My question for you is, how did you think about what you owe those people knowing you were safe and they were not? I want to answer the question, but let me

talk.

So remind me to come back to the question.

Nima Hassan and Rawan Hussain.

There are about, I think, five to seven pieces that are translations or core writing.

And I attribute them, those pieces to Rawan.

I like the idea.

Yeah.

How do you feel about that sentiment, that statement that Palestine is the defining moral issue of our time? Do you agree? Or does that feel like more of like the theater and the making this a spectacle?

So before I get to that, I'm not saying that Palestine will free itself, but Palestine will not be free unless people who support Palestine understand that Palestinians have to be the leading figures in achieving that or attaining that liberation.

And that requires a lot of honesty that people need to come up to come face to face with.

So the next time and there will be a next time Palestinians rise again.

And I wonder where the those who are in solidarity only when the Palestinians are dropping dead in heaps, where they will be.

You know, so there is so there is that.

I mean, I understand, again, the pragmatism of Palestine is the moral issue of our time and all the stuff.

So tell us about this book, and then I'll have a few follow-up questions here.

It's not a lightness here.

Yeah, I don't even know that it was ever light, the erasure that Palestinians have been enduring, really.

Just that there's also, I think, to your point, the horror of the heaviness of this erasure is that because all those who've looked away for so long... and infantilize this really by their looking away, this kind of patronizing so-called sympathy.

have now met a massacre large enough for them to believe that our erasure is actually happening or has been going on.

So there is kind of an absurdity in this.

I find it very interesting and liberating to go back and read Palestinian writing in the 60s and 70s.

whether it's Kanafani or Darwish or whoever, the language is there.

But as an artist, as somebody who thought it was important to work alongside other Palestinian artists to produce Exhibit G, will you again describe the opportunities and again, the limits of solidarity in artistry?

It's a very unique project.

Thank you for seeing it that way.

I think There are two easy ways to think of this.

One is an extension of the previous book, The Bracketed Ellipses, because I felt in that book, it was a writing that preceded the genocide in the sense of the language itself.

And it was more immediate for that articulation to happen as the genocide began, because as a Palestinian, you had a conscious understanding of the process of your erasure, especially in English.

And I wasn't satisfied with that.

And there was so much more language to be engaged and embrace or, or tussle with.

Could you work with these lines a little bit?

Parts 11, 12 and 13.

In the sacred city, um, which is, yeah, uh, Machu Picchu.

In the sacred city I wanted to visit the Moon Temple and Huayna Picchu.

Time said I had to take the hill running and hopping at a comfortable nonstop pace so that I might make the last bus down to Aguas Calientes.

On my way up I passed a depleted man sitting on a rock.

His half-life was visible in a plastic water bottle.

On my descent he was near the top, a decaying wolf who couldn't blow a house down.

Mm-hmm.