week 3: Identities

3rd week. And summer hitting. And me moving again. Great! Hello all.

I was told I sound Texan when I write 'you all'- Oh well, split in between identities. Not new, not original. But true. As if all along the centuries, identity-pride, definition and escape have been overwhelmingly recurrent themes. Something we love and battle against -a stormy relationship with the border of our humanit(ies).

When I worked in England, they thought I was French and teased me with the fact that the French soccer team lost to the English one -which they were very intense and fervent about. In France though, they said 'oh, our cousin, come here my friend!!!'

Elsewhere, people often ask me if I'm from Israel... But certainly, the most surprizing intro/self-description I ever experienced was in a train in India. A guy sat beside me and he said 'Hi! My name is blablabla, are you catholic?'

'Catholic?!' I repeated, laughing.

'Yes, I just thought you looked so catholic'

Identities.

So I just do the same. I go in a shop. I incircle people with their origins. I go in a shop and ask the wonderfully smiling shop keeper 'are you Iraqi'?
'Yes I am', he says smiling.
' Ok, I'm on this project... A theatre play. About the war in Iraq. I would like to meet up with some Iraqis. We have to bring people together, would you like to speak with me?'

Then he stops smiling and becomes very serious. 'sorry, I can't help you. Next!'

There might be many valuable reasons. But I'm left in a void of unanswered wonders.

Why don't you want to speak?

So I read. I read one of the most feminist books I have ever read (after Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own'). It's a recent book from Nadje Al-Ali & Nicola Pratt ' What kind of Liberation? Women and the occupation of Iraq'. There is an anthropological flavour to it -makes it very interesting to me. Personal. I usually do not focus my universal quests on women. Maybe I should. Maybe it's an axis worth taking.

There are a lot of women working on Truth and Treason. Here is one: