Mona Hatoum ~ Measures of Distance 1988

[Laughter] foreign i wish this bloody war would be over soon so you and your sisters can return and we will all be together again like

the good old days [Music] i enjoyed very much all those intimate conversations we had about women's things and all that [Music]

you know i have never talked in this way before why don't you come back and live here and we can make all the photographs and tapes [Music]

[Music] go ahead and use them and don't mention anything about it to your father [Laughter] i suppose he was embarrassed to find us

both standing there stark naked and we just carried on [Music] [Music] as if i had given you something that

only belongs to him [Music] because i felt we were like sisters close together [Music]

[Music] [Music] you will never know how much i miss you and long for you to come and visit again soon

i only hope that we do not have to wait for another four years to see you maybe it doesn't make sense to you now and i must say i'm surprised that you still remember every word

yet you are well i suppose it's a very important instant in a little girl's life and it seems to have created an identity crisis

[Music] i was only trying to console you because you were very upset at the signs of the blood and you were crying very hard

[Music] i said you should consider yourself very lucky to be a woman because you only have to think about it once a month

whereas men have to shave every day [Music] i suppose thinking about it now it's a strange way to describe the difference between men and women

hello [Music] it is not fair that this bloody war should take all my daughters away from me to the four corners of the world i've been enjoying your letters

enormously and i enjoy answering your questions although they are sometimes weird and too probing for my liking still they make me think about myself in a way that i hadn't looked at before

and for a moment they take my mind away from this terrible war that seems to [Music] when you ask me questions about my sexuality

your father said what's all this nonsense who's occupying after all you've always been your father's daughter and i remember that before you and i

made those tapes and photographs together during your last visit your letters were always mainly addressing him i suppose he still can't forgive you for taking those pictures of me in the

shower it's as if you had trespassed on his property and now he feels that there's some weird exchanges going on between us from which

he is excluded he calls it women's nonsense your last letter made me laugh a lot i can't understand this expression lie

back and think of england you mean they believe that women are not supposed to enjoy sex well my answer to that is of course we do as much as men if not more

why do you think i keep telling you should get married after all life is not worth living if it's all hard work and no fun [Music]

um the love of my heart only for one minute i don't know what you mean when you talk about a gap between us you say you can't remember that i was

around when you were a child [Music] because before we ended up in lebanon we were living on our own land in a village with all our family and

friends around us always ready to lend us a hand we felt happy and secure and it was paradise compared to where we are now

so if i seem to be always irritable and impatient it's because life was very hard when we first left palestine [Music]

can you imagine us having to separate from all our loved ones leaving everything behind and starting again from scratch our family scattered all over the world

some of our relatives we never saw again to this day i personally felt as if i had been stripped naked of my very

soul i'm not just talking about the land and property were left behind but with that our identity and our sense of pride in who we are

went out of the window yes of course i suppose this must have affected you as well because being born in exile in a country which does not want you

is not fun at all [Music] that is totally different to your own so when you talk about a feeling of fragmentation and not knowing where you really belong

well this has been the painful reality of all our people foreign my dear muna etc etc i have not been able to send you any

letters for the last few months because the local post office was completely destroyed by that car bomb back in april and there's no sign of them fixing it

i am sending you this letter with your cousin amal who is leaving for bahrain tomorrow the nearest post office now is aina romani but as you know i don't like

going there because there's always rockets falling on the main road so i don't like to venture that way anymore even going to your aunt's place around the corner for the afternoon coffee

seems to be quite an adventure these days let alone going across the green line to visit your uncles and aunts there i have not seen any of them for the last eight months now

and now even the most basic link of communicating with you by letter is being denied to us i know it's extremely difficult for you to get a line to beirut and you have to

dial for days before you can get through if you're lucky but it looks like this will be the only way to get your news from now on you