Some Old School: Remembering the Nakba Everywhere

Cliches in The Hurt Locker

Maryam Ismail (AT HOME) / 30 March 2010

The film The Hurt Locker is an infomercial for the war on terror, reiterating the one-sided portrayal of US soldiers as self-sacrificing and hardworking. Iraqis in the film however are corrupt, sneaky, and cowardly. Conversely, this film made by a woman, had only one woman in it whose lines don’t amount to a single paragraph.

The voices of the women, especially those affected by the war are hard to find. It’s time to create an oral history of victims of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, Palestine, Lebanon. In this project there can be no wailing, chest pounding, grovelling, moaning or bizarre conspiracy theories.  Just voices of women, girls, and mothers-whose voices have been locked up in the sort of media ventriloquism of aid workers, documentary makers, UN officials, and powerless 
peace activists.

The traditional media outlets of AP, UPI, Reuters, as well as other global players have split the discourse into two sides colouring one hero and the other terrorist and for the most part, both are male. To spice up this black and white canvas, there are stories of Iraqi women and girls being forced into prostitution or unwanted refugees who’ve been rejected as asylum seekers. But what about those who remain behind? How do they cope with the battalions of missionaries, social reformers, and cultural opportunists coming to ‘save them’? 

I found a warm fuzzy story about happy refugees who’ve made peace with their predicament and the suffering on the web site, Teacherstv. This video about Iraqi refugee children in Syria, was reminiscent of the 18^th century polemics of the happy slave, when no one is happy. But it’s human nature to take the worst situation and do the best you can with it. In my search for videos about Iraqi moms, I found a horrendous video from Parents TV promoting a children organisation called Campfire USA. Armed with a scheme called ‘Operation Iraqi children’, Campfire USA organised a school supplies drive for Iraqi children. readmore