The Right to Be Sad

A few days ago, I received a message from someone I know. She works in a conflict zone — the kind of person who appears in no headlines but holds up the infrastructure of the world’s worst places, and who sends you voice notes about laundry and weather on days when nothing is exploding and then, on the day when something is, sends you three lines of text that take you an hour to open because you already know, from the length and the hour and the flatness of the punctuation, that something has happened.

An explosion had struck the military camp where she was working. It nearly killed everyone. She survived. The details were sparse — a sound, a wall, a silence afterward that was worse than the sound. She is alive. She is, by every available metric, fine.

I have been thinking about this for days. Not about her, exactly — she would not want that, and she would be right not to want it, because she is not a story, she is a person, and the distance between the two is something the world has never been very good at respecting. What I have been thinking about is the moment itself. The moment during. And a distinction that arrived to me slowly, the way important thoughts sometimes do — not as a revelation but as a correction, as though I had been using the wrong word for something my whole life and only now noticed.

We speak of the living and the dead as though they were two things. A binary. A switch. But there are three.

The opposite of alive is not dead. The opposite of alive is not alive.

Dead means the body has stopped. The lungs do not draw air. There is, at least, a finality to it — terrible, but final. Not alive is different. Not alive means you breathe, but you can no longer function in the way you did before. Your eyes open. Your hands can hold a cup. But something essential has been removed — the ordinary unconsciousness with which a person who has never been nearly killed moves through a morning—the ability to walk into a room without first calculating whether the room is safe. You are not dead. You are standing upright. But you are not alive in the way you were before the wall moved, and no one will name this state because you are breathing, and breathing is, to the outside world, sufficient proof of life.

That is the state she was in during the explosion. And it is the state that many people remain in long after the reports have been filed and the word “survivor” has been applied to them like a badge they did not ask to wear. The body is asking a question — am I alive? — and not receiving a clear answer.

And now it is a memory.

That is the part I cannot put down. A few days ago, she was in a place where the world was ending. Now she is somewhere else, doing something ordinary — buying groceries, answering an email — and what happened to her is no longer an event. It is something she remembers. It sits inside her the way all such memories sit: quietly, without resolution, in a room that does not close. She will go to work. She will laugh at something, probably soon. And inside her, a room will remain in which the explosion is still happening, in which her body has not yet confirmed which of the three states it is in. You learn to walk past that room on most days without opening the door. But you never lose the key. And you never forget which hallway it is in.

I know something about rooms like that, though my rooms were built more slowly.

When you live in your own city, among your own people, on streets where your name is known, you can afford to stumble. You can break your leg. Someone will take you to the hospital. Your neighbor will call your family. Your cousin will bring food. The net beneath you is invisible but absolute — woven from a thousand ordinary threads of relation, obligation, and the particular kind of love that does not announce itself as love because it does not need to. You do not think about this net. You do not thank it. You walk, and sometimes you fall, and sometimes you are caught, and the catching is so unremarkable that it does not even register as tenderness, though that is exactly what it is.

Now remove the net.

Remove the city. Remove the street. Remove the language in which your family name is known. Place yourself in a country where you are liked but not held, where if you fell on the pavement on a Tuesday afternoon, a stranger would call an ambulance, but no one would call your mother. And so you learn without anyone teaching you, without deciding to learn it, that you must not fall. You develop a talent for it. You watch your step with a precision that others mistake for grace. You go to the doctor before the pain becomes serious, because pain that becomes serious requires someone to sit with you afterward, and there is no one to sit with you afterward.

This is the great unwritten skill of the displaced. The talent for not falling. It is simply the way you walk through the world once the world has made clear that it will not catch you. And it is exhausting — not dramatically, but in the quiet, cumulative way of a body that has been bracing itself for years.

My friend stood in that space — between alive and not alive — for seconds. The exile stands in it for decades. The duration is different. The room is the same.

The sadness she now carries is not something she chose. It was delivered to her at the speed of shrapnel. And the world will file it under “the conflict,” as though conflict produced sorrow the way winter produces cold — inevitably, without authorship. But sadness that comes from violence has a sender and a return address. The passive voice is the grammar of impunity. Lives were lost. Communities were displaced. Heritage was destroyed. By whom? The sentence does not say. The sentence was designed not to say.

And then there is the other kind of sadness — the kind that memory produces. Not the memory of a specific event, but the persistent, low-frequency memory of a life that was. The memory of a street and where the uneven stone was. The memory of a smell that belonged to a place, the way a fingerprint belongs to a hand. This sadness is different. This sadness is yours. Not because you chose it, but because it is the proof that something mattered — that the place you came from was real, that the people you loved were real, and that carrying the weight of that fact is not a pathology but a form of fidelity.

And here is what is terrifying about what my friend lived through: one day, the explosion will feel like this too. It will no longer be the thing that almost killed her. It will be a memory. It will sit alongside other memories — a meal she loved, a face she misses, a door in a house she once lived in — and it will take its place among them with the same weight and the same silence. Memory does not rank. Memory does not triage. It simply holds, and what it holds produces sadness, and the sadness does not distinguish between the catastrophic and the tender. It is all just: this was, and it is no longer, and I carry it.

Can that sadness be normalized? Can the thing that was done to her — the thing that moved her, without her consent, from alive to not alive — be made into something she is permitted to carry openly, without it becoming her identity, without someone deciding it is a condition? I believe it must. Because the alternative is to measure her progress by how successfully she forgets. And forgetting is not healing. Forgetting is the completion of what the explosion started.

And equally — and this is the part I did not expect to arrive at when I sat down to write — she must be permitted to be happy. Because if sadness is pathological, then happiness is merely its remission, and you are no longer a person who feels but a patient who fluctuates between states. My friend, who will one evening soon find herself laughing at something ridiculous, will not be in denial. She will be alive. Not the not-alive of the aftermath. Actually alive. And being alive includes the full range of what the living feel, without every emotion being routed back through the worst thing that ever happened to you, as though the worst thing were a customs office through which all feelings must pass before they are permitted to exist.

There is a thought I have been carrying. The exile does not only grieve the country he lost. He grieves the person he would have been if he had stayed.

That person does not exist. He was never born. And yet every exile carries him. You imagine his routines. You imagine his complaints. You imagine him sitting in a garden with a book, and you think: he would not have needed to learn not to fall. He would have had the net. He would have had the neighbor who remembers his father’s name. He would have broken his leg, and someone would have carried him, and he would not have thought of it as love, because he would not have known what it was to live without it.

And I wonder if my friend still carries something similar. Not the ghost of a person she might have been, but the ghost of the person she was five minutes before the blast. The person who did not yet know. The person for whom that morning was still ordinary. That person is gone. She will never be her again. And the distance between the woman before and the woman after is a kind of exile too, even if you never leave the country. She has been displaced from her own continuity. And the sadness of that crossing is not a pathology. It is the mind’s honest accounting of what was lost — not a building or a city but a state: the state of being alive without knowing how fragile that state is. Once you know, you cannot un-know.

I do not know how to end this, which is perhaps the most honest thing I have written today. I do not know how to end it because the thing I am describing does not end. The room does not close. You learn to live in a building that contains it, and some mornings you walk past the door without noticing, and some mornings you stand in front of it for a long time, and both of those mornings are yours, and neither of them is a problem to be solved.

Suffering is what they give you. Sadness is what you keep. Memory is not a wound. Memory is a witness. And the sadness it brings is not a symptom. It is testimony.

We will be sad when we choose to be sad. We will be happy when the morning allows it. We will not fall, because the world has not given us the luxury of falling. And we will not apologize for any of it — not the sadness, not the happiness, not the not-alive days when we breathe but do not quite live, not the suddenly alive days when something ordinary returns us, without warning, to the full and terrifying privilege of being here.

That is our right. And it is enough.

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Image 1. Credit: Maurice Abd al-Nabi. Photo taken around the year 1950.

Critics of this method raise that oral histories are subjective, and the narrations too individual to draw any conclusions. Proponents argue that the value lies precisely in the uniqueness of the stories ˗ what makes them so important. With this method, previously marginalized voices or experiences that were actively dismissed or excluded can be preserved.

Oral histories aim to record how individuals perceived certain situations, how they perceived changes in their communities, regions, or personal lives. The goal is not to create detailed lists of events based on these narrations, but to get an understanding of how events or circumstances shaped individual lives. Narrations may extend to the conveying of traditions and cultural values and thereby give unique insight into the aspects that carry importance for certain communities.

In addition to the value that the stories have for researchers and those reading or listening to them, narrating them is also important for the individuals. For some, these recordings may be the only time their memories and their perspectives on events were heard.

Trust is the central component that makes the recording of oral histories possible. This means that ethical considerations and a deep understanding of cultural values is the starting point of every oral history project. Aside from questions on who is interviewed and who interviews, on suitable settings and emergency plans for when interviews cause distress, explaining what happens with the recordings is equally important. As AI tools are increasingly popular, it is pivotal to discuss whether emerging technologies may be used for processing the data when the repercussions of these tools are not fully understood.

The method of oral histories also reminds us of a principle that every project grounded in qualitative research should follow: It is not researchers who produce knowledge. Knowledge is created relationally, through the exchange between interview partners and interviewers. The interview partners are the most central part of any project. It is them who projects have to serve.

About this series

Over the coming months, profiles developed on the basis of oral histories, recorded with members of the Jewish community from Mosul, will be published on this website. The interview partners were children when they left Mosul with their families in the 1950s and moved to Israel or other parts of the world. To preserve their stories, videos were recorded between the years 2021 and 20231 in which the individuals, now elderly, talk about their childhood memories, memories of the city of Mosul, of them leaving the city and finding new homes elsewhere. The recordings are between one and two hours long and give unique insight into Jewish life in Mosul in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Jewish heritage of Mosul has largely been forgotten or disregarded. With this series of oral histories, this facet of Mosul, a once highly diverse city, is actively remembered and brought to public attention. By understanding how individuals perceive certain times, the history of cities becomes multidimensional. Projects like these help to counter tendencies of historical distortion and the homogenization of narratives that times of conflict and war may bring.

Based on these recordings and in close collaboration with the interview partners, Heritage of War and Peace has created articles that re-tell these memories and make them accessible to a broad audience. As a whole, this series continues the work of Heritage of War and Peace and its overarching goal of archiving and documenting memories of communities affected by conflict and war.

In his debut film ‘The President’s Cake’ (2025), Hasan Hadi brings the paranoia of life under the dictator to the screen with striking clarity. Hadi’s film also captures the devastating impact UN sanctions had …

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This wasn’t a decision we made lightly. In July, our team came together to reflect on how we describe our work. Was memory the right word? Or is heritage a better fit? Both terms felt meaningful, but in different ways.

Memory is active. It’s something we do, both individually and collectively. It’s shaped by intention, emotion, and politics. Memory can be commemorative, but it can also be contested. It is often instrumentalized, used to serve particular narratives or agendas. Memory is powerful, but also fragile.

Heritage is something we inherit. It encompasses the tangible and intangible. It is broader, but no less important. Heritage is what survives, what is passed down, what endures but also what needs to be protected. It is not only what we remember, but how we carry those memories forward.

In truth, neither word is perfect. Both are true, and yet fall just short. Our initiative exists in the space between remembering and preserving, between questioning the past and shaping the future. We interrogate dominant narratives, but we also work to safeguard what might otherwise be lost.

Ultimately, we chose heritage not because it is better, but because it offers more room. It allows us to exist in the complexity of this discourse. It invites dialogue. It acknowledges that what we inherit is not fixed, but shaped by how we engage with it. Heritage is not just what we receive, but what we choose to carry, reinterpret, and transmit.

In that sense, heritage is what we make of our memories.

T…

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In a narrow street of a quiet seaside neighborhood, I met Maria. She is 95, lives just across fr…

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In societies emerging from the devastation of war and conflicts, memory is not simply a matter of the past—it is a political and ethical battleground. To speak of memory is to speak of power: who remembers, what is remembered, and who gets to forget. In post-conflict reconstruction programs—particularly those aimed at…

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Wedding Celebrations in Mosul

By: Ahmad al-Sufi

Initially published in Al-Turāth al-Shaʿbī, Issue No. 8, April 1,…

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11 years ago, on June 5, 2014, Mosul fell to ISIS. What was a complete rupture in the lives of the inhabitants of the city was a mediatized news event for people around the world, including myself. When so many pairs of eyes look at a tragedy, one should assume every detail is preserved. Media reports and academic literature on military failures and ISIS strategies were quickly produced. What seemed to be left out were the memories of the citizens.

Image 1. ‘Stolperstein’ in front of Schauflergasse 2, 1010 Vienna, Austria. The text reads: “In this house, the shop for women’s coats by Alexander and Edmund Sohr, former purveyors to the court, was located. It was “Aryanized” by the Nazis. The owners were killed.”

I am in the incredibly fortunate position of never having witnessed war myself. I only read about it, watched movies on wars, and listened to the rather sparse stories from my German grandparents. On the rare occasions they spoke about that time – in my memory: mostly about being hungry – even as a child I felt like these memories carried weight, these memories had to be listened to. The narrations filled me with awe because I knew I had to remember them to eventually pass them on.

I only know war through the memories of others. I inherited memories of war and fit them into the context that history books provided. To me, remembrance of war became a civic duty. And with this duty, the question of what must be remembered and how it should be remembered slowly transferred to me. Yet, I do not know what parts of the storyline my grandparents wanted me to keep. I fear that I lose aspects of these memories, an emotional access I never had myself. My approach is almost technical. I try to think about it conceptionally, hoping that this helps me to carry the duty of preserving the memories of others responsibly.

How we remember war

Memories of violence and war exist around the globe, shape personal and national identities, and characterize political discourse – explicitly or implicitly. Official commemoration ceremonies formed into a ritual by state officials, memorials that we walk past without knowing, the anonymity of history books in school. These memories are always fragments of larger stories, they are told asynchronously, and confront us at different times and in different situations. 

“You will always recognize the Germans by whether they refer to May 8 as a day of defeat or liberation.” (Heinrich Böll, German writer, in 1985, about May 8, 1945)

These memories are also contested – not only when new documents are discovered but also when socio-political tides change. Narratives once assumed to be common knowledge suddenly become disputed. Personal stories narrated by others may contradict each other, or will always give the impression that important elements are missing. 

And it is not only the memory of violence itself that is contested; also how violence is commemorated will be debated – even more so in the case of the atrocities of genocide. A number of memorials built in remembrance of the Holocaust have sparked and continue to spark debates. As of 2024, 107,000 golden ‘Stolpersteine’1 (German for ‘cobble stones’ or ‘stumbling stones’), created by artist Gunter Demnig, confront passersby on streets across European cities and remind them of the individual victims of Nazi Germany. Some voices criticize the laying of these stones as not being a dignified, worthy form of remembering the victims of Holocaust.2 Others emphasize the value of precisely these small stones for remembering the individual suffering as compared to the statistical number of victims that all too often glosses over their personal fates.

How and when we remember and the forms we deem suitable for such remembrance will vary. Some will not want to remember, some are eager to discover every detail. To some, speaking to individuals not involved or affected by the tragedies may be easier, to some it may be even more difficult. The kinds of memories one holds seems to shape the forms chosen for their preservation.

Image 2. ‘Stolperstein’ in front of Petersplatz 3, 1010 Vienna, Austria. The text reads: “In this house lived: Friederike Grünwald, born March 1, 1872. Deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. Killed in Treblinka on Sept 26, 1942. Arpad Grünwald, born December 6, 1896. Deported from Malines to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. Death on January 13, 1945, in Natzweiler.”

As someone with only second-hand memories, I try to support remembrance, not decide about its forms. I try to understand the technicalities of remembrance to ensure all kinds of memories and all kinds of forms of remembering find their places.

“What must we not forget?”

All these different ways of remembering, from the ritualized state ceremonies to the spontaneous narrations transmitted by relatives, may be summarized under the term ‘culture of remembrance’ or ‘memory culture’. In simplified terms, Jan Assmann, Professor for Egyptology, has described memory culture as the answer to the question: “What must we not forget?”.3 He describes it as a phenomenon inherently tied to a specific social group and its past. Sharing a culture of remembrance may even be the constitutive element of a community. 

While an outsider's perspective may be valuable at times, the question “what must we not forget?” clearly directs the focus to the community affected. Remembrance culture is based on the results of their analysis of the past, their involvement with it.

Assmann mentions two central preconditions for memory culture: First, the past must have been documented, it must be accessible in some form. Second, there must be some discernible difference between the group’s past and present. A break that ‘produces a past’, for example through the use of different language that marks that break. 

Yet, this past does not automatically turn into history, into a linear storyline, clearly structured and commonly agreed upon. In order for a memory to enter the culture of remembrance of a certain community, it must be formulated in concrete words. In reference to the work by the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, Assmann writes: “Memory (...) works through reconstruction.”4 One creates it. It is a process that, at the same time, structures how a group thinks of their past and their future. He specifies: “Thus collective memory operates simultaneously in two directions: backward and forward.”5 Not only does this imply that a culture of remembrance needs active work but it also highlights its enormous impact on the future of a community.

A culture of discourse

There are only two things I know about remembrance of war: it is difficult and it is necessary. In many ways, it defines us. The question of “what must we not forget?” is incredibly large – and it will never be fully and comprehensively answered. Different generations will have different answers. However, at its core, the question invites discourse. A culture of remembrance cannot be established by a single actor – or by a media outlet – it is the result of the discourse within a community, among first-hand memory narrators and second- and third-hand memory keepers.

Remembrance takes time and challenges us. It is fragmented and contested. It neither has a defined beginning nor an end date. The sometimes arduous task of collecting, analyzing, and interacting with stories, documents, and photos from a group’s past is a necessary step for remembrance to flourish.

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Mosul did not simply fall in June 2014. It collapsed into memory—violent, disorienting, unfinished. And now, eleven years later, that memory has not faded. It has taken root, quietly and overwhelmingly, in the body.

For the past ten days, I tried to write something. Anything. But I couldn’t. My mind circled the memory without finding a way through. My bo…

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Memory of War and Peace Project

• Location: Remote (Paris-based preferred)

• Contract Type: Unpaid Internship (for academic credit and professional experience)

• Duration: 3–6 months (with possible extension)

• Application Deadline: Rolling until filled

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Memory of War and Peace is a global initiative focused on preserving oral histories, documenting the lived experiences of conflict-affected communities, and fostering ethical public memory. The project contributes to transitional justice, reconciliation, and cultural preservation in post-conflict environments through digital archiving, storytelling, and research.

Interns will work remotely with an international team and gain practical experience in public history, documentation, nonprofit development, and multilingual editorial work.

AVAILABLE INTERNSHIP POSITIONS & RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Chief Editor / Lead Editor

• Supervise editorial process for transcripts, reports, and articles

• Ensure consistency in language and message across materials

• Manage editorial calendar and style guide

• Coordinate with researchers and translators

2. Editor (English + Additional Language)

• Edit and proofread interviews and texts

• Translate/revise materials in Arabic, French, Hebrew, or other languages

• Annotate content with cultural or historical notes

3. Communication Officer

• Draft internal/external communications and newsletters

• Support stakeholder engagement and event promotion

• Track media coverage and manage contact lists

4. Fundraising & Development Intern

• Research grants and draft applications

• Maintain donor lists and write donor reports

• Help design and implement fundraising campaigns

5. Social Media Officer

• Create content for Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Facebook

• Analyze engagement metrics and refine strategies

• Develop culturally sensitive multilingual content

6. Audiovisual Intern

• Edit video/audio using Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, etc.

• Subtitle and caption interviews

• Organize and archive media content.

7. Graphic Design Intern

• Design promotional materials and social media visuals

• Maintain the project’s visual identity

• Collaborate with editors and communication officers

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Work experience in international nonprofit and cultural memory sectors

• Ethical storytelling and post-conflict documentation methods

• Practical skills in editing, research, communication, and digital media

• Mentorship from an international team of professionals

REQUIREMENTS

• Education: Master’s or PhD students/recent graduates (final-year undergraduates considered)

• Languages:

  • Strong English writing and speaking

  • Additional languages (French, Arabic, Hebrew) are a plus

• Technical Skills:

  • Comfortable with Google Workspace, Zoom, Slack, Canva

  • For media/design roles: Adobe Suite, Figma, etc.

TERMS

• Type: Unpaid internship (eligible for academic credit)

• Location: Remote (Paris or CET time zone preferred)

• Schedule: 10–15 hours/week with flexible timing

APPLICATION PROCESS

Send the following documents to info@memorywarpeace.com:

1. A short cover letter explaining your interest, background, and preferred role(s)

2. Your CV (max. 2 pages)

3. A work sample relevant to the role (e.g., writing sample, edited text, design portfolio, video, etc.)

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for a virtual interview.

In the heart of Mosul’s ancient city, nestled between arched alleyways and timeworn stones, lies the Soap Market—Sūq al-Ṣābūn. This small yet storied souk has long served as a sensory portal into Mosul’s layered past, where the scent of Aleppo soap mingled with spices, incense, and tales of long-distance trade. Its legacy, howe…

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In the heart of Mosul's Old City, on the western bank of the Tigris River, sits one of Iraq's oldest functioning marketplaces: Sūq al-Ḥaddādīn, the Blacksmiths' Market. Though modest, the market embodies one of the city's longest unbroken artisanal traditions, linking past and present through the per…

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Mosul—al-Mawṣil in Arabic, meaning “the connector”—has long been a bridge between East and West. Strategically located in northern Iraq, the city was a vital hub on the Silk Road, linking merchants and travelers from China, Persia, Anatolia, and the Levant. With the Tigris River running through it, al-Mawṣil became a m…

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In March 2017, a U.S.-led coalition airstrike hit a residential neighborhood in west Mosul, Iraq. The target was ISIS. The outcome was something else entirely. A building collapsed, and more than 100 civilians were killed — many of them children, most of them sheltering from the fighting.

The event was acknowledge…

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A man walks through a narrow street in Mosul’s Old City, dwarfed by the remains of a shattered building. Exposed steel beams hang overhead like a collapsed scaffold, remnants of once-dense urban life now reduced to skeleta…

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