Ahmed Riaz Mohamed
It was in the latter half of 2009. We were in the midst of the advanced stages of organising an international conference at UCT focusing on important issues of reconciliation in the aftermath of mass trauma in societies emerging from protracted periods of conflict. We had set up the website, arranged for keynote speakers, accepted submissions and were on track with the planning and preparing for delegate registrations to begin online.
I remember it was a clear morning in Cape Town when I received an e-mail that took me aback and ultimately forced me to reflect on how the world so easily forgets or deafens itself to the plight of victims of socio-political injustice. How even at a conference on reconciliation we (almost) perpetuated the silencing of victims and hence their victimhood and “invisibilisation”.
The e-mail received was from a woman – let us call her Mira, a pseudonym – who was sending me an e-mail because she was planning to attend the conference in December of 2009. She was attempting to register for the conference but could not do so successfully online.
She continued, explaining that she was able to fill in all the information but that when she clicked on the drop-down menu to select a country/nationality she could not continue. She could not continue because – and this I remember verbatim – “I cannot in good conscience lay claim to Israel as my home”. Inasmuch as she lived – technically-speaking – in Israel (in Jerusalem), she was Palestinian and as such was denied a nationality. “Palestine” or “Palestinian Territories” was not an option in our drop-down menu. We too – albeit inadvertently – were denying her a nationality! How could we expect Mira to accept Israel as her country of choice given the politics of the region that denies the fact that she exists as an agentic and legitimate human being with rights and privileges such as the ones we now enjoy in South Africa.
Immediately and without further thought or hesitation I contacted our webmaster and insisted we add “Palestine” to our list of countries. Mira was soon able to register for, and attend, the conference in December 2009. She would not have done so otherwise.
By December that year I had all but forgotten about the incident with the drop-down menu. Given that there would be a large contingent of attendees at the conference I had not even considered the possibility of actually meeting with Mira. It is not something I had planned to do or something I thought would happen.
Early on in the conference proceedings, however, I was sought out by a woman; she was short in stature with black hair just above her shoulders, was striking, mature, wore spectacles and spoke English with a Middle Eastern accent. I assumed she was a delegate who wanted some information so I turned towards her, smiled warmly and offered my assistance. She smiled back with an equal warmth that struck me as grateful. I found this strange – what could she possibly be grateful to me for? I have never seen this person in my life before – but shrugged it off and waited for her to make her enquiries.
She then introduced herself as Mira and moved forward to embrace me and thank me with such veracity that I was left speechless, and deeply, deeply humbled. People in our immediate vicinity observed us with curiosity and anyone who walked by received a little context from Mira (“Do you know what this man did for me?”).
It became clear to me that what to me was an insignificant act, was something very much more to Mira as a Palestinian. I didn’t just arrange for a drop-down menu to be changed.
I recognised and acknowledged her pain, and the injustice she and her people have endured. I identified her as a human being, as someone worthy of an identity and worthy of a nationality that has been painfully denied them. I gave her the platform for voice and to shed the shackles of victimhood and reclaim her sense of legitimacy that has been shattered across the entire Palestinian Territories and has been cast into the Mediterranean Sea to be forgotten.
The level of Mira’s gratitude to me was profound and touched me so deeply I was unable to contain my emotions later that day when I reflected on the encounter. I imagined the extent to which she and other Palestinians in the region are so deligitimised – not just as citizens of a country, but as human beings – that the slightest gesture of solidarity and recognition of this loss (and it is most certainly experienced as a loss) was met with such appreciation. I didn’t feel as though I deserved the honour. I was simply doing what I thought was the right thing to do. I was rectifying an error. It just made sense to me to have Palestine added as a country on our list.
Yet, what this meant to Mira (and by, extension, to other Palestinians) was so, so much more. What it represented was I suppose in some ways a protest; it was a stand against socio-political injustice on my part – albeit unintentionally. It was a moment of activism. As small and seemingly insignificant as it may have been, objectively, it was the furthest thing from small or insignificant to Mira.
Listening to Mira and her travelling companion’s narratives of loss and pain – although heartbreaking – was a privilege. Odd as that may sound, it was a key moment of dialogue that allowed for not the expression of pain for the sake of it, but for the recognition of how that pain resonates with us all on a level of humanness. And how the smallest of actions can mean the world.
Yes, my “good deed” did nothing to change anything happening in Gaza and the West Bank. It improved nothing for Palestinians living in the region be it in the line of fire or those living some way away in Jerusalem such as Mira and her family. But what it did do was allow for what psychoanalyst, Jessica Benjamin, refers to as “mutual recognition”. We developed a relationship through this process that changed us both. It was a transformative moment that embodied Nelson Mandela’s appeal to the South African people following the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993: “This is a watershed moment for all of us. Our decisions and actions will determine whether we use our pain, our grief, and our outrage to move forward to what is the only lasting solution…”
It didn’t matter that I was South African, and that Mira was Palestinian, and neither did religion have any bearing in the space between us. What we saw in one another and what we identified with was the humanity – the pain, the grief, the outrage as human emotions that exist regardless of anything other than the fact that we are human beings.
Let us not underestimate the power of deceptively small, seemingly simple gestures, the significance they may hold and the resonances they can inspire for meaningful transformation.
l Mohamed is a clinical psychologist in the therapeutic services unit at the Centre for Psychological Services and Career Development at the University of Johannesburg.