Like anyone who has registered with the Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Outreach Coordinator, I received an invitation to attend a writing workshop led by Palestinian author Ibsitam Barakat. Participants would read her memoir about her childhood and then participate in a day-long session with her on February 2.
I wondered what the session might be like. Would pain and bias eclipse open dialog and the ability to use writing as a vehicle for exploration and understanding? I knew the Outreach Coordinator and had admired the way she had coordinated prior programs. I decided as a writer and teacher that I wanted to attend.
Before the session began, I spoke briefly with Ibsitam. I was impressed with her intensity and how hopeful she was. She said she was interested in constructing, in bringing people together, that all of us want and need to grow, and suddenly she drew an ecological parallel, “You’ll never meet a tree that doesn’t want to grow.”
Ibsitam challenged our thoughts on growth at personal, societal, and historic levels, right from the start. “There is no freedom without cutting through fear,” she explained, encouraging us all to break through our fears of others, our exclusionary beliefs (religions, group identities, etc.). Despite a painful childhood scarred by war, flight, and fear (all richly described in her book, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood), she is able to advocate for a policy of “zero attacks,” where blame is not cast in dialog in order to resolve conflicts.
And then we were writing about our most personal feelings, memories, ideas. Various educators in the audience shared–stories of loss, stories of structures of oppression through the personal experience, of, for example, being an African American woman in the US. Ibsitam valued our voices, our experiences, and wove them together with historical experiences, her own, and the histories of peoples–including Arabs and Jews–throughout the milennia.
We wrote several times, and in the writing and the ensuing discussions, the room was a connected class of 25 teacher-writers. We supported each other in our frustrations at not being able to support children as we want to, the mindsplitting prospect of not reaching them on the personal levels and the awful pressure of teaching the mandated curriculum verified through highstakes tests. We listened with empathetic ears, and there was suddenly a community of empathy, respect, and care.
Ibsitam achieved this for two reasons, I believe. First, she is wise. Second, because we believed in the idea she offered us, one of a compassionate power stengthened by virtue of being in community. I look back on my journal notes from that session and carry these memories as glimmers of hope for how a world can live in peace, by sharing our stories and listening, one story at a time.
Information about Ibsitam’s book is available at http://www.amazon.com/Tasting-Sky-Palestinian-Ibtisam-Barakat/dp/0374357331.
To learn more about Ibsitam Barakat’s ideas, scroll down to Ibsitam’s name and watch the interview: http://culturesurfer.com/VideoIndex.htm.
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