LIVE, LEARN, & LOVE
Do you take delight in watching
films, listening to pop music, or reading books? For English learners, movies,
songs, and books are one of the most wonderful sources to explore the language!
You can indulge in your favorite pastime and still learn some expressions,
words of wisdom, and oftentimes good lessons while you’re at it.
# 8. Put Your Soul on Your
Hand and Walk (2025, documentary film directed by Sepideh Farsi)
“I am used to all these bombings, destruction, no food,…..and this situation feels like normal here. I think I am in prison. But I don’t feel like a normal person in this situation. I don’t eat normal food, I don’t do normal things, I don’t walk in a normal street, and I want to be in a normal place and the nature breathing in clear air. We say “Fatra o beta’addi” which means “This time will pass”
- => The 25 year-old Palestinian
photojournalist Fatma is describing how her daily life begins and ends. The indescribable
war-zone situation has made her and her folks get used to the abnormality of
their lives, but she doesn’t give up on the hope that all this shall pass in
any time soon.
“It’s okay, Sepideh, it’s okay….You are here, and that’s enough. It’s
okay. It’s enough that you hear me and share my feelings. I’m so glad to be
heard. I’m so glad that you are beside me. I hope all of this ends and I
will see you in another place in this world….or in Gaza. I hope you can come to
Gaza, and I take you to my home or walk with you in all of the streets in Gaza.”
“Although I have very little hope to live my own life, I have an idea
that I must keep going and document everything to be in this history…to be me,
and to tell my children about what I have lived and what I have survived.
Everything is destroyed everywhere, and I want to get out of here….but can’t do
that….because here I have my family, my memories, my friends, my everything. We
have just Gaza. This is our land were we were born and live. I don’t know when,
but I believe everything will end. Hope to see you soon!”
- => As a photojournalist, Fatma held
on to her calling to do the right thing: Capture everything with her camera so
that she could let the world face the truth and the future generations learn
about what life had been like in Gaza
On April 16th, 2025 at 1:00 A.M., Fatma and six other members of her family were killed in their sleep, by an Israeli strike on their house. On May 2nd, 2025, the United Nations Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian Territory confirmed the “killing of 211 journalists in Gaza since October 7 2023, including 28 woman journalists.
· ** Jean’s
small thoughts:
The title of this
documentary film “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” is a direct quote of the
interviewee, the young Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona in the film. The
words signify the profound peril and bravery that are necessary to document the
war’s harsh and raw reality. She had never lost smile and hopes despite the never-ending
airstrikes and bombings occurring right in front of her every single day. In the spotty videocalls between Fatma and the director Sepideh Farsi, their strong bond and heartfelt wishes for each other was always there like the invincible cacti in barren deserts.
It was tragic timing that
Fatma was fatally struck in an Israeli airstrike alongside most of her family,
merely a day after the film’s acceptance to the Cannes Film Festival in April
2025.
Born, having lived, and died in the same place named Gaza - which Fatma had always thought as the only land she and her family should be rooted – Fatma never dreamed of leading her life outside the city. Who took the one and only thing that she held on to today? Who has the right to take someone else’s hope? Who made the people of the land walk with soul in their hand? Who killed even the faint smile that pretended to be normal in the land of abnormality?
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