I do desperate thinking
What is it that I loved
What is it that I said I loved
—Dionne Brand,”Nomenclature for the Time Being”
i.
Pole.
ii.
In early 2008, following Kenya’s national election and subsequent post-election violence, at a time when the vernacular was “Kenya is Burning,” Binyavanga Wainaina issued an invitation to writers: Write for Kenya.
The invitation went to journalists and academics and bloggers and poets and fiction writers, anyone he had encountered in any way. It was forwarded from those he knew to those he didn’t know. I didn’t know him at the time, so I received it from Wambui Mwangi.
Write, he said.
And this was how Concerned Kenyan Writers was founded as a google group.
Many of us had despaired as we watched Kenya burn. Those in Kenya—I wasn’t at the time—tried to capture what was happening in image and language, sometimes sending harrowing emails, and other times sitting in stunned silence, huddled with others, wondering what was happening.
Binyavanga said, simply: you are writers—write.
We wrote.
In those first three months of 2008, we wrote in all the registers we knew and invented others that we needed. We wrote anger. We wrote frustration. We wrote grief. We wrote loss. We wrote hope. We wrote love. We wrote panic. We wrote fear. We wrote the Kenya that had been and the Kenya that we dreamed.
We wrote with and for each other. Affirming that we could write ourselves into being, into practice, into the silences of our national histories. Kenya’s media refused to write about what was happening. Kenya was burning and they were silent. We wrote around them. Against them.
We published on the google group, for ourselves. We published on our blogs, those of us who had them. Those who had connections in the foreign press placed stories anywhere and everywhere it was possible.
You are writers. Write.
iii.
I have been struggling with how to write for and with Palestine. I envy the painful clarity of those who live in the United States and Canada. The instructions are clear: Write to your elected representatives. Call your elected representatives. Protest this genocide. Send money to fundraisers if you can.
Painful clarity.
And, yes, I know many have paid and are continuing to pay heavily for their opposition to this genocide.
Still, I envy the painful clarity.
iv.
From Nairobi, it’s more difficult to know what actions matter, if any.
Our currency is rubbish, so it is impractical to contribute to fundraisers, unless you are very wealthy.
Kenya hides behind the African Union and, as Nanjala Nyabola points out in an interview with Democracy Now, the AU supports Palestine:
I think it’s important to understand that the African Union, as a bloc, has been a consistent supporter of Palestinian rights since 1972, and arguably since 1948. Many of African nations see similarities between, and they see really an identical experience between, Palestinian occupation and what they have endured under colonization, and so there’s a lot of empathy there, and there’s a lot of resonance there.
It’s important, though, to distinguish the position of the African Union from the position of individual member states. So, while the union itself has been consistent and has always held the line that Palestinian independence was an integral part of the African Union’s foundational documents and foundational position in international relations, various African nations — because there is no impetus from the African Union for there to be always a single position within each country, various African nations do have different relationships with both Israel and Palestine. So, for example, while every single country in Africa except one recognizes the state of Palestine, the recognition of the state of Israel has varied. There was a time after that 1972 war where African nations wholesale declared that they would not recognize the state of Israel, but that has changed considerably.
But as Nanjala clarifies in a different interview with Democracy Now,
One of the interesting things, for example, that connects U.S. military interests in Africa to Gaza and Israel is that in some of the bilateral agreements that the U.S. has with Kenya, for example, that this is on record, that one of the ways in which Kenya was able to get financial assistance from the United States was to agree to normalize relationships with Israel.
Following October 7, 2023 Kenya’s William Ruto declared his support for Israel. In June 2024, he reaffirmed this support. Kenya cannot send money or weapons to Israel, so this support might sound like “thoughts and prayers,” but the political people tell us that Kenya has some power and influence, so this support does not mean nothing.
In more recent news, Ruto supports whatever plan the U.S. develops. We are, after all, and above all, a vassal state.
That “we” troubles me. It names an entanglement. It would be irresponsible to claim that the president’s official stance has nothing to do with me. He represents Kenya. He speaks for Kenya.
So, we must be explicit and say we stand with and for a free Palestine.
v.
But, still, how to write with and for Palestine?
I do not mention Kenya’s post-election violence as an equivalent situation. It was not.
And I learn the dangers of empathy from reading Saidiya Hartman:
The effort to counteract the habitual indifference to black suffering requires that the white body be positioned in the place of the black body in order to make this suffering visible and intelligible. Yet if this violence can become palpable and indignation fully aroused only through the masochistic fantasy (my emphasis), then it becomes clear that empathy is double edged, for in making the other’s suffering one’s own, this suffering is occluded by the other’s obliteration. (Scenes of Subjection, p. 25)
And she continues,
The ambivalent character of empathy—more exactly, the repressive effects of empathy—can be located in the “obliteration of otherness” or the facile intimacy that enables identification with the other only as “we feel ourselves into those we imagine as ourselves.” And as a result, empathy fails to expand the space of the other but merely places the self in its stead. (Scenes of Subjection, p. 26)
I do not find fault with those who must imagine themselves into the images they see and reports they read to engage and oppose the ongoing genocide. We need multiple strategies. I simply do not find empathy very useful for how I want to write with and for Palestinian freedom.
vi.
The image for this post is of the Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow plant. The plant is so named because “its blooms open purple and change color every day depending on how long the flower has been open. The pansy-like flowers start out purple, then fade to lavender and on the third day the flower turns white.”
Multiple times sit alongside each other on the plant. An image can hold the past, the present, and the future. An image can promise the past, the present, and the future. An imagination can hold the past, the present, and the future.
Our imaginations for Palestine hold the past, the present, and the future.
vii.
It might be that all we writers who are not in the U.S. or Canada can do is insist.
If so, we insist that Palestine will be free.
It might be that all we writers who cannot afford to contribute to fundraising efforts can do is insist.
If so, we insist that Palestine will be free.
It might be that all we writers who do not have access to space at the UN or the AU can do is insist.
If so, we insist that Palestine will be free.
It might be that we writers who do not have access to block ports and impede arms sales can do is insist.
If so, we insist that Palestine will be free.
And if insistence can move through dreams and chants and vibrations, carried by the wind and the sun and the rain and migrating birds and insects, then we will insist.
Palestine will be free.
If all we can offer is this insistence, then let us insist.
Palestine will be free.
thank you for these quotations and this piece. carrying this into tomorrow