What is a life made of? What creates and brings into existence a person?
While telling her personal history, (The Eidetic Memory of the Opulence of Narcissism), Hanan Awwad literally fills a pot with everything that has created her since birth, and even before that, since the time of her ancestors. Joy, pain, hope, loneliness and many other things come together to create both a life and a person’s being.
Awwad shows us that a person’s life reaches beyond her personal identity. The life story she tells is also the story of a people and a country, namely Palestine, and the story of the Middle East and also the story of our world in the modern era, with its bright and dark aspects.
Awwad is not only the one who lives, but also the one who tells the things she witnesses. The pen in her hand is a storyteller’s pen. Even as that pen tells the pain, it contains hope. Because understanding and telling the past is for defending the future.
Human rights, freedom and the peaceful living of all humanity can only be possible by understanding the stories of others. While telling her extraordinary story, Awwad addresses not only the lands she lives in, but also everyone living in different geographies. Her voice is the voice of life and the goodness within a human being.
Burhan Sonmez
Cambridge, July 2024
