{"id":36597,"date":"2025-04-04T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T07:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=36597"},"modified":"2025-08-29T14:20:48","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:20:48","slug":"dear-souseh-existential-advice-for-third-world-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/dear-souseh-existential-advice-for-third-world-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Souseh: Existential Advice for Third World Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this first edition of The Markaz Review\u2019s monthly advice column, Souseh answers a letter from a Palestinian reader, wondering how to talk about the struggle for liberation with her non-Palestinian partner.<\/h3>\n

Dear Souseh,<\/b><\/p>\n

My partner and I have been in a relationship for seven years. I’m Palestinian and he’s from North America (where we are both living). When we first met, he knew very little about the Palestinian struggle and admitted to not having a strong interest in what he calls politics. Despite this, I’ve made it a point to teach him about Palestinian history as it is an inextricable part of my own identity. It took my family ages to accept him, but I fought hard for us and he stood by me even though there were times when they were not very nice to him. He was always polite and never held it against me or them. Since then, they\u2019ve come to like him and see that he really loves me. My mom even sends back extra food with me sometimes for him because he loves her cooking. So he knows my family, and he also knows that my extended family is scattered all over the world because of the Nakba and he knows that my aunts and cousins are living under curfew now in the West Bank, and he knows a lot of other ways that we\u2019ve all been affected by almost a century of dispossession and displacement. He knows so much more now about the Palestinian struggle for liberation than he ever did when we met. He was always willing to listen and allowed me to explain things to him without interrupting or arguing.<\/b><\/p>\n

And yet, after October 7, it\u2019s felt really difficult to talk in any detail about the genocide with my partner. He watches the news with me and I know it makes him upset but he still struggles with accepting certain things like acts of resistance. When I push him to talk about it, he shuts down and makes it impossible to engage. Then I get angry, because I\u2019m already so angry, and I find myself lashing out at his lack of understanding when I need him the most. I’m so utterly heartbroken and I’m finding it very difficult to explain with a level head why Palestinians have been given no choice but to resist in whatever ways are necessary. He\u2019ll tell me over and over that he doesn\u2019t like to talk politics. I don’t know how to have these conversations without further building resentment. He is otherwise loving and kind and very sympathetic when I\u2019m down. I already feel so alone because I\u2019ve lost several friends over this. I don\u2019t want to lose one more person I love.<\/b><\/p>\n

Signed,\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Broken but Not Defeated<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Broken but Not Defeated,<\/span><\/p>\n

Last night I finished <\/span>reading a book<\/span><\/a>, a very bleak and depressing (but in some ways beautiful) book about a fascist takeover in Ireland that eventually devolves into brutal civil war. Toward the end, there is a long, breathless passage that reads partially thus: \u201c\u2026the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and [\u2026] the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news\u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You are experiencing a local end of the world. He (thinks he) is not. To him, despite the fact that he lives with it in the form of his partner, he sees it as \u201ca brief report on the news.\u201d To you it\u2019s personal. To him, it\u2019s \u201cpolitics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That the \u201cpersonal\u201d and \u201cpolitical\u201d can appear separate to some people seems the essence of privilege, if we take privilege to mean being accorded the luxury of not having to negotiate your humanity with the world. And having less to negotiate means you have less on the line. But you have everything on the line here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course you feel alone. This scythe reaping endless death in Gaza has also severed so many relationships and cut down so many illusions about the world. As an Arab, especially as a Palestinian, I\u2019m imagining you had less illusions than most \u2014 about justice, about international law, about media and reporting. Hell, even about common decency. But one of the illusions that so many of us carry regardless is that love will, if not conquer all, then at least help us negotiate some generous treaties to maintain peace in the intimate realm. In the grand scheme of things, sure, an expansive, world-embracing love is the only path forward. But in the day-to-day particularity of our relationships, especially the ones that we choose, and not the ones imposed on us by biology, love, too, is something we choose. Or at least something we can choose whether or not to practice (as the saying goes), as a verb.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a tough assessment for you to have to make in such circumstances, and I feel for you. The world is closing in. Not to be overly dramatic, but yes, the world is closing in. Especially on people like us, who come from countries and cultures deemed \u201clesser than,\u201d whose homelands, whether ancestral or adopted, are being rendered more and more uninhabitable (if they weren\u2019t already forbidden to us altogether). Therefore, now more than ever, we need home \u2014 that is, the private space we build for ourselves out of our intimacies and communities \u2014 to be a place of safety. A place where we are free to be who and what we are. To express our sexual, political, moral and ethical affiliations without fear of reprisal or rejection.<\/span><\/p>\n

For it is exactly rejection that you\u2019re dealing with. If one\u2019s partner is a Palestinian, whose immediate family tree has been hacked at, uprooted and transplanted by collective catastrophe, and yet one refuses to truly engage with the Palestinian struggle, then this is effectively a rejection of one\u2019s partner in the fullness of their humanity. There\u2019s this quote that\u2019s been going around social media for quite a while now; I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen it. It\u2019s often misattributed to James Baldwin (while it is fact by a Twitter user named sonofbaldwin). \u201cWe can disagree and still love each other,\u201d it says, \u201cunless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m assuming that your partner doesn\u2019t wish for your oppression and doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s denying you your humanity or your right to exist. He\u2019d probably be horrified if you even hinted at such. But if he denies you, or your people, the right to resist, then what does that really mean? <\/span>If you accept my people\u2019s right to exist,<\/span><\/i> you might ask, <\/span>then how are they supposed to do so in the face of an ongoing annihilation?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I think, before anything else, you owe it to yourself and to your seven years together to try and probe why he might be shutting down. As well as to assess whether this is something that can potentially be overcome. You don\u2019t mention this, but how does he make it \u201cimpossible\u201d to engage? Does he get angry or scary? (Unacceptable and potentially physically dangerous). Does he turn petulant and give you the silent treatment? (Unacceptable and emotionally draining). Does he physically walk away and shut himself up somewhere until it\u2019s all \u201cblown over\u201d? (In theory a more mature way to handle conflict in the moment but as good as the silent treatment if, once he\u2019s back and calmer, he still refuses to engage).<\/span><\/p>\n

See, in one way\u2026 I don\u2019t blame him for shutting down. In the way that this reflects a facet of us all: that total impotence in the face of obscene destruction. We stand there reeling in horror, unable to summon any kind of response commensurate with such a shattering. Overwhelmed, we cease to function. It is clear from what you say about the way that he loves and respects you enough to have stood by you despite your family\u2019s opposition that he\u2019s not doing this out of meanness or malicious feeling. It seems more like he doesn\u2019t know how to process it all and so he just\u2026 doesn\u2019t. He turns a blind eye to avoid the emotional cost of seeing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, he can afford to do this. But really\u2026 can he? When his partner is Palestinian and directly affected by what\u2019s going on, which in turn implicates him? When his partner is openly asking, again and again for support and for him to engage? Can he really afford to turn away? At this point, eighteen months into a genocide, can anyone?<\/span><\/p>\n

You need, we all need, now more than ever, people who have our back. People we can depend on during this \u201clocal\u201d end of the world, in which the knocks are coming harder and faster on so many people\u2019s doors. Is he someone who will take your hand gently and stand beside you firm and strong, ready to face together whatever hardship or nightmare comes through that door? Is he someone who will help you forage for beauty in the gloom and hold you when you need a break from that difficult work? Hold the entirety of you: your grief and your terror and your history and your distant, longed-for geographies. I really don\u2019t think that\u2019s too much to ask. I think it is, in fact, the bare minimum to ask. For any of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be \u201csympathetic when you\u2019re down,\u201d simply isn\u2019t enough. He needs to be able to help lift you up. We all need to be able to take turns carrying one another across the rubble of the crumbling world. In our intimate relationships above all. But because we need that so badly (and, let\u2019s face it, because we also need to be perceived as being \u201cin a good relationship,\u201d and don\u2019t wish to be judged as \u201cselling ourselves short\u201d), we don\u2019t want to embarrass our partners \u2014 or ourselves \u2014 when we know they aren\u2019t up to the task. As a result, we expend much of our efforts trying to make ourselves as weightless as possible to avoid facing that simple fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Am I right in guessing that part of the reason you don\u2019t want to face it is that, after having defended him to your family it feels especially damning to stop defending him, even to yourself? And of course, there is love. Sure, it might best be practiced as a verb, but let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s also a noun. There is the love you feel for him and the love he shows you, as well as the comfort he provides simply by being familiar (nothing to scoff at, ever), and by being \u201cotherwise loving and kind.\u201d And of course, you feel a sense of loyalty. He\u2019s \u201cstood by you.\u201d But\u2026 can he carry you? Again, with the full weight of your history?<\/span><\/p>\n

Only you can evaluate whether he\u2019s eventually up to such a task. But assuming things remain the same, that he keeps refusing to engage, I\u2019ll have to ask you to think on the following question. If, after you\u2019ve explained to him time and again what your family has gone through and what you\u2019re feeling; if after watching eighteen straight months of savagery and genocide by slaughter, torture, forced exile and famine; of watching the lengths to which the West is going \u2014 obliterating journalistic integrity, eroding civil rights, jailing, disappearing, deporting people on the flimsiest of pretexts \u2014 just to silence any critics of that genocide; if, after all that and doubtless worse yet to come, he\u2019s still calling what\u2019s happening \u201cpolitics,\u201d distancing himself from it, behaving as though it were something he can shut out, might you not already have the answer to your question? Is this relationship not somehow compounding the feeling of being \u201cangry and alone,\u201d rather than mitigating it?<\/span><\/p>\n

To \u201cde-politicize\u201d or \u201cuniversalize\u201d the above: if your partner continues refusing to face up to an issue, any issue, that cuts to your core and affects the integrity of your sense of self<\/span>, especially<\/span><\/i> after seeing the pain this refusal has caused, then there is something fundamentally lacking in the relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t judge you if you decide to stay and you shouldn\u2019t judge yourself either. There may be any number of reasons why you decide to do so. Things absent from your letter, or things I failed to read into it. But please don\u2019t let the desire to avoid the emotional difficulty of a breakup be the only reason you stay. Your future is far too high a price to pay in order to defer present trouble or embarrassment. The world might be ending, but your life continues.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Souseh is a new monthly feature at The Markaz Review, an advice column that tackles personal questions inflected by our greater social, cultural, political and historical contexts. Do you have such a question for Souseh? Send your letters to <\/span><\/i>DearSouseh@themarkaz.org<\/span><\/i><\/a>. A new letter will be answered every month.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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