A couple weeks ago the Times ran a good story about the Gaza blockade with the byline of Michael Slackman and Ethan Bronner; and you will see two very different bylines at the bottom of the story, Mona El-Naggar and Fares Akram.
The night after the story ran, Felice Gelman, who knows Akram, and knows him to be a fine reporter, spoke at a Manhattan fundraiser and said, "There is no reason in the world that the byline doesn’t say Fares Akram from Gaza except that the New York Times wants to shape the narrative about Gaza."
An essential part of breaking the siege on Gaza, Gelman went on, is allowing Palestinians to tell us the Gaza story, and then she introduced a young Gazan named Fida Qishta, and her film about the attack on Gaza of 08-09 called "Where Should the Birds Fly."
The fundraiser was at a Greenwich Village apartment, and of course the issue is getting traction on the left, and so many people showed up to meet Fida Qishta that she had to show her trailer three times, and give a little speech three times too.
Qishta is charming. She told us that a couple of years ago she was asked by a friend to videotape weddings and she told him that she didn’t know how to operate a camera and he said it was easy, she just had to hit this button to record. "Yes but how do I turn it off?" she said. Hit the same button. Qishta found that she preferred talking to people on camera rather than recording pomp and ceremony, and soon she was comfortable with the camera. When the Gaza conflict happened, she couldn’t restrain herself, she ran out into the streets of Gaza City with her camera. Her brother tried to stop her once, and she went out the window.
"I felt protected by the camera," she said.
You can see the trailer for the film here, at Deep Dish. The two main characters of the piece are Qishta herself, and Mona, 11, a little girl who with incredible calm describes the destruction of her family. "They took the most precious beloved of my heart," she says in her even voice, at 3:40 or so, and you can see the drawings she makes of her entire family, including uncles and cousins. Purely wrenching.
"I lost my mother, my father, my freedom and the life I had…. I know that people don’t appreciate the blessings they have until they lose them…" And now she wants to be a doctor. Again I am reminded of John Ging’s statement to my group a year ago, The Palestinians are a deeply-civilized people. But so few Americans know this.
Deep Dish production company aims to make a feature film of Qishta’s footage. But they need money. Here’s the link to help out the production.
Someone asked Qishta how she had managed to get into the U.S. She told us a touching story about a consular official who obviously pitied her, and then she interrupted her own story.
"I was lucky…. But I must be honest as well."
