by dina bataineh
a reflection from the Arab ecoversities gathering in Jordan 2019
it’s irrelevant what language i write in, some music can only reach so many ears, and my meaning is movement, an intricate dance of interweaving melody, a delicate utterance of allah.
how can i draw a story out of what was…? transport you to a moment in space where we were captured and held in the net of our multicolored threads, like so many banana leaves soaked and kneaded, drawn taut to be woven, loosened as we leaned in. a tapestry of our cultural horizon, brightly colored by our diversity, juxtaposed by our missing parts, entire strands blocked by barriers and borders, historical, economic, political, social, all.
we were 28 adult and young participants, 2 children, 3 farmhands, 1 dog, 1000 chickens, 3 roosters, a flock of ducks, a flock of sheep, 2 donkeys, birds, lizards, mosquitoes, bees, wasps, stones, a variety of trees, plants, herbs, 1 sun, 1 full moon, stars for the counting, vast skies,
floating clouds, and flowing life in general. representing 9 out of 22 Arab nationalities, with 28 different regional backgrounds that we could account for from Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon, and Jordan (and India, if you account for our youngest participant). presencing all who were not present, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Ivory Coast, Libya, and all those between borders, defined and redefined.
we were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, all relations, people of the land, refugees on the land, refugees from neighboring lands, with a range of the backgrounds and beliefs that grew from our soil. how strange and lovely to witness an elder encounter a young person from the Sabe’ah in Iraq, a faith that he had only heard about from stories… to hear her honey sweet melody hum from her core breaking through the shyness that surrounds her strength; how humbling to witness a voice reverberating the revolutionary streets of Sudan honoring the presence of a brother from Darfur, shouldering the burden for historical wronging; to see them dancing against the flames, Palestine and Sudan, in solidarity and power; to have the many faces of Egypt peel back layers, salt wounds for healing, seed their soil; to hear the story of a song before it rises from soul, weaving divine through the whole; to experience the history of Somalia in one flowing breath, to recognize oneself as a storyteller through the practice; to share the first song and dance of a Yemeni brother, to watch his hands deftly braid a bracelet for the first time, noting the technic came from observing his mother as a child; to honor the disruption of children, voices raised in dissent, providing a compass grounded in joy; to watch that queer soul rise, embraced; to have fear transformed to delight at sunny fur; to feel the warmth of a Syrian mother in the details, a net that holds gently all that is loose; to swim through a pool of song; to taste ginger coffee, all things seasoned with sage, the same again better, the same thing different, from all sugar to no sugar and reverse, to experience hospitality of spirit as well as space, to learn through neighboring, through loving, through interbeing, through mujaawarah.
to feel the poisons inside of us rise to the surface for bleeding, a clean slice, a bucket to hold. To simply acknowledge oneself (and each person) as a source of knowledge and knowing; to value what we each yuhsen (what a person does well, that is beautiful, useful, giving, and respectful); to challenge authority, even of our own making, to spread hierarchy as thin as a horizon; to shed the skin of institutions and acknowledge the casket of development for the empty shell it
to make visible the invisible; to clean house; and to search along many paths, into so many words, so many worlds. we simply lived together, briefly, in the many beautiful contours of our cultural horizon, experiencing its richness, recognizing its potential, and breathing in its natural remedy. we wove beautiful relations in a moment that sustain us even in distance, just like the many beautiful strings that tie me to all of my ecoversities family.
and just like my Zapotec brother once said, anytime we need to find each other, all we need to do is move down and to the left, that’s where we all live.
