Listen, Read, Watch: Resistance
During our much-needed winter break, we published a series called #ListenReadWatch on Instagram, curated by the afikra community. Each featured one album, one book, and one film from somewhere in the Arab world. It was a way to get recommendations of things to listen, read, and watch during the holidays, and to celebrate some of the best creative minds from across the region and times.
Listen: The Intifada, Riad Awwan
Written a week after the First Intifada began in 1987, this album features Riad Awwan and his sisters Hanan, Alia and Nariman performing on home-made instruments. Mahmoud Darwish helped to co-write part of the album. Awwan produced and distributed 3000 physical copies of the album cassette, most of which were confiscated by the Israeli army.
Read: We Are Here to Stay, Tawfiq Zayyad
This collection of poetry by Tawfiq Zayyad — that combines traditional Arabic verse with free-verse — brings together some of his best known poetry about the Nakba, life under military occupation, discrimination, imprisonment and land seizures. Tawfiq Zayyad was a Palestinian poet, member of the Knesset and elected mayor of Nazareth between 1975 and 1994.
Watch: Bonboné, Rakan Mayasi
A Palestinian women visits her husband in an Israeli prison. With conjugal visits banned, the couple devise a creative way to conceive the child they have longed to have. The film sheds light on sperm smuggling, a reality of the Palestinian experience.
