ever told. I can see how his tears are not his, and his pain is stronger than what I was taught a human heart can take, because his tears, his pain, his memories, his blood, his hopes, and his struggles are theirs. they are part of a joint heart which only exists within their collective memory.

Now I can see how his tears are his, but not his only.

Dispossession: action of depriving someone of land, property, or other possessions.

It has become a conflict of interest between two groups of people, rather than the domination and dispossession of one people by another, rather than the dehumanization of these people, the destruction of their property and their soul, rather than the attempted dissolution of any kind of dignity, not to mention the theft and appropriation of a legitimate feeling of belonging, of humanity. We try to make sense of it pragmatically and seek a solution which would bring some kind of justice and life, rather than lessen the injustice and sorrow.

These mountains you have been carrying, you were only supposed to climb.

This mountain he has been carrying, they have been carrying together… that is their home. That is their feeling of belonging, and it is not a consoling one. They are carrying it because they are not allowed to climb it, like the rest of us. It is a home that does not exist in this world. Home is indeed a feeling, but it should also come with a residual space. Until evidence of the contrary, it starts from a residual space.

And we will always stand on our feet, never on our knees, he said to me. The only thing we have kept is our dignity, and yes it does matter.

I don’t know anyone who is more human than him, and I never understood why. I like to believe that with time and care, things are making more sense to me… he talks about being alone and feeling alone… betrayal and treason… all these words and feelings I feel less deeply and barely understand the meaning of outside of the dictionary. When the whole world has stopped seeing them as humans, they become the only living ones. “be existence yourself”, Dawlat commands the camera.

How is she the only one who forgives her parents and the world for what has happened to her? when no one else has?

Indignation: sentiment de colère que soulève une action qui heurte la conscience morale, le sentiment de la justice.

Reconstructing and restoring the threatened collective memory, identity and history of a whole nation has to be done through the stories of each one of them, single personal memories, and must serve connect the dots. Amal decided not to show any separation between individual and collective memory because there is none, she says.

The world I was brought into claims to be relatively close to this reality, which we tend to refer to as a cause. Most often, it is described as history, and quickly analyzed as a geopolitical system, with all its powers, matters, interests, actors… a geographic fragmentation and a demographic isolation… it is barely and rarely depicted as a history of people, human lives, minds, thoughts, feelings, and their tragic stories.

They whose blood has crossed oceans and mountains, they whose blood has come from far away, they whose blood has been buried under the ground as numbers, they who speak with their blood, cry with their blood, scream for help in their blood…

what does it mean for them to bleed without borders?