We have grass; it exists

[asakiyume]

Last week I saw No Other Land (2024; Oscar-winning documentary on destruction of a group of small hamlets in the West Bank, filmed from 2019 through 2023).

In it, at one point the father of Basel Adra (one of the two main young men making the documentary) takes several of the children in the extended family to school in a van. (The school is later destroyed.) The children are chanting in the van, they say--

We have grass; it exists.
We have a mountain; it exists.
We have a chicken house; it exists.
We have a rock; it exists.

There may have been other things they say--those were the ones I scrawled down in my notebook in the theater.

This could be something similar to playing "I spy with my little eye" ("I spy with my little eye something striped!" and then people guess what you see). Or part of a nursery rhyme or something that doesn't rhyme when you translate it into English.

But to me, watching that movie, it felt like a verbal way of touching, and touching base with, things that are really there and won't disappear. It felt like a spell, even.

Although the chicken house does, in fact, get bulldozed.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I wish I had the fortitude to watch this documentary. I am so impressed with the makers and subjects.

[sovay]

But to me, watching that movie, it felt like a verbal way of touching, and touching base with, things that are really there and won't disappear. It felt like a spell, even.

It makes me think both that the spell works as long as people hear the children chanting whether the chicken house is still standing or not and of Auden: "We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now."

[sartorias]

What, what an effective chant! And kinda heartbreaking, too.

[oracne]

Ouch.