Chicago poet, Palestinian-American artists use radio to be in solidarity with Gaza
CHICAGO (CBS) – At midnight, just under 50 miles from the ongoing bombardment in Gaza, the words of a Chicago poet, along with the work of other Palestinian-Americans and artists in solidarity, played on a radio station in Bethlehem.
"Every day has felt like a different kind of trauma response," read George Abraham, a Chicagoan and Palestinian American writer and executive editor of the journal Mizna.
Abraham's words are part of "Correspondences as a Shelter, an Interruption," an hour-long composition of songs, verbal correspondences, field recordings, and poems by Palestinian-American artists or artists in solidarity with Palestine.
Omar Ahmad, a Palestinian composer, sound artist, and musician based in New York, arranged the mix.
"At the same time, there is another gravity forcing me into a different present: the need to center increasingly urgent Gazan demands for a cease-fire in every space I enter, fueled by a need to remain as present as possible for my people," Abraham's correspondence read.
Ahmad's mix first aired as a guest mix on Mark Trecka's show, "Correspondences as Shelter," on Radio Alhara, an online radio station based in Bethlehem. A group of friends from the West Bank and Jordan created Radio Alhara in 2020 as an outlet to raise awareness about civil and human rights issues facing Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
Over the past six months, the war on Gaza has been a part of daily headlines. Ahmad said this mix allowed space for the community to take back and craft their own narrative together. "I've rarely seen an opportunity for Palestinians to explore a deeper, more three-dimensional set of emotions, feelings, experiences, and frankly, tenderness as a concept applied to the Arab community," he said.
Ahmad met Abraham and many other artists featured on the mix at a solidarity event at the People's Forum in New York.
As the final performer at that event, Ahmad ended the night at the People's Forum with a cover of the old Islamic Era "Tala 'al-Badru 'Alayna", a song about exile and refuge. "I felt really held by everybody in attendance," he said.
Ahmad's family fled from the village of Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem during what lead up to the Six-Day War. In 1967, in those six days, Israel doubled its control of land and gained military occupation in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and several other areas.
The question that inspired "Correspondences as a Shelter, an Interruption" began at the event at the People's Forum: how do you contend with healing when the wound gets reopened every day?
Then it all fell into place.
"I was just the vessel," Ahmad said.
Although it happened quickly, no part of the mix felt rushed. Ahmad said that each piece was picked in context with what is happening right now.
Some of the music that Ahmad used for this mix was from Purple Tape Pedigree, an artist collective and independent record label based in New York City.
"The density of every word is really felt so heavily. I mean, not that many words are used, but so many ideas and concepts are conveyed," he said. "I could literally spend weeks reflecting on each of them.
The two specifically reflected on the poem "Sun Gets Enemy" by teacher, poet, and filmmaker Ladan Osman, whom Ahmad met at The People's Forum. "[It] shook me to my core when I first heard it, literally going to war with the sun, because bombs are not enough," he said.
The poem was an excerpt from Osman's correspondence with Palestinian-American poet and physician Fady Joudah.
"Darkness is treated as evil and those who have a relationship to the sun are generally darker, yet the sun represents light," Ahmad said. "It evokes so much meaning and so much intensity," he said.
Writer and poet Farah Barqawi's verbal correspondence is featured at the start of the mix.
She shared the words of her mother, who had spent two hours on a rooftop to catch the phone signal to give her a call.
Her mother was upset she woke her up, but Barqawi was upset there was a seven-hour time difference between her and her family.
"Everything is well in the new meaning of well, not starving, with relatively less intensive bombing," she read. Her cousins spend the days trying to look for food and water in Gaza.
"They walked back empty-handed, but they have really matured, mashallah [God has willed it]," her mother said to her.
"They're still trying to look on the bright side," Ahmad said.
The mix oscillates between calm and peace and tumult and difficulty.
"I wanted all of it to be there. I'm tired of singular sounds and ideas of what being an Arab is, what suffering sounds like, what community sounds like," he said.
Abraham's verbal correspondence is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to journalist Sarah Aziza, who is also featured in the mix.
What began as a written exchange between the two in September 2023 about Abraham's position as executive editor at Mizna was derailed after October 7. The letters that discussed the topic of the future of the Palestinian community became a months-long catalog of Palestinian grief, they said.
Even as writers, they had difficulty sometimes finding the right words to capture the weight of suffering and grief.
"I've really had to let language be reduced to rubble itself," they said. "Witnessing this escalating genocide in Gaza, we can do this alone and just be sad alone, or we can collectivize," Abraham said.
"The idea of correspondence as shelter was apt. Because a lot of us are just like, how the heck do we write? How do we just continue living," Abraham said.
"Correspondences as Shelter, an Interruption" also interweaves "sounds from the ongoing genocide," Ahmad said, as well as field recordings from when he last visited Palestine and from his great-grandmother's funeral, or janazah, in New York.
His great-grandmother had always dreamed of returning to Palestine and being buried there.
"The Imam is very emphatically talking about what it means to be a community and what it means to die, and that death is not the end," he said. "There was a certain power in death not being the end that I think has been really evident in what we're hearing out of Gaza," Ahmad said.
Although his great-grandmother was physically never able to return to her homeland, the words from her funeral played on in Palestine through this mix.
"Being able to return…revel in the closeness…is a bizarre relief," Ahmad said about having his mix air on Radio Alhara.
Abraham is the only person in his immediate family that was able to return to Palestine, because of their university's program.
"It's small now, but it's a material process that begins with letting us literally reinsert a Palestinian voice back into the homeland," they said. "Radio Alhara has been doing really great work about bridging and bringing in diaspora Palestinians back," they said.
"Palestinians have been robbed of their ability to maintain a close connection to modern art and are in the present day, you know, they've been relegated to, you know, art that was produced in the past," Ahmad said.
A majority of all infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed: hospitals, homes, roads, grocery stores, and all schools, equating to 26 million tons of rubble.
The Central Archives of Gaza, as well as dozens of libraries, bookstores, and museums, have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military since October 7. There has been a long history of the fight to preserve and conserve old Palestinian art, he said, but there also needs to be a space for modern art and expression.
Ahmad and Abraham said that is where Radio Alhara steps in. "To have people listen to art and go onto a website to listen to Palestinian radio to hear the newest art feels like a really freeing thing," Ahmad said.
"To be part of the annals of Palestinian contemporary art shared through a unique medium at the forefront of what radio could even become for the future is really, really cool," he said.
Ahmad will soon host his own show on Radio Alhara and plans to travel and perform "Correspondence as Shelter, an Interruption" live.
"Correspondences as Shelter, an Interruption" is now available on SoundCloud.