Palestine: Memories of 1948 by Chilean Journalist Chris Conti

The 19 stories offered in this beautiful book illustrate different ways of being present, of counting, of making oneself heard and of having some weight.
In the face of erasure – imposed through terror, through the destruction of their villages, by being uncounted during population censuses, by being deprived of their right of residence – in the face of the confiscation of
their property and their marginalization in the dominant historiography on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these men and women tell their stories of 1948 – the moment their world collapsed.

These 19 stories obviously cannot cover all of the experiences Palestinians lived through in 1948, but they give a fairly representative idea, in terms of their places of origin, where they live today, their social class,
professions and their level of political engagement.

Indeed, the testimonies have an important link with truth and justice. The Nakba represents both historical trauma (being expulsed) and historiographic trauma (being made invisible).

That’s why Edward Said insisted, in 1984, on the necessity of elaborating narratives to ‘absorb, support and circulate’ the facts, to incorporate them into history and to use them in a historical narrative, with the aim of re-establishing justice.

A collection of colour photographs of Jerusalem goes hand in hand with these memories. For each Palestinian, the city is imbued with an important symbolic, identity and memory charge, all the more so since it has become
inaccessible to most. These photos are exhibited from the 12th to the 29st of February 2020 at the Dar Al-Anda art gallery in Amman, Jordan.