Collectively Remembering Coline Covington by Janet Fisher

Essays

Five members of ROOM’s editorial board decided to read and discuss Coline Covington’s latest book, Who’s to Blame? Collective Guilt on Trial, the third of a series of writings that interweave psychoanalytic ideas with political, social, and group theories, to arrive at the possibility of a moral world. This was not intended to be her final writing on the topic, only to lay out some of the theoretical problems involved in thinking about acts of destruction and possible paths to repair and reconciliation. In her last weeks of life, Coline learned of our plan to honor rather than just review her book, for which she was touched and thankful.

Reader Response: Shegofa Shahbaz

Responses

I am writing this email to tell you about our meeting yesterday with IPA subcommittee at the U.N. We talked about women’s situation in Afghanistan and they talked about my writing which is published in ROOM 6.23. They mentioned that my writing in ROOM 6.23 helped them. They also said that they will have programs for women in Afghanistan and we will work together on that….

Reader Response: Martha Bragin

Responses

Early on February 10, 2002, I sat in a large, crowded room in Kabul, Afghanistan. With coats pulled tight against the icy blasts from broken windows, representatives of the Afghan Interim Authority’s Ministry of Education prepared a plan to open Afghanistan’s schools at the traditional start time, Nowruz, the New Year….

Reader Response: Arnold Richards

Responses

This communication is a response to the two articles published in ROOM 6.23 about the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel and on the West Bank: Naftally Israeli’s essay “From Erasure to Exclusion” and Richard Grose’s book review of Lara and Stephen Sheehi’s book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine….

Gateways by Hattie Myers

Editorials

“It has been almost two years since we were waiting for you to take action. We expected you to not be just a viewer,” Shegofa Shahbaz wrote to the UN. But because she wasn’t sure the UN would read a letter written by a nineteen-year-old college student sent on behalf of all the Afghan girls whose lives have been shattered, Shahbaz sent it to ROOM, hoping we might publish it, hoping it might find its way to the UN. Of course we will publish it, we told her. We will publish it in English and Dari so that other Afghan girls might find strength and hope through these words that they might be heard—that they will be recognized.

Letter to the United Nations by Shegofa Shahbaz

Essays

I am writing this letter on behalf of all Afghan girls. I am Shegofa Shahbaz. I am twenty years old. I grew up among the dust and smoke of explosions, gunshots, fire, war, and sad stories. I grew up with fear. Fear of an explosion inside our classroom, fear of not seeing my family again, fear of losing my friends, and fear of losing my dreams. Beside all those sad stories in my life, I had a hope for a better future, but when the Taliban took the control of Afghanistan, my dreams were destroyed.

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Re/calibrating by Murad Khan

Essays

Karachi, Pakistan—1997
“How many times have I said—don’t put spices in the food!”
My father’s voice ignited my nervous system, scorching through the oppressively humid atmosphere. My mother, who had cooked the food, stared silently at her plate.
He pointed at my eldest sister and asked, “Do you like spices?”
“No,” she responded.
He pointed at my second sister and asked, “Do you like spices?”
“No,” she responded.
He then pointed at me and asked, “Do you like spices?”
“Yes.”
He stared back at me as if I had slapped him across the face.
“What did you say?”
“I don’t mind spices.”
He took me into a separate room.
“Slap yourself.”

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From Exclusion to Erasure by Naftally Israeli

Essays

I am writing this on Israel’s seventy-fifth anniversary, its democratic future shrouded in fog. Sections of society that failed to gain recognition, excluded for years from the main public discourse and centers of power, are now seeking to dismantle it from within. They are enraged: they seek to use their power, this time not just to exclude others (as they themselves were excluded) but to wreak destruction and erase everything they perceived as other than them.

Adventures in Turkish Journalism by Matt A. Hanson

Essays

I had reached a new low. The heights of the literary profession had never seemed more distant, unreachable. In fact, I lived in an attic. It was a hot and unbearable Istanbul summer. I woke every morning and sometimes every afternoon caked in sweat under the wooden roof on the top floor of a residential building in the modernistic environs of Besiktas, a neighborhood synonymous with football, beer, and anarchy.