Sohaib Alzoubi & Ameenah Sawan

Words & Acts 

From victimhood to agency we are facing a long journey.  But it needs to be taken.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians had to live through unimaginable circumstances in the last nine years. No matter how often Syria has been on news front pages, our stories remain mostly untold, hidden behind the numbers and statistics. We are to be the “modern refugee” (Peter Gatrell), passive, voiceless, in need of humanitarian help, until we shall “integrate” into our host society, becoming altogether invisible. But here and today, we present our individuality, in order to eventually build a collective narrative and bring about change. This project collects stories from our memories to help mobilize actions. Memories are triggered by food and by objects from the past. There is a  subject-object relationship that we can use to unravel the threads and to tell what happened and how things make sense. Once that story that we have been keeping for ourselves is told we can connect with each other, build relationships and create new action networks, resorting to the goals and visions of so many Syrians. Our shared stories can remind us that we must turn the prevailing objectifying discourse into a discourse about our agency and that we have to come to terms with the complexity of the problems.Stories and art are the tools that we will use in this project to restore our political projects, to move from depression and a negative state of mind to a collective state of action, and to enhance the advocacy process among all those who are interested in the Syrian cause. While you are listening to our stories, please be aware that we don’t tell them for the purpose of arousing sympathy and sadness. We want ourselves and you to be politically more involved, to know more about Syria. We can at least try to make a change, to get us closer to our visions. Remember, even in the midst of despair, there is always something to be done. 

Photos: CC0, private