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Yalla é um podcast de conversas sobre a Palestina—uma luta contínua contra um sistema colonial que persiste há décadas. É sobre romper o silêncio, desafiar narrativas e manter viva a resistência. Porque é preciso falar sempre, independentemente do que o mundo escolhe ouvir.
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Yalla is a podcast that delves into the Palestinian struggle, examining the enduring resistance against a colonial system that has persisted for decades. Our mission is to challenge dominant narratives, amplify silenced voices, and sustain the spirit of resistance. Speaking out is imperative, regardless of the world's attention.
Today we speak with Reem Khatib.
I have to improve my "kh", right?
A researcher and curator
based in Jerusalem and Bethlehem
and program coordinator
and sound studio manager at Dar Hassir?
- Jacir.
- Okay, sorry.
For art and research.
She has taken part in
Unbuilding Listenings
with Nicolás Jaar,
she coordinates
the Palestine Beats Workshop
with the Berkeley College of Music
and curates Rhythms for Relief
using sound and music for healing
and collective resilience in the face
of colonial oppression.
And...
I would start...
with Dar Jacir...
... because it is not just an art center.
It is a house,
a garden and an archive.
And it has been raided
and damaged
by Israeli forces more than once.
So, it's this thing that, in Palestine,
a house is never
a private structure, in a way.
It carries history with it.
You know, it's proof of the occupation.
So, for us to begin,
what does it mean
to work from a 19th century
Palestinian family home
that the occupation
keeps trying to violate?
Dar Jacir was founded in 2014.
It's an experimental
and interdisciplinary hub,
which takes a participatory approach
and it fosters intergenerational
and cross-cultural exchanges
and encounters.
Originally, it was built in 1880s
for the Jacir family.
So, it's 150 years old.
It stood tall
against the Ottoman Empire,
the British mandate
and the ongoing Israeli occupation.
It's a house that...
We are its guardians.
We care for it as it cares for us.
It's a space where
many exchanges in art and research happen.
And land.
land is a very crucial part
of our programming
because of the green terraces
around the house.
And also the importance of having
this green space open for the community
with all the annexation
and not allowing Palestinians
to enter their land.
Yeah...
It's...
The...
Intimacy is the heart of the project.
Yes, we are open to the community,
but, mainly, the intimacy,
the privacy of the house.
Our main program is a residency program.
We have artists
and researchers in residence,
who spend time
in this house as their home
to develop their projects.
So, we're kind of both closed
for privacy as a house
and open for the community
whenever we have the chance for it.
And how have you been able
or what are you doing
to keep these practices,
to make these...
... practices resist the logic,
the colonial logic of fragmentation?
How do you
keep...
Basically, resisting
the fragmentation that the occupation
tries to...
To force upon it?
Well, I think I can focus here
or I can highlight the words
"intergenerational"
and "interdisciplinary".
Because of what this space offers,
we have farmers, artists,
scholars, grandmothers, grandchildren.
Because I feel you are doing
the opposite of fragmentation.
Exactly. We have everyone all at once.
We share this space together
and the knowledge.
We learn about each other with each other,
from each other, all together.
And that's the core of...
... the anti-fragmentation approach
against the colonial system.
And...
You also explore...
I feel that when people
talk about occupation,
it's very visual.
It's the destruction, its...
We talk about land
and about cultural buildings
and the images that come from Gaza.
But there's also,
in Palestine, specifically, a very...
Sound is...
... a super powerful tool
to talk about the occupation.
For example, the zananas,
but also the sounds of occupation.
When we talk about sound in Palestine,
such as drones, checkpoints,
prayers, voices, silence, all of that,
how do you feel
that the occupation has been
shaping the very way
people listen and...
The sounds of the routine
and of the cities,
and of life in general?
Sonic warfare is
definitely an extension
of colonial control
and power in Palestine.
And the use of sound
to control the soundscape
of Palestine is...
Is very...
It's real and it's there. It exists.
As you said, visually,
it's more known.
Personally,
I focus on my current research
on the sound of checkpoints
and how it...
How the extension
of colonization on checkpoints
also deprives Palestinians
of the natural soundscapes
of their own land.
First of all.
And the direct sound control
and sound weaponization
that happens at the checkpoints.
Can you give examples
of the way it's affecting the natural...
Well, before I give an example,
I can mention
the effect of sound on the human body.
So, listening to sound
is the first thing life begins with
and the last thing it ends with.
And the effect of sound on the body
and the nervous system,
it comes in the body without permission,
even before the brain gives it meaning,
which means it has huge power
on the reaction
and response of human beings.
So, it plays on two factors.
Mainly,
the association of a memory of the past,
in the past,
and the...
Something that might happen in the future.
So, when a Palestinian
is at the checkpoint,
any sound
that is related to the checkpoint sound
is either going
to take them back to a memory
of this sonic colonial violence,
or is going to make them anticipate
violence in both ways.
It takes them away
from the present moment.
For example...
Many people have associated...
At the checkpoint, there's this machine
that's called mu’ata,
which is an iron gate that goes...
I don't know if you've been through it.
And it's a...
The patent of it was made for chickens,
to organize chickens at farms.
The sound of it is very...
It's very much associated with checkpoints
for any Palestinian
anywhere in the world.
And a participant in an interview told me
that when they went to Jordan
for a while,
they had a gym membership,
and going into the gym,
there was a mu’ata.
The first thing that they felt
was they needed to check
whether their ID was with them or not.
It's these simple small things
that we might not be aware of
in our daily life.
So, as I said,
this subtle sound can be
in everyone's daily life twice a day
coming in and out of a checkpoint.
As an artist,
how do you think
we can work with...
Hold the tension of sounds
or of certain situations,
for example, without
a kind of like
aesthetic of the suffering.
How do you navigate in the projects
that you are involved in
that...
That dynamic of...
It's always, even in films
and other kinds of art,
how do you hold the tension
of these situations
and balance it with...
It's not even...
Balance isn't the right word for it,
but I think you get it.
How do you navigate that?
Firstly, the sound of colonial violence,
and the sound of Palestinian daily life,
exist simultaneously.
And you can't mention one
without mentioning the other.
I think the first thing
that we should start doing,
or we should do, is to...
It's not about making peace
with the sound of colonial violence,
it's about refusing to
let it have the last word.
And as artists, researchers,
or activists, or human beings even,
we just should listen.
The keyword is "listen". Yeah.
Listening is a very intimate action,
it lets your guard down
and let's you see the other person.
Not literally, but, you know,
see the other person in front of you
as a human being and connect deeply
with your heart, with your soul,
with your mind, fully.
And...
You get rid of all the prejudices,
the stereotypes, the projections,
and...
It's not simply putting yourself
in someone else's shoes
as much as it is reminding yourself
that we're all part of this life.
We're all part of this cycle.
And, yeah,
that's a very human thing to do.
I feel it's a very huge step
to start with.
You were saying that listening
is very intimate.
And you worked
on Unbuilding Listenings.
It's a workshop built for Palestinians
with little or no experience in music.
Teaching them to record,
layer frequencies and tell stories.
I think that the world
tends to hear Palestine only
through a colonial lens.
You know,
we've been talking about security,
conflict,
strategy and all of that.
And what do you think
that the world needs
to unlearn
in the way it listens to Palestine?
I'd love to talk about the project
of the Unbuilding Listenings Workshop
and the start of it
with the sound studio at Dar Jacir.
So, the sound studio
is also part of the house.
It's a small building
next to the house
that was originally a food shack
or a food storage.
And, in 2019, Nicolás Jaar
came for a residency
and his final project for the community
was to turn this food storage
into a sound studio.
Because of the thick stone,
it has natural isolation.
- Sound isolation.
- That's really cool.
And the...
The whole...
The coziness in the building itself
gives a very nice vibe for anyone
to work either individually
or collectively there.
I experienced it
in so many beautiful different ways.
In 2022, I participated
in the Unbuilding Listenings Workshop
and, if I can summarize my experience,
it was my first experience
with sound directly.
And I remember the whole goal
was Nicolás teaching us
how to, as you said,
unlearn and deconstruct, decolonize
the sounds that we grew up with
in the environment,
in the soundscape,
and then build...
We unbuild and then we build the sounds.
What are the sounds
that you have to unbuild, for example?
Well, it was very colorful
what each one of the participants did.
Everyone learned
so many things about themselves.
We were recording sounds
of the environment
and it was very similar
yet very different,
you know, the experiences.
Most of the participants
had a sense of love in their sounds,
the one they rebuilt or they built
after the unbuilding
of the sonic environment around them.
And the sonic environment
that we were trying to unbuild
was very loud and very layered,
with so many things and most of us
ended up
with very love-filled sounds eventually.
It was the first, for me,
the first time that I experienced
how to deconstruct sounds
and decolonize the sound.
And this is my own journey
about how I ended up
with checkpoint sounds.
And do you feel the difference
even in the bodies,
because you were saying
how the bodies react to sound
and it was amazing what you shared.
I never thought about that.
It's the first kind of channel
of information we have
and also the last experience.
And...
What happens to a body,
especially a young body,
when every time it finds, you know,
rhythm or voice, you know...
The way it experiences sounds,
it's in a context of permanent fear.
Like what...
Even with the participants,
what is the change that happens
to themselves and to the bodies...
That transformation.
I can't but think
of a very beautiful example for this,
which was also a participant
of the interviews
that I conducted for the research
on the perception of sound.
It was a 28-year-old male,
who crossed the checkpoint
few times a year,
maybe years,
he needed a permit and, you know...
Because he lives in the West Bank.
And in the interview, he mentioned
that, in a certain year,
there was this
10-second looping sound piece
at checkpoint 300.
And this is actually very common.
Israelis use looping sounds
or background music,
they would flip a song.
It's very disturbing to think about...
It could start as a funny thing,
but it would be very disturbing
knowing that you're going to
be held for a while in this...
- It's also a form of torture.
- Exactly.
As a side note,
but, in Portugal, one of the tortures
for political prisoners
was just having a water drop.
So, it's something so...
Yeah, there are so many uses
of sound that are
top notch horrible
in torture and violence.
And it's...
The looping sounds,
the music also, as I mentioned,
because, as Palestinians,
we tend to normalize for survival.
So, we become...
It becomes a background sound.
We're not aware of it.
He mentioned that every time
he was stuck at the checkpoint,
or spending time there to cross it,
he would hear this song looping.
And it was a popular pop song
that they chose
for the 10-second piece.
And what happened was
that he described the feeling
in his chest and throat
while he was talking to me.
He put his hand
and said: "I felt it here."
"I felt it stepping on my chest
and taking my breath away."
Then, he continued to say that...
Because it was a popular song
at that time,
whenever he'd hear it
anywhere else other than the checkpoint,
like, for example,
he mentioned his grandmother's house,
he would anticipate
a soldier coming out,
popping out from anywhere
in the room,
armed and...
So, this is an example of another
sound that could seem harmless,
in a way.
But what's beautiful about this?
I know I described it
as a beautiful example,
not for the chest, no.
Because he said that, one time,
he crossed and bumped
into a group of teenagers,
that were going on a trip
with their school or with an organization.
And they were all stuck
at the checkpoint.
Waiting for their turn.
And the teenagers were beatboxing
on the sound piece.
And they were making rap
and coming up with lyrics and stuff
and dancing and clapping and dancing.
They made it a whole fun experience.
They, kind of, you know...
He deconstructed this association
that he had
with this experience at the checkpoint.
Every time he would listen to the song,
or hear it,
he would remember
these teenagers beatboxing over it.
Does that happen
with participants as well?
Sounds that were triggering after...
Like...
Undoing and rebuilding again
and creating new... That's happening.
And in different...
Alongside other ways of
music healing collectively.
- This is one way of doing it.
- Yeah.
You have been working
between Jerusalem
and Bethlehem,
two cities that historically
were bound together,
but now are separated by checkpoints.
The wall, permits and restrictions
of movement and all of that.
What does it mean?
How do you move
and curate and produce
when even the movement
between those two cities
is super controlled and limited?
Personally,
I've been living through...
I've been
coming back and forth from cities
since I was a child,
crossing checkpoints
at least once a day
for 12 years to go to school
and then studying in a different city,
which I had to cross weekly
or bi-weekly.
And now my work
and where I'm based in Jerusalem
and my work in Bethlehem.
Of course, after October 2023,
it's becoming tighter and tighter
in a crazy, rapid way.
And since I started working
in October 2023, at Dar Jacir,
to me, it always felt like...
... any event of any sort
that happens,
successfully or not,
it just happens.
And Dar Jacir, it's a...
A tiny miracle, let's say,
with everything that's happening.
And it is.
It's exhausting to have to plan
around uncertainty as the norm and...
It's something that Palestinians
have to adapt to
every second of the day too.
And if we don't adapt,
then we fall into hopelessness,
a dark place where
no one would want to go
because life goes on
and our whole fight is to live.
So, it's the defeat of the logic
that tries to...
That prevents Palestinians
to be together in one room.
About what you are saying,
I feel that there's always
like Palestinian culture
and
everything you just described,
it's always forced to function
despite everything.
And...
What do you think is lost?
And what do you think you gain?
I don't think gaining is the right word,
but that comes
in a different way
when everything has to be done
despite everything.
What do you think
is lost and you learn to adapt?
It's a lot of things,
but I think
one word wins in this answer:
"time".
Time is lost and time is life.
And it's a lot of energy
to have to chase time
every second of the day.
Personally, I think that
time is an illusion in Palestine
because if you believe other than that,
then you lose your mind
because you can't control anything.
If you try to control your time,
in this context,
you fail miserably.
It's something you have to learn
and relearn every day,
every time you wake up in the morning.
Basically, you're losing your life.
Yeah, and you feel
that the daily routine
is stealing time/life
because just by giving the example
of Bethlehem and Jerusalem,
it's something
that you can see, each city.
But it takes hours,
it can take hours to reach them.
And I remember when we were there,
we went on a service
and I don't even know where we were.
It was off the route. Really off.
And it took two hours or more
not to check a checkpoint,
not to cross a checkpoint.
Because if you rent an Israeli car,
it's different
and you can maybe go to the checkpoint
and we are international and stuff.
But we were with Palestinian friends.
And so...
That's it.
You are always risking
being there more time
if they want to ask whatever.
And just the idea
of being able to see the city
and it just takes a lot of hours
because you never know
if there's flying checkpoints
or whatever.
Or if they closed the checkpoint or...
By the way, the service drivers
are heroes in Palestine.
They always find a way around,
whatever the circumstances.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
I feel like...
I give my life away
whenever I'm in service.
I know I'm going to reach the destination.
I don't know how long it's going to take.
I just know I'm going to reach
the destination.
And with as less checkpoints as possible,
even if they have to take a huge detour.
They go all the way...
Sometimes, we were like:
"I don't know if this is a road,
but I'm going."
They just keep going.
So...
This is more on...
I really wanted to ask you something
in terms of archive,
because there's the destruction
of cultural life
in Palestine, in general.
This includes libraries, archives,
museums, universities, all of that.
And...
And...
And when all of this is burned,
such as archives,
when we say this, we picture books
or we picture documents
or objects or stuff like that.
But there is also,
and I feel that written things,
even if you kind of burn one,
you can bring it to, I don't know...
To save it
for the next generation somehow
or hide it or whatever.
How do you preserve,
when it comes to sound.
For example,
something that was never written down?
Something that is oral,
such as a song or...
Or an everyday sound of a place,
for example.
How do you preserve
some of these things?
There are two ways.
There's using technology
and recording and...
Putting all together
or collecting all the sounds,
or sonic archives,
or sonic pieces that come out
of productions of works
at the Dar Jacir
or the neighborhood or the street.
Yeah,
from my experience with sound studies,
sadly, there's a lack
of sound archives
in general around the world,
but specifically in Arab countries.
I think Palestine, at the moment,
its sound is becoming prioritized
and it's good to see it like that.
There's also oral history, of course,
and preserving the heritage
with storytelling,
with songs, with music
that come through the generations.
Yeah, these are different ways
of sonic archiving.
Of course, it's...
As you said,
anything could be lost.
And...
Personally, there's this sentence
screaming in my head,
which is:
"Everything in this universe
has vibration and vibration is sound."
And if something doesn't have vibration,
it ceases to exist.
The existence of Palestinians itself
is a scream,
it's a shout.
And the act of preserving that
and holding it is an archive.
And I promise not to take any longer,
but I would like to...
And even for the people who usually
listen/see the podcast,
what does it mean to listen to Palestine
in a responsible way?
I mentioned that listening
is to let your guard down
and to open yourself,
to open your heart, your soul,
and your mind to the human being
that's in front of you.
And I think to listen responsibly is to
let
yourself be vulnerable,
to receive the information as it is,
and to not let fear of change take over.
Because
when you listen,
something has to change, for sure.
- You cannot unlisten.
- Exactly.
- Thank you, Reem.
- Thank you.
At Don't Skip Humanity,
we believe in storytelling
as a path for collective liberation.
At Yalla, every voice is a reminder,
a reminder that Palestinians
keep creating, keep resisting,
keep living,
and fighting for their liberation.
So, if you want to hear
more of these stories,
more of these voices,
and you believe
that these stories are a way
for collective liberation,
collective mobilization.
Join us and support us.
Thank you. Shukran.