![\"hassan\"](\"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/hassan1.jpg\")
<\/a>Blasim reading. Image from his website.<\/h6>\nA short text by Iraqi short-story writer and filmmaker Hassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright:<\/p>\n
You escape death.
\nThey hit you on the border.
\nThey insult you in the racist newspapers.
\nThey analyse your child\u2019s dead body on television.
\nThey get together and discuss your past and your future.
\nIn their pictures they draw you drowning.
\nThey put you in their museums and applaud.
\nThey decide to stop hitting you and set up a military unit to confront you.
\nAcademics get new grant money to research your body and your soul.
\nPoliticians drink red wine after an emergency meeting to discuss your fate.
\nThey study history in search of an answer for your daughter, who\u2019s freezing in the forest cold.
\nThey weep crocodile tears over your pain.
\nThey come out in demonstrations against you and build walls.
\nGreen activists put up pictures of you in the street.
\nOthers sit on their sofas, comment wearily on your picture on Facebook, and go to sleep.
\nThey strip away your humanity in debates that are clever and sharp as knives.
\nThey write you down today and, with the eraser of selfishness, make you disappear the next morning.
\nThey expect to come across their own humanity through your tragedy.
\nThey take you into their paradise, then flog you night and day with their horror at your eyes, which radiate fear and hope.
\nThe past goes to sleep, and wakes up inside you.
\nThe present engulfs you.
\nYou produce children and grow old.
\nYou die.<\/p>\n
H.Blasim
\nTranslated By Jonathan Wright<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
via Arab Literature (in English) on NOVEMBER 4, 2015\u00a0: Blasim reading. Image from his website. A short text by Iraqi short-story writer and filmmaker Hassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright: You escape death. They...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1784],"class_list":["post-13792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","tag-hassan-blasim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13792"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13796,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13792\/revisions\/13796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}