i know

this is a room and it is also a brain. i know is an immersive installation that covers every surface in american newspaper, in headlines that fall like weather, in the language that shapes how the world understands a place i come from. the text is a conversation between two versions of myself: one who carries the homeland and one who lives in the country making decisions about it. this is the central struggle of the diaspora: to be of two places at once, and to be fully at home in neither.

arab: what did you do today?

american: i went to the store. i cut some newspaper. i painted a piece of wood.

arab: what color?

american: you know what color.

arab: say it.

american: red.

arab: like beirut.

american: like beirut.

arab: my grandmother’s kitchen smelled like that color.

american: i know.

arab: no you don’t. you left.

silence…

arab: beirut is in the news again.

american: beirut is always in the news again.

arab: in jordan my mother watches the news and doesn’t sleep.

american: i know.

arab: and you’re here.

american: and i’m here. cutting their newspapers. reading the headlines the way you read the same sentence you’ve been reading your whole life. covering every wall in the language that is making decisions about our part of the world from a very safe distance.

silence…

arab: and the wood?

american: a piece the ocean brought in. already displaced. already traveled. i painted it red and put it in the center of all that language.

arab: why?

american: because my hands needed to do something they could finish.

arab: and did it help?

american: no. but now the room exists. and someone will walk into it and feel, for just a moment, what it costs to live in two places at once. to read the news the way we read the news. to have the headlines be the walls around you.

silence…

arab: you paid for some of those bombs, you know.

american: i know.

arab: with your groceries money.

american: with my groceries money.

arab: and you made it red.

american: the only color it could be.