Call for submissions, April 2005

A PROJECT ABOUT EVERYDAY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION IN IRAQ

DO YOU HAVE LETTERS, DIARIES, EMAILS AND OTHER PERSONAL ACCOUNTS FROM IRAQ THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE?

We are Act Together, a group of Iraqi and non-Iraqi women based in London. We have campaigned against sanctions, the war and the occupation of Iraq. We were also strongly opposed to the former regime and our support has always been for the people of Iraq. You can find out more about us on our website: www.acttogether.org

One of our main activities is to try to illuminate the experience of ordinary Iraqis to a non-Iraqi public, and, in particular, to people in Britain. In March 2003, we mounted an exhibition in London called ‘Our Life in Pieces – Objects and Stories from Iraqis in Exile’ (there is information about this on the website). Many who came were moved and enlightened - for some the exhibition was the first time they were allowed an insight into the lives of Iraqi people.

We are now appealing for personal letters and testimonies from occupied Iraq. Do you have personal accounts, in any form, that describe what everyday life has been like in Iraq during the last two years? They could be letters, emails, or notes of telephone conversations with relatives or friends in Iraq, or they could be accounts of your own experiences of what it has been like to live there recently. They can cover any aspect of life – from the smallest detail to the most significant impacts. It is not important that they reflect any particular political position – we are more interested in creating understanding of what ‘ordinary’ life is like.

Once we have collected the material together, we will select about an hour’s worth to be translated into English and read out in a public performance. Some of us in Act Together participated in a similar event called ‘Palestine Verbatim’, held in Trafalgar Square in the wake of the Israeli re-occupation and invasion of the Palestinian territories in 2002. Here is a comment about that event:

‘One by one the readers, many of whom were actors, read out to a public audience the accounts and testimonies which the organisers had been sent or had collected from websitesÉThere were no political speeches, just the words of people over there read by people over here and listened to in a public spaceÉWe watch the news on TV. We see shots of tanks, guns and stone-throwers. We hear statistics and we hear what politicians say, but we’re none the wiser because the core reality of human experience, the one thing which might help us make sense of things, is absent from the account. This event was an attempt to make space for these personal stories to be heard.’

The event we want to hold for Iraq is similar, and it is likely that it would be repeated in several public spaces and venues, inside and outside London. We also hope to bring together the material into a publication.

Please send us copies of your stories, letters, testimonies. Please include your name and address and any other contact details so we can keep in touch. Let us know if you would like to have your submissions returned. We reserve the right to select from the material sent to us.

Please send your material by email to: haifa_zangana@yahoo.co.uk if it is in Arabic. English accounts may be send to us here; or fax us at +44 20 7272 9324; or post your material to: ACT TOGETHER, PO BOX 34728, London N7 6XE.