When you hear me exclaim, over and over, “Alhamdulillah!”—“Praise God!”

trying to keep the quaver of hope out of our voices and words. Unable to allow ourselves to truly believe anymore

When writing about war, I am often at a loss as to how to proceed. I want to make the writing as dissonant as I can, to recreate a sense of disruption, of an essential brokenness. I want to make the writing as unobtrusive as I can, to have it slip easily into the mind, mild-mannered and unassuming, before revealing that it has been wearing a vest of explosives all along. But these are theoretical questions, questions of technique, and ultimately ways of distancing myself somehow from a raw wound at the core that simply and only begs to be told, no matter how.

I cry a lot while doing this work. It isn’t something I can control.

As if the act of bearing witness, followed to the end of one of its branches, snaps under the weight of what is seen, and you fall to your death. As if to die for a cause in Arabic is to bear witness to something until it annihilates the self.

The women, the writers, range in age from their teens to their sixties and seventies, come from all walks of life, all parts of Syria. They are teachers, activists, seamstresses, farmers, doctors, volunteer paramedics, housewives, writers, aspiring writers, students and revolutionaries.

In the last few months, I have watched my city, Maarrat al-Numan, burn, I have watched my city, Raqqa, burn, I have fled Aleppo from the increased fanaticism of the rebels, I have fled Aleppo from the chokehold of the regime, I have fled Aleppo to Turkey, I have fled Aleppo to Lebanon, I have fled Aleppo not knowing if I will ever return, or what I might find if I do.

where her perfect blue body lay among countless others they had not yet found place enough to bury. Her name was Fatma.

I’ve moved houses no less than 35 times.

Keep in mind that your students who live with social anxiety may find the first couple of weeks of meeting a new online class already very difficult. You might choose to reserve more social activities that ask for personal stories or check in with feelings until everyone is more used to the space that you are creating. 

We must support the creation of structures of inclusion that recognize and accommodate difference, rather than seek to erase it.

stereotypes

Belongingness entails an unwavering commitment to not simply tolerating and respecting difference but to ensuring that all people are welcome and feel that they belong in the society. We call this idea the “circle of human concern.”78

Studies since the 1950s demonstrate the tendency of people to identify with whom they are grouped, no matter how arbitrary or even silly the group boundaries may be, and to judge members of their own group as superior.

Millions of Americans were shocked and alarmed when presidential hopeful, and leading Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, not only announced his intent to build a wall along the United States-Mexican border to keep out “criminals and rapists,” but also demanded a ban on Muslim immigrants, even Syrian refugees, from entering the United States.16

We define “othering” as a set of dynamics, processes, and structures that engender marginality and persistent inequality across any of the full range of human differences based on group identities.

It is not just religion or ethnicity alone that explains each conflict but often the overlay of multiple identities with specific cultural, geographic, and political histories and grievances that may be rekindled under certain conditions.6

Othering undergirds territorial disputes, sectarian violence, military conflict, the spread of disease, hunger and food insecurity, and even climate change.1