Hello, and happy Friday!
This brief correspondence follows a whirlwind reporting trip to Belfast, where I was working on my latest profile for TIME. More on that soon 👀
This was my first trip to Northern Ireland, after which I can now finally say that I’ve been to all four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. (If that doesn’t constitute sufficient grounds to expedite my citizenship application, I’m not sure what will.) For a relatively small capital city, Belfast packs in so much: sobering history, vibrant street art, incredible seafood, and (as expected) some pretty excellent Guinness. The people were lovely and the weather was, briefly, quite nice. I’ll definitely be back.
What I’ve written
Last month, I spoke with Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani and producers Jennifer Lawrence and Malala Yousafzai about their acclaimed documentary Bread & Roses, which offers a rare look into life for Afghan women under the Taliban. It was a fascinating conversation, which you can read in full here.
Afghanistan right now is the only country in the world that bans adolescent girls from completing their education and bans women from work and university education. All the Afghan women and experts are calling out that this is a gender apartheid that the women in Afghanistan are witnessing right now. I think there's nothing more powerful right now than Afghan women and girls sharing their stories in their own voice. And this documentary is that platform for them.
Keep reading: ‘This Is a Film About the Women’s Resistance.’ What Bread & Roses Reveals About the Feminist Fight Against the Taliban
What I’ve read
How Far Trump Would Go • By Eric Cortellessa in TIME
What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
I Am Building an Archive to Prove That Palestine Exists • By Elena Dudum in The Atlantic
The destruction of cultural heritage is not new in the history of war. Perhaps that’s why when my father came across a tattered hardcover titled Village Life in Palestine, a detailed account of life in the Holy Land in the late 1800s, in a used-book store in Cork, Ireland, he immediately purchased it. He knew that books like these were sacred artifacts that hold a truth—a proof of existence outside political narratives. My father’s copy was printed by the London publishing company Longmans, Green, and Co. in 1905. The first few pages of the book contain a library record and a stamp that reads cancelled. Below is another stamp with the date: March 9, 1948. I’m not sure if that date—mere months before the creation of Israel—signifies when it was pulled out of circulation, or the last time it was checked out. But the word cancelled feels purposeful. It feels like another act of erasure, a link between my father’s collection and the growing list of historical sites in Gaza now destroyed. We are losing our history and, with that, the very record of those who came before us.
The Anti-Defamation League Has Abandoned Some of the People It Exists to Protect • Emily Tamkin in Slate
Historically, the ADL has had as its mission not only to protect Jews, but also to protect civil liberties for Jews and all Americans; on its website today, one can still read that the ADL stands up for religious freedom and against discrimination. It is thus theoretically Greenblatt’s job to defend these ostensibly little-read journalists and Professors So and So, too, even if he disagrees with them on Israel. Instead, he has repeatedly used his platform not to defend their right to expression even as he disagrees with their definition of antisemitism, but to undercut them. That isn’t just abandonment of part of the ADL’s mandate, but an abandonment of some of the people who are at risk of antisemitism.
What I’m thinking about
Rolling Stone’s excellent roundup of the 50 best Arabic pop songs of the 21st century. Especially happy to see Mohammed Assaf’s “Dammi Falastini” at a respectable #10.
Until next time,
Yasmeen