like grief stretched out over time, watching again all the places and structures disintegrate from afar. the places of respite, of calming chants and thick musty myrrh, all torn through, as pools of blood spill out onto tiles. and clear plastic bags of flesh, scooped up from the floor, red globules on the… Read More Alexandria 04.17
at first it seemed distant in the aerial photos of newspaper spreads, then slowed footage showed the detonation tearing through buildings and bodies, familiar shapes splintered. and through the shaky recording you could discern how flesh twists and buckles under the weight; parts embedded in thighs, arms, some splitting into fine dust caking the hair,… Read More Tahrir
soaring, but the vibrations seem dull as you’re half-sleep. the head turns automatically: you never know if it’ll be this time or—. it happened last week in a nearby house: shrapnel propelled through, and the guts spilled out, the skin had split, like spooning out seeds. then they lay as if lightly and quietly arranged;… Read More Sonic Boom (Gaza)
the fold of the napkin, deft and silent, except for the slow clicking of the jawbone; how a place can become both barren and incendiary. scrolling down screens suggesting: receive, see with your lungs, not with your instant defence to fix and hold still— yet the squeak of rubber in the car door… Read More Unheimlich
—is the main language of Asfouriyeh. standing in the front grounds, extending before and behind them, falling into empty swathes. the background is bleached, in the misted haze of a cataract burn, the trees veined and made of white-hot metal. a rotund tarboosh, rifles slung over backs, and miniature wheelbarrows dotted throughout the groves;… Read More El Asfouriyeh (1898)
the warping of time, but also the familiar skidding, delay, then the strike— reminders of sequences watched over again on grainy VHS tapes, the mechanical whirring until —held— like time stilled. before the impact, all off-screen, just as moving sheets of sound through air, displacing the mist hanging over a motorway in France. though we came… Read More Crash (Lesvos)
I thought because we were wearing the same school uniform this meant we had an equal power dynamic. Though in sixth form you are able to wear your own shirts underneath the blazer, and mine would have been much smaller on my tiny 12 year old body. I still have the same body, boyish and… Read More I Like A Man in Uniform (Pt.1)
He slid across into the chair, shifting his weight, perpetually unsettled, until he leant forward to watch. A few moments were spent in feigned concentration, eyes glassy to the pixels unfolding in front of him, until he started speaking: ‘So, how is this… relevant?’ There’d been explosions in the neighbourhoods of Beirut where my family… Read More Relevant
Inherited wounds, mediated distress. A vague wash of associations: mutable, a vessel; intonations of instruction and authority, speaking the script gently but strongly; occasionally, breaking to reveal slight vulnerability. A restriction suggesting modesty, a restraint, suggesting things left unsaid. Excess sounds absorbed by the grey, jagged foam. The crew shuffling out-of-frame of the interpreter in… Read More Soft to Shrapnel
I encounter so many instances of Orientalism everyday on different scales, from interpersonal conversations, media representations and wider geopolitical discourses. Through this I am keenly aware of the differences between how my family and me are treated within this based on our racial appearance. My brothers and I have the same genetic makeup but different outward… Read More EVERYDAY ORIENTALISM II
Shoyle 