YARA, a 22-year-old Syrian woman, entered Gaza on November 8, 2018, with excitement, anticipation, hope—and her wedding dress. She was about to get married to her sweetheart, Fadi al-Ghazali, in ten days. In her in-laws’ house—her new home—she hung the dress on the wardrobe’s door. Four days later, as she arranged her clothes in the bedroom, Yara heard screams from the street outside. Someone pounded on the door and asked her to vacate the house because the Israeli army had attacked the Gaza Strip, destroying nine buildings. So she ran, saving herself. But she couldn’t save the dress or her dream to look like a beatific bride because it got buried under the rubble.
Yara bringing that dress to Gaza from a foreign country was itself a ‘luxury’, as wedding dresses have been banned for import in the territory for a very long time. What else is—or was—banned? Let’s go back in time, say the year 2008, and think about a toddler craving chocolate. Not allowed. Banned. Or how about a Palestinian girl needing crayons and stationary to draw a sketch on an A-4 sized paper? A-4 sized paper, banned; stationary, banned; crayons—crayons?—banned.
Denne historien er fra January 11, 2024-utgaven av Outlook.
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Denne historien er fra January 11, 2024-utgaven av Outlook.
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Metastasis of Binaries
As binaries multiply, pluralism in India is being pushed into precarious terrain
Who Moved My Orchard?
Hundreds of apple farmers living in villages in Pulwama and Anantnag are angry and upset as proposed railway lines are going to cut through their orchards
The Lives of Others
Australian writer Anna Funder's latest book, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life, shines the spotlight on Eileen O'Shaughnessy, celebrated writer George Orwell's first wife.
For Patna-a Promise, Kept
“If I'm alive, I'll come to the Festival of Literature on Music,” legendary vocalist Kishori Amonkar had promised once
The Ugly Myth
Women are slotted into two categories: beautiful or ugly. Who defines beauty and who does this binary actually serve?
My Way or the Highway
The binary logic of absolute divisions has increasingly shaped global political discourse
Undocumented Return
The deportation of illegal immigrants is the most tangible and troubling impact of a policy that is formulated on binaries-insiders vs outsiders, settlers vs migrants, locals vs aliens.
A Signboard of Abstraction
Surrealist artist, author and provocateur Salvador Dalí finally made his way to India thanks to the curation by Christine Argillet, daughter of Pierre Argillet, Dali's publisher and lifelong friend.
What after Rejecting the Binaries?
As spaces expand under debinarised imaginations, finding the ground beneath will become all the more difficult
Binary Bites
BJP's ultranationalism is a strategy to make up for its absence during the freedom struggle, but the binary discourse on nationalism is being weaponised to make detractors fall in line
