ABC News Exchange is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Time: Jan 6, 2022 03:00 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

Interviewer: Why are you boycotting Sydney Festival?

[redacted]

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Interviewer: Don’t you think this is a lot of fuss over $20,000?

[redacted]

In perspective it’s quite um.. a small amount of money that um does not really affect the bottom line that much and I would think that the Sydney Festival should have turned their minds to how this partnership could be perceived a— [redacted]

Interviewer: Isn’t it a shame for all these artists to be withdrawing from the festival?

[redacted]

[redacted]

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Interviewer: Is there anything else you would like to add?

[redacted]

***

When I am young

I figure no one can argue with facts

Fact: I am the eldest of 8 children

I am translator, cleaner, defender, parentified, responsible, example, scapegoat, still just a kid…

Fact: I chose a law degree because of hopelessness

Not hope.

***

Fact: I visit Lebanon in 2005, before Cronulla.

I have left a world where I am unwanted

behind, I am entering a world in which my grandfather is still alive

I cry on the plane back. I want to stay. I am more

a foreigner in my land of birth. Land of splintered

Paradise, land of lip service

land of foods indulged and accents mocked

***

Fact: I am told I should take off my hijab if I want to find a job in a law firm

Unlike a believer or a lover, I am ugly

because I am faithful

Fact: It has taken me years of trusting to think otherwise.

***

Fact: When I ask to see family

photos, my husband’s grandmother says there are none  

Fact: Israel bombed their home in South Lebanon. The remnants of their memories buried alongside martyrs in unmarked graves

She gestures to the mountains where they ran

To the sisters of the North

Faizeh Hourani carved out her family’s survival

With mighty hands that have raised men, cattle and hell

***

Fact: My grandfather was born on 11 November 1938

Fact: Jedo Dommar Khodr is older than the state of Israel

He told me about a time he was visiting Falasteen

It was a Jewish man that helped him get home when he was stranded

Whether by the cross or the crescent or the star

It has taken me 28 years to understand that the enemy everywhere is the coloniser

And the coloniser is everywhere.

***

When the interviewer asks why we are boycotting the festival, I am armed.

Fact: In 2021 alone, over 300 innocent Palestinians are killed by Israeli forces, one fifth of this number are children

Fact: In 2021 alone, almost 900 Palestinians are forcibly displaced and made homeless

Fact: Human Rights Watch labeled Israel an apartheid state in April 2021, a month before the Sydney festival sought funding from the Israeli Embassy

Fact: Israel commits war crimes and atrocities against the Palestinian people which are well documented by global human rights organisations

Fact: I cannot perceive a world in which the arts is apolitical. When my identity, my body, my existence is politicised, and I create my work, isn’t that work [redacted]?

***

The TV segment goes to air and the reporter begins with, “described as eccentric and experimental, Sydney Festival organisers never imagined this performance could spark such an uproar”…

Fact: I want to [redacted].

Overland’s Friday Features project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.