Pieces & Places of Hope: Ways for the Middle Eastern Community to Engage in Hope-Making Practices.
“It is in these very moments of despair that we should rely upon the strength and support that hope can engender.”
Written by Isabel Balkhi, MA Social Anthropology and Persian
It’s never a calm or quiet day when you come from a region that is so often embroiled in conflict and unrest. Anxiously checking the news whilst attempting to contact loved ones has unwillingly become a prominent feature of most Middle Easterners’ daily routine. And yet, as I’ve learnt the hard way, it is in these very moments of despair that we should rely upon the strength and support that hope can engender. Now, more than ever, spaces and resources for gathering and healing are crucial to ensuring that our communities remain steadfast in the face of such pain. They offer us a chance to combat the pernicious nature of hopelessness and lead us to a more radical and powerful step of action: hope-making.
One of the primary ways to engage in the practice of hope-making is through intentional dialogue and learning. Luckily, London is one of the best places to do just that. Located on 93 Mortimer Street, just a fifteen-minute walk from SOAS, Ibraaz is one of my favourite places for those wishing to convene and engage in meaningful cultural discourse. Derived from the Arabic word meaning ‘to shine a light on’, Ibraaz frequently hosts a vast and fascinating range of talks, workshops and performances that powerfully draw attention to the often-unheard voices of the global majority. Accompanied by a charming cafe and bookshop, their current library-in-residence also offers itself up to the public, with free access for anyone wishing to read books, journals, recipes and more by Asian and African authors.
The Arab British Centre is an equally notable organisation to check out. A key site for a varied range of cultural and artistic events, the centre’s inspiring ambition to amplify and support voices of the Arab world has resulted in a fantastic selection of courses to get involved in, including ‘Creative Indiscipline: Art, Exile, and Resistance in the Maghreb’ and ‘Stitching Survival: Palestinian Embroidery as Ontological Resistance and Feminist Praxis’. You can also book an appointment to visit the centre’s public borrowing library, currently home to over 2000 titles centred around the histories and stories of the Arab world.
Hope, being the ever-elusive sentiment that it is, however, can also be actively fostered through movies and melodies. Although cliché, there is proof in using media as a tool towards reimagining a better and more hopeful reality. Various studies highlight the particular role that music plays in the formation of our emotional well-being and, in turn, in prompting feelings of hope. As composer Franz Schubert famously wrote in a diary entry over two hundred years ago:
Something as simple as creating a playlist on Spotify of your most inspiring songs can profoundly elucidate feelings of hope. Movies, too, are an effective instrument for healing. Through a multi-sensory approach to storytelling, cinema can be a potent tool of activating ‘areas of the brain associated with emotional processing, reflection, problem-solving, and empathy.’ My recent viewing of ‘It Was Just an Accident’ by Jafar Panahi proved just that. Though inciting strong feelings of indignation, the movie surprisingly left me with a renewed sense of optimism in imagining a reality in which all victims of injustice can one day confront their oppressor.
Movies, melodies and engagement with spaces for gathering and learning can thus all work in unison to aid and enhance the intentional act of hope-making. In a time where hopelessness seems to be on the rise across our beloved region, hope-making has proven itself to be an indispensable practice for all of us who wish to see our communities finally live in peace and prosperity.
