“A Thousand Eulogies Are Exported to the Comma.” Of Syntax and Genocide

“A Thousand Eulogies Are Exported to the Comma.” Of Syntax and Genocide

February 13, 2024 at 10:21PM

In this essay—a written version of a speech given on January 27—Nicki Kattoura reflects on the attacks on Gaza over 113 days; the futile process of writing about war and destruction; and the way that our sentences fail to convey the scale of Palestinian suffering.

I’ll give you another example. Typically, when reciting the devastation of genocide we tend to rapid-fire statistics. To date, 26,000 Palestinians have been martyred (comma) over 60,000 have been injured (comma) over ten thousand are trapped underneath the rubble of buildings and presumed dead (comma) 2 million people have been internally displaced (comma) millions are starving (comma) dehydrated (comma) dying of disease… The comma neatly separates a list of things that are completely entangled, and in the process obscures the degree of violence happening to each individual person.

A thousand eulogies are exported to the comma, a tiny line or symbol, that just cannot bear the weight of the lives and aspirations of this many people. People whose lives are as intricate and multi-faceted and contradicting as our own.

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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/02/13/a-thousand-eulogies-are-exported-to-the-comma-of-syntax-and-genocide/
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