We should counter hate with poetry and culture

If many around the world have forgotten or ignored the humanity of the people in the Middle East, many still are refusing to forget, writes Shata Almutawa

A general view of the Mutanabbi Street market in central Baghdad, long a meeting place for book lovers (AFP PHOTO / SABAH ARAR)

Following the Paris terrorist attacks, the colours of the French flag began to appear on American computer and phone screens, on the icons of apps and the faces of friends on Facebook.

At the same time in America, those with connections to the Middle East lamented the absence of sympathy and solidarity with the people of Lebanon, who were targeted only one day earlier, and the people of Syria, Palestine and Iraq, who suffer every day. The disparity is stark, undeniable, and expressive.

For many Muslims and Arabs, this disparity means what many other western actions have meant: Arab and Muslim lives are cheaper than western, Christian lives.

At moments like this I am grateful to have found the Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project.

Started by Beau Beausoleil after the March 5, 2007 bombing of the booksellers’ street in Baghdad, it brought together artists and poets to stand in solidarity with the people of Iraq, celebrating and remembering Iraq’s history with the word, from the cuneiform epic of Gilgamish to the beautiful poetry of such figures as Fadhil Al Azzawi and Amal Al Jubouri.

Since that bombing, artists and poets in the United States and abroad have been creating original work and sharing it with audiences familiar and unfamiliar with the events in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. For the ninth time, poets and artists will commemorate the 2007 bombing of Al Mutanabbi Street. They will congregate in the United States capital for three months of events celebrating Arabic sounds, voices, imagery and thought from January through March 2016.

Galleries, universities, and libraries in and around Washington, DC, will display prints made by people from around the world, Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim, young and not so young, intimately familiar and new to the heritage and traditions of Al Mutanabbi, the namesake of both the street and the project.

Americans have much to distract them from the violent realities happening elsewhere, but these Americans are working tirelessly on Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, because they do not see the bombing of a street in Baghdad as separate from their own people falling victim to injustices in their own cities and streets. Death counts are harrowing and often ignored, but in Iraq and in America racism and inequality are only sometimes veiled, often manifest.

And yet this project is not about the politics of injustice; it is about the women and men who prevail, thinking, dreaming, writing and reading despite the blood and bombs. It is about life, whether in war or in peace – its everyday moments, and its extraordinary moments. It is about a world of imagination, playful and serious at once. When Dunya Mikhail writes:

He watches TV

while she holds a novel.

On the novel’s cover

there’s a man watching TV

and a woman holding a novel.

We recognise the scene, whether we are Arab or American, or both. And that is the point of the project.

It shows that the people of Iraq are familiar to people in America, they love and write and read and sing, even though the circumstances of their lives are now unfamiliar. Ours is one of many projects that seek to create bridges.

If many around the world have forgotten or ignored the humanity of the people in the Middle East, many still are refusing to forget.

Shatha Almutawa is an Emirati working with Split This Rock, a non-profit in Washington, DC, calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a network of socially engaged poets