August 30 is a monthly editorial that features a one-week diary by a different person. The journal selections will include both previously written diary pages as well as new entries written upon invitation for August 30.
Nour Shantout – October 21-29, 2023
10/29
Vienna, Austria
Waking up is becoming harder and harder in the last days. I was in between wakefulness and sleep when I heard that somebody was trying to enter my flat. I tried to guess from the way the keys were turning, it must be my friend Pascale.
I feel as if I am carrying a huge rock on my chest, my head is foggy and it is impossible to make any sound, even as simple as ‘hi’. So, I look for my phone and I see that Pascale has tried to reach me. And I found a sweet message:
There is breakfast in the kitchen if you feel like it
I start my day lately with checking the Instagram accounts of journalists from Gaza, and since I knew that there is an internet blackout since the 27th of October, and Gaza is under complete darkness, looking at my phone this time had a different meaning, I am worried as if I am checking on a family member. There is a strange familiarity and closeness that has formed in the last weeks with journalists on the ground, they have become part of my extended family.
I started with the page of Plestia Alaqad, she was saying that this is the worst point so far, that her job is impossible under such circumstances, she was speaking Arabic this time. I was glad that she is alive. I scrolled to the comment section and I saw that many people are sharing the same feelings with me, they are worried about Motaz:
-E: ‘Has anyone heard from Motaz?’
-M: ‘He is alive just no connection’
I go to Motaz Azaiza ’s page and I see that the last time he posted a story was hours ago, but I trust the people in Plestia’s comment section, I was certain that he is alive. He was smiling in one of the videos while showing his colleague a transparent bag full of dates from his mother. He was talking about how he almost refused to take it, about his mother’s love and care, how glad he is that he actually took it.
I manage to go to the kitchen and I saw that Pascale was not here anymore but they left me heart shaped falafel (that was still warm), tabouleh, hummos, mohamara, and ‘arabic’ bread. I know from the packages that this food has travelled from the other side of the city (this is true community love!). The heaviness is still there but I feel very lucky that I am surrounded by people who see love as a political practice, this feeling of warmth helps me carry the rock sitting on my chest.
Pascale came back a few hours later, they told me that they were taking interviews in the neighbourhood for a university project. I asked them to help me put a big carpet in my room, it was a gift from my friend Lamisse who moved back to Australia this year. I underestimated the size of this carpet; we unrolled it together and it filled most of my 25 square meter room.
I remember that I read in Etel Adnan’s book Sea and Fog that the carpets in her diaspora were a reminder of home, and how they influenced her work. I notice how most of the furniture I own is gifted to me from friends, how making home in the world for me started when I accepted my alienation and the fact that making home is about our connections with people not about the actual geographical spaces we inhabit. The carpets I own travelled and crossed many borders to fill my flat with a familiarity I long for, the heaviness of Lamisse’s carpet contrasts the temporality of my status in this city, it is a ground and an anchor.
I woke up today to a message from P, a picture with bell hooks’ face and a text:
LOVE IS PROFOUNDLY POLITICAL. OUR DEEPEST REVOLUTIONS WILL COME WHEN WE UNDERSTAND THIS TRUTH.
-bell hooks
September 25, 1952- December 15, 2021
Image courtesy Nour Shantout
10/26
Vienna, Austria
I have been trying to take care of myself in the last days, I am drastically failing at it, but my readings on mental health helped me understand that it is all about the small wins. Like being able to leave the flat and face the world, like being able to make lunch, like showing up to a political meeting even two hours late. Sometimes being unapologetically alive is a form of resistance.
My friend and Mentor Jelena sent me a picture that she likes as a reminder to take care of myself. It is of three Yugoslav heroines taken in 1944, their laughs stayed with me, she wrote:
One of them led the Antifascist front of women (at the time of this photo there were almost 2 million of them in the movement fighting against fascism and nazism). One of them later talked about how occasionally disconnecting from everything, enjoying a bit and resting at a time when it seemed impossible to everyone was crucial to victory ❤
Judita Alargić, Mitra Mitrović and Vera Zogović, August 1944
Image courtesy: Museum of the Revolution of Yugoslavia (Museum of Yugoslavia since 2016 after merging).
So, I listened and I insisted that I will make it to my date with V. We chose a queer bar, and I thought it would be good for me to disconnect from the news for a few hours (having in mind that being able to disconnect is a big privilege). I also noticed that I didn’t really go out since I came back from Beirut on the 5th of October.
At the same time, I heard from Joanna that their collective art work is facing censorship at Belvedere 21, for dedicating a poem to ‘Firas from Palestine and Ali from Lebanon’; people they met on the Polish-Belarussian borders. They were planning to publicly take it down during the opening, in an action against censorship, I spread the news among my community but I did not join.
These institutions make me sick on a good day, and now they want to erase the existence of Arabs all together. At the same time, I saw that the vigil for Gaza was banned too. It is clear that Austria won’t let us exist or grief in peace. I am full of rage!
It took me hours to leave my flat, I have been obsessively cleaning these days, I am afraid that soon I won’t find anything to clean anymore. Fred Moten in the background was interrupting the vacuum cleaner, I stopped and wrote what he said on a yellow sticky note:
Stay away from people to whom you have to proof your humanity
I started to panic, how can I live and share public transport and streets, breath the same air and drink the same water with people who support a genocide? With people who actually don’t give a fuck? I should stay away.
My bubble is thick these days, I came to terms with this at the community care event, when the social worker asked us to remove the armor that protects us from all the bullshit outside in the white world. Even though we are in a safe space for BPOC’s, I could not take it off. I started to see how the autumn breeze is gently moving the leaves outside, I was acknowledging the beauty of that space, but I accepted that the armor that make my shoulders heavy has become part of my body.
The idea of the unsafety of the outside world started to occupy a big space in my head. I don’t think that people will physically attack me if I go out with V, but most people in that bar will be just having a normal evening, and this is not ok. As my friend says: ‘nobody in the right mind should be feeling ok at the moment’.
I made it to the bar in the end, and I got a flower. It was my small win for the day.
Image courtesy: Nour Shantout
10/24
Vienna, Austria
I went to most demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine in Vienna since the 7th of October, and I could walk with my bike only once, on Saturday the 21st of October 2023.
Being able to walk/stand with a bike is a measure of how dangerous a demonstration is, and of the possibility of police violence. I mostly park it streets away, in a spot me and the two comrades, who walk with me, agree on (we move in groups of three people, best is to be with two allies who have ‘better’ statuses in Austria than me, in case of arrests).
Something changed on the 21st of October, my wheels were moving next to wheelchairs and strollers. I felt safe regardless of the threats from the police who spoke my mother tongue, I felt safe because of the thousands of people who marched for a free Palestine, regardless of the propaganda and the criminalization of voices in Solidarity with the cause.
My heart was full and I lost my self in the crowds, I could not find my friends for a while, but I did not mind it. I was enjoying being one with the people, who were from very different backgrounds and age groups. Therefore, we turned that day from ‘terrorists’ to ‘terror supporters’ according to the reporters (too many queers to accuse to be Hamas), this is only some days after a white Austrian friend was framed as ‘Trans-Muslim’ (no joke!).
I finally found my friends, and even though my friend P looked pale, I did not ask how shey are doing. There is some kind of an agreement between us, to not ask each other how we are, because we are all not doing ok these days. But P shared with me that shey were stopped by the police, and shey were accused that the drink shey were carrying is a bomb, and the cleaning pump for the camera lens is a hand grenade. The undercover police stopped shem first for taking picture, despite the fact that in Austria it is legal to take pictures and videos of the police, and anybody has the right to witness, so one can film the police during arrests.
P showed me sheir drink, the drink was a mix shey made because shey were unable to eat that day, an organic energy drink that had the colour and the texture of oat milk and P put in a transparent plastic bottle.
I started laughing, and P told me that this is serious, the undercover police was actually frightened by this drink. They even jumped half a meter away when P drank it in front of them to proof that the drink is not a bomb. This is the level of state and media propaganda we are witnessing today in Austria. They forced P to give sheir ID, even though this demonstration was legal, and their accusations are ridiculous.
I have flashbacks of the day I met P, we met in a demonstration in the international women’s day in 2021, I was wearing a kufiya and P told me to be careful because there are many Antideutsche among us. I told shem that I don’t give a fuck, we danced together (and peed in a construction site). A true anarcho-feminist friendship was formed that day, and we have been to many demonstrations together since.
In a bike action we joined against feminicides in 2021, P told me that shey are reading magical feminist books at the moment, and we started imagining how our super powers would free us from police violence, how we could get rid of all of them. I wish our super powers would free Palestine.
all images are courtesy of Nour Shantout
10/21
Vienna, Austria
I remember Deir Yassin, Tantura, Abou Shusha, Lydda, Saliha, Al-Dawayima, Qibya, Kafr Qasim, Khan Yunis. I see Sabra and Shatila, Tal al-Zaatar and more.
I keep remembering and I lose the connection to my body, in the morning after Al-Ahli hospital massacre, whose body am I inhabiting?
These places haunt me, and I feel that I failed them, we all did. I figured out that all the anti-colonial history I learned from my grandfather, who fought all his life against settler colonialism in Palestine was the ground of everything I do. The ground is now shaken, and I lost my compass.
I thought that the counter-narrative we carry would protect us, I thought that we will not watch another genocide while the white supremist world is closing its heart and eyes, to the memory, to the images, to the facts.
My grandmother calls me, she insists, I can’t leave the bed. I finally pick up and I tell her that I cannot stop crying, how many tears are left?
Ongoing grief since Nakba. I feel the cross-generational trauma in every bone, in every breath. Endless mourning.
My grandmother does not know her exact birthday or year. The only thing she is sure about is that she was born in Palestine, and she says that she was around two years old when she and her family were forced to leave her village, Samakh at the south end of Tiberias Lake. They took refuge in Hauran in Syria, then in Irbid Jordan, and she is calling me now from her house in Syria that has a view on Jabal El-Sheikh, the only natural barrier between her and her homeland. I think about the absurdity of all this, this phone call hurts.
She asked me if I am taking care of myself, if I am eating. So, I told her that my friend Salma gifted me Zaatar from Jenin. I told her about my radical care network in a country that considers my body to be a threat, to be violent. She told me that I should eat it, it would give me power.
There is so much healing power in our herbs, in the indigenous plants and trees. No wonder they keep burning our olive trees, that witnessed the settlers’ violence. So, I leave the bed, I put the Zaatar in a jar. And on the 19th of October 2023 I listen to the words of Mariam Bargouthy and I keep heart, I keep fighting for that breath.
Today, I acknowledge that I did not only inherit my ancestors’ traumas, but also their resilience and strength. I get back to my body, and I breathe.
Image courtesy: Nour Shantout
CLOSE DISTANCE 