bureaucracy, all designed by Israel, implemented with Egypt, sold to Europe.
Today, as Europe talks the talk of human rights – universal human rights, presumably, it supports and does deals with and arms the dictators who squeeze their populations so that so many of them hand themselves over to smugglers and traffickers, invest whatever trust they have left in the sea or the desert, in a desper- ate attempt to find a life. They come to Europe, not in retribution but in search of respite. They come to Europe because – despite knowing the role Europe plays in their predicament, they also believe that Europe – democratic, free diverse Europe – will give them a chance to col- lect themselves. A place of safety until they can go home, to rebuild a broken world. In this space, and in the brief moments I had to walk around this neighbourhood today, hearing all the lan- guages being spoken, I got a glimpse – a glimpse that Europe has shown us already – of that safety. We must fight for this world, we must not give up ground that we have already won. This world could be what many humanists across time have urged. Erasmus, in his gentle way, not even foreseeing the urgency of today, writes: "That you are patriotic will be praised by many and easily forgiven by everyone; but in my opinion, it is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all." Yet Europe responds by shutting the would-be migrants out. By paying dictators to shut people in; to shut them off from pos- sibility, to shut them up and to shut down their dreams. What an ugly word “shut” becomes! In Arabic, though, “shut” is a comforting word. On the other side of the Mediterranean “Shut” is the water’s edge. Shut eskendereyya – “The beach of Alexandria” – a song by Fairuz which dappled a whole generation’s teenage image of romance, shut el-bahr the shore of the sea where you stand and look towards the other side, the other shut that you know is there even though you can’t see it. Shut, the location from which, in one story, Europe got her name, and shut el-aman, the shore of safety; the most common use of “shut” as a metaphor in Arabic: to arrive at shut el-aman is to be no longer in danger. Shut el-aman was what Niknam Masoud was trying to get to when he set out – perhaps from Ostend, to swim across the English Channel at the end of August. Mr Masoud was one more migrant, halted in the middle of his migration. He had made himself a life-jacket of empty plastic bottles, and he had a slipper on one foot. He had that constant companion of the poor and the displaced: a plastic bag very carefully sealed and tied with his papers inside it. None of that stopped him drowning in the cold English channel. What are these borders, my friends? What are these bor- ders that money and material can cross but people can’t? And even if you’re not fleeing war or terror, since when has it become wrong to be an “economic migrant”? And on the other side, the other shut of our shared Mediterranean is Gaza. Reflecting fortress Europe back at itself. The same technology: the surveillance, the walls, the barbed wire, the patrols, the drones, the administrative
The deadly opposite of the mezzaterra inflicted upon Gaza, a city that was a fertile common ground. An ancient resort where Egyptians, Sumerians, Phoenicians, Romans sum- mered in ancient times, a mediaeval port city where merchants from Malabar and Europe traded, a city whose people are among the most diverse, the most active, resourceful, produc- tive on earth. Now pushed inch by inch into destitution by Israel and Egypt with Europe and America at their backs. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing can atone for the past. But the real, ongoing power of the past is in how it affects our pre- sent and our future. What we can do is shape a future history into which we consciously and deliberately carry with us only the best of our past. We need to liberate Europe from the confines of received geography, of constructed race, and allow her to expand into the best and richest part of her history. In her history, Europe has never stood alone, wars have waxed and waned, but legit- imate exchange, trade and cultural influence have flowed steadily. Language bears the marks of that, and so do painting and sculpture and music and architecture and fashion and cui- sine. You in the ECF see Culture as a force for positive change – let that change be to recognise and expand the common ground. Think of the common ground as a massive Venn dia- gram. Its basic assumption is that people are not identical. Its other basic assumption is that there will always be areas where humans will overlap: areas of their experience, their ambition, their skill, their passion, their sorrow. Art and culture recog- nise these areas, expand them, and even work to create empa- thy with those outside them too. What is at stake here is saving human life on this planet. I, personally, will not be around to live either the extinction or the salvation. And yet I care. Not just about my grandchild, not just the tug at my heart as I watch the millions of school- children defending their right to exist on this planet. When I let images stream into my mind I see cobbled streets and mel- low buildings and pretty bridges, I see huge old-style cinemas and covered marketplaces – images from cities that I’ve loved, the footprint of humankind forming itself into societies on this earth. The word “ard” means “this specific land”, but also the earth, and the whole planet. In this line by Mahmoud Darwich the ard is Palestine, the earth and the planet.
“On this land on this earth, there is that which deserves to live.”
Thank you.
55 www.indiaparentmagazine.org
October 2019
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