Essays and Features

 

Prison: A Geography of Despotism without a Place in the Nation

 

A picture of a wood stove warms hearts.

 

The gas stove in the picture has an odor.

 

The prisoner never drew a stove on the prison walls or on the screeching iron gates. 

 

The geography of the prison is coldness and solitude.

 

Everything I read about Ghayath Mattar confers an image of a young man who was a model activist in the ongoing Syrian Revolution. Ghayath was a pacifist and advocate of non-violence, states the Madrid-based Syrian exiled author Nawal al-Sibai, according to the website Aklam Hurra (Free Pens). She points out that Mattar’s legacy is what can be called a political will: “Even if they kill us all we should not resort to weapons to defend ourselves.”

 

To the young Syrian filmmaker

 

I do not like parallel montage — this is just how god of cinema designed me

And who can argue with the gods?

But I do not like the parallel montage...for another reason:

While I was speaking at the other end of the world

(at the Museum of Modern Art in New York)

 

One might wonder about the title of this article at a time when Syria is paying a heavy human cost on a daily basis. The environment of killing created by the Assad regime is producing a culture of death, as many of us have witnessed via graphic images on satellite TV, Facebook and YouTube, video which amounts to some sort of terrible Reality Television.