SWANA Podcast - Sunday, April 26, 2026

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1. Thank you for watching.
2. Hello and welcome. This is Radio Intifada coming to you from Los Angeles on KPFK,
3. a production of Suwano Region Radio, a weekly review of politics and culture from Kolkata to
4. Casablanca. I'm Rana Sharif. Radio Intifada will temporarily move to a KPFK podcast,
5. but we'll soon return to KPFK's airwaves. Until then, be sure to check out our weekly shows at
6. kpfk.org. April is Genocide Remembrance Month, and this week we ask, how do we remember the
7. victims of genocide? We speak with Sri Lankan poet Shash Trivat, whose book, The Naming of Names,
8. honors the lives of Tamil people killed throughout the Sri Lankan genocide. But first, Lebanon and
9. Israel will meet this week for a second round of direct talks. Hezbollah chief Naim Qasim rejected
10. the negotiations last week. Meanwhile, there are renewed and more vocal calls to disarm Hezbollah,
11. and Israel has continued to blow up neighborhoods and border villages in southern Lebanon,
12. including the raising of civilian infrastructure. What does a neutralized Lebanon mean for Lebanon?
13. What does a neutralized Lebanon mean for the region? What is the future of Hezbollah?
14. To understand the realities on the ground in Lebanon, we are joined once again by Lebanese
15. anthropologist Munira Khayat from Beirut. Misha Chowdhury, an Ankina Intaram host.
16. Today we are joined by Munira Khayat. Munira Khayat is an anthropologist and professor at NYU
17. Abu Dhabi, whose research revolves around life and war, intimate genealogies of empire and theories
18. from the South. She is currently calling in from Beirut. Thank you so much for taking the time to
19. join us today, Munira. Thank you so much for having me. Welcome, Munira. Can you describe
20. what the last few weeks have been like from your perspective in Beirut? So it's been a really,
21. needless to say, extraordinarily difficult time. It's a time that feels quite unlike any of the
22. other many times of war that many of us here in Lebanon have lived through. Often when I'm asked
23. about this current war, I have trouble kind of, you know, isolating it from the multiple wars that
24. came before it, specifically from the war that began really here in Lebanon on October 8th,
25. 2023, the day after Al-Aqsa flood in Palestine. The war that began then was mostly concentrated
26. on the south of the country, but then it grew or intensified to include the rest of the country
27. in September of 2024. And that war that is referenced as the War of 60 Days saw the deaths
28. of around 4,000 people and, of course, I mean, multiple thousands of wounded. During this war,
29. of course, the top leadership of the Lebanese military resistance were assassinated. A new
30. invasion and occupation of South Lebanon began an occupation that is still happening And then there was a ceasefire that was called on November 27th of 2024 That was 60 days after the start of that particular war
31. That ceasefire, there was a two-month period from November till January
32. where there was an agreement that fire would be ceased
33. and that then at the end of which the Israeli army would withdraw from South Lebanon.
34. The fire was ceased by the Lebanese military resistance,
35. but on the Israeli side, they continued to attack Lebanon.
36. And at the end of the 60 days in January of 2025,
37. the Israelis did not withdraw from South Lebanon.
38. So the ceasefire continued, so-called ceasefire continued.
39. And during the ceasefire, of course, the Israelis continued to attack Lebanon almost daily.
40. They continued to occupy South Lebanon.
41. During the ceasefire, about 15,000 breaches were recorded that included drone attacks,
42. mortar attacks, you know, multiple forms of violence, detonations and complete demolitions
43. of villages in South Lebanon.
44. 37 villages were destroyed.
45. There were five occupation points that were then multiplied to nine.
46. So this was 15 months of so-called ceasefire that then ended, so to speak, on March 2nd, when the Lebanese resistance resumed fire.
47. So this was considered an unspeakable breach of the ceasefire by the Israelis, even though they had been breaching that ceasefire for 15 months and causing around 400, the deaths around 400 people and multiple injuries, etc., and unspoken amounts of damage.
48. And so this is the war that we are in now.
49. The one that began on March 2nd, when the day after the Khamenei was assassinated in Iran,
50. the Lebanese resistance, who nobody knew if they were completely defeated and incapable of resistance action anymore,
51. whether they would even be able to do anything.
52. They responded by shooting a couple of mortars over the border.
53. and this basically was the start of the war
54. because the Israelis had immediately responded
55. by pounding the Dahye, which is a part of Beirut,
56. the southern part of Beirut,
57. where about a million people live.
58. And the war proceeded at a pretty dramatic pace since then.
59. On that night, Israel called for the evacuation
60. of about 30 villages in the south.
61. So there was a terrible exodus of people in the middle of the night. I was actually in touch with my friends in some of those villages. They were just, you know, sitting in their villages and really not expecting anything. But then Avichai Adrai, the spokesperson of the Israeli army, issued the list of villages and everybody ran.
62. So that was the first wave of exodus. The next day, they expanded their evacuation orders to over 100 villages. And then they decided that the Litani, basically south of Litani, needed to be evacuated.
63. And then the day after that, they said that the Dahi needed to be evacuated.
64. So you had massive amounts of people pushing into Beirut city, into Saida, into parts of
65. the country that they assumed would be safer and out of the red zones of Israeli attack And so you had a displacement move of about 1 million people And this is in a country of about 6 million people So maybe one out of
66. every three to five people in Lebanon is a displaced person and, of course, living where
67. they can. It was pretty, it was pretty dire. I was here for the for the whole for the whole war.
68. The vision, I mean, the images and the scenes of people, you know, living on the streets that one
69. season, the, you know, reported on the media, are all too real. Entire families displaced,
70. you know, multi multi generational families with their pets as well. You know, living out of their
71. cars and in tents and on mattresses on the sidewalk. This is a very cold and late winter
72. for Lebanon. It was very cold. It was very wet. There were lashing rainstorms, extraordinary
73. suffering for people who are already suffering and suffering for so long.
74. The feel for many here, there's a sense in which this is kind of like the final war.
75. So there's a real sense in which that this is a confrontation that we need to withstand
76. in order to be able to continue to be.
77. It's an existential war.
78. Many people fear that if they do not make this stand for land and for dignity,
79. that after this, there will be no tomorrow,
80. meaning that we will live under the boot of Israeli domination
81. and follow the format of the devastation, of the genocide,
82. of the kinds of violence that is ordinary and everyday
83. and utterly unbearable in Palestine.
84. The erasure of villages, the displacements of people
85. who can never return to their homes,
86. the overwriting of worlds, of histories.
87. These are the kinds of fears that people have will materialize
88. if Israel was allowed to do what it wants.
89. And indeed, what we're seeing right now,
90. so, I mean, we had 45 days of war,
91. starting from March 2nd,
92. and we are now like in a brief period of so-called ceasefire.
93. I mean, fire has really not ceased.
94. I mean, people are beginning to recognize
95. that these ceasefires are a blanket,
96. a sort of a way to cover over
97. basically the machinations of the Israeli war machine
98. in South Lebanon.
99. So currently in South Lebanon,
100. There's a massive, massive machinery of destruction that is underway. Entire villages, not even villages, I mean, we call them villages, but some of those are really huge and historic towns like Binti Jbeil that basically there's nothing left standing.
101. they're uprooting desecrating cemeteries they're uprooting orchards they're destroying homes
102. they're destroying roads they're destroying water i mean there's no there's no capacity
103. now to maintain life to live right in these places right now um and to see this to know
104. that this is happening while we're sitting here in our homes um and uh and really like what can
105. i mean of course there's a lot that can be done and there's a lot that is being done by those who
106. have the ability to do it. But it's just, I mean, it's mind blowing to just, you know, be here as a
107. person, a Lebanese person, a person who has, you know, loved and lived for the South their whole
108. life to see and to know what is being destroyed It feels very everyone is exhausted Everyone is very worried Our government right now the Lebanese government our president and our prime minister
109. are basically towing the Israeli-American line,
110. which feels extraordinarily painful to all of us Lebanese
111. who will never be represented by those goons.
112. To see them, you know, going, I mean, sending,
113. and doing these charades in Washington.
114. A few days ago, there was a meeting between the Israeli
115. and the Lebanese ambassador in Washington,
116. the presence of Marco Rubio.
117. For many people, just to see the Lebanese flag side by side
118. with the Israeli flag felt like physical pain
119. because we have lived a really, really painful reality
120. with this relentless and aggressive neighbor for, you know, since 1948.
121. We've suffered invasions and occupations and, you know, bombardments and massacres ongoing, right?
122. So it's not like we just, we don't like them.
123. We don't get along, right?
124. It's a really violent relationship.
125. And it's one that we have been really suffering with the utmost kind of capacity for dignity
126. that Lebanese, you know, really have.
127. So there's a real sense of we need to stand here and fight
128. because if we do not, we fear what might come after that.
129. And there has been a movement,
130. this is not, didn't just start with this war recently,
131. to disarm Hezbollah.
132. There was a vote taken many years ago
133. and some of other entities disarmed Hezbollah did not.
134. And there's a movement now towards Lebanon's political neutrality.
135. Does a weakened Hezbollah make this possible?
136. And what will it mean for the region if Lebanon is neutral,
137. if it makes sort of agreement with Israel to be neutral?
138. Look, I mean, we've seen other examples of Arab states
139. that have so-called normalized with Israel.
140. And I mean, you had the first to do this was Egypt,
141. and then there was Jordan,
142. and then there were the Oslo Accords of the Palestinians.
143. And each of those stories is a story of,
144. I mean, the Oslo Accords are a devastating,
145. you know, sort of aftermath.
146. But the story of Egypt and of Jordan
147. is basically of an authoritarian state
148. at the level of the state
149. orchestrating, you know, a normalizing agreement, you know, with a state that they were previously
150. mortal enemies with or existential enemies with, right? And sort of, you know, this was what the
151. state decided. The state has a very, you know, contentious relationship to its people. And the
152. majority of the people did not accept this normalization. Nobody embraced it or understood
153. it or was able in any way, you know, to normalize with an aggressor and with an entity that is in
154. the midst of our region and murdering our people, right? So if you talk to your average Egyptian,
155. they will, you know, on the one hand say, you know, the state did this, this has nothing to do with me,
156. and I don't accept that. I'm less familiar with Jordanians and I don't really know how,
157. and I don't know how they relate to their leadership and I'm sure that there's a lot
158. lot of differences. But I lived in Egypt for a long time. So I can speak for you. I can speak
159. for what most Egyptians I know say. So I think in Lebanon, I mean, if we were to go in this direction,
160. which many people can't even imagine, even though there does seem to be quite, I mean,
161. there seem to be some parts of Lebanese society that seem to think that that's the best way to go.
162. and I think most people just kind of want to get past wars.
163. This is pretty much, I think, what most of their incentive is.
164. To get past wars, one, to get rich maybe is also another big incentive.
165. But if they want to do that, they have a really wrong idea of who they're dealing with.
166. Hezbollah is misunderstood and vilified in the sort of racist terms of the global north or the west.
167. Hezbollah is a resistance organization, a grassroots resistance organization that came out of the many bloody wars and occupations that Israel committed in Lebanon.
168. They grew out of the Lebanese, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the occupation, which lasted until 1985 in Abt al-Sayda, which is my hometown.
169. And that lasted until May 2000 in the borderlands.
170. and Hezbollah didn't come out of nowhere
171. before that there were many resistance organizations
172. that basically were fighting Israel
173. the Palestinians, namely the Palestinians
174. Hezbollah came in the aftermath of the
175. Palestinian
176. groups being expelled from Lebanon
177. during the 82 invasion
178. so I don't know
179. if the state wants to do this
180. there's a possibility that there might be
181. internal discord in Lebanon
182. a very high possibility of that
183. yes indeed
184. And you are listening to Radio Antifada on independent and listener-sponsored KPFK, 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 93.7 FM San Diego, and streaming live on kpfk.org.
185. I'm Ankina Antaram. My co-host is Misha Chowdhury.
186. And we are discussing Lebanon with our guest, Munira Khayat.
187. so monita your book a landscape of war ecologies of resistance and survival in south lebanon
188. examines ecologies of resistance in a world of perennial warfare and you published this in
189. 2022 um four very long years ago can you talk a little bit more about how you are seeing these
190. ecologies of resistance hold up or show up in this moment of really acute violence
191. Yeah, thanks for that question. So my book was written in the aftermath of the 2006 war,
192. Israeli war on Lebanon. This war was another devastating Israeli war. I mean, to just begin
193. to count the wars and the amount of devastation that Israel has wrought on Lebanon, one would be
194. counting for a long time. But there've been about just, let's just say seven invasions so far,
195. just to give you just one smaller number.
196. But the 2006 war was a brutal assault on Lebanon
197. in which the southern border villages,
198. I mean the south actually, south of the Litani,
199. and the southern suburbs were practically flattened.
200. About 1,500 people were killed, multiple wounded,
201. multiple thousands wounded, and of course,
202. massive amounts of damages.
203. this book was
204. researched in the aftermath of that
205. at the end of that war as opposed to this war this war is the one that I mean we now in sort of the second installment of After the war ended the Lebanese I mean and they do this all the time
206. the moment the war ends, people rush back to their homes. So this book was researched during this
207. rush of return, of rebuilding, of sort of reviving, you know, all these kinds of happy rewords that
208. we're unable to realize right now. And at the time, I, you know, I grew up in Lebanon during
209. the Lebanese war, which lasted from 1975 until 1919, of course, presumably, you know, sort of
210. lasted in a more latent sense after that. And I wanted to write about war. But I, you know,
211. I thought, where would I write it except in South Lebanon, which is a place that has lived war since
212. 1948 and continued to live under occupation and war until 2000. And in 2006, there was a return
213. to war. So I didn't want to write about war in the way in which the global North kind of thinks
214. about war. War is kind of like, you know, rubble and missiles and people dying in dismemberment.
215. Of course, this is absolutely what war is largely about in many ways. But also war is about trying
216. to live, right? Because many people have no exit, live in wars and try to find ways in which to live
217. within them. And so I focused really on the vital ecologies and the ways in which people kind of
218. made life within unlivable circumstances. And so I really was, you know, South Lebanon is a beautiful,
219. fertile agricultural borderland, where people rely on tobacco in order to, you know, make a
220. cash income because they farm it for the Lebanese state monopoly. They rely on goats, because goats
221. can walk through minefields because they don't trigger mines. And they also rely on their olives,
222. which basically provide all forms of really good sustenance and income for people who live there.
223. There are other forms of farming, of course, of systems farming that people rely on in order to
224. provide sustenance for themselves over the seasons. So I noticed that this was actually,
225. below the sort of level of resistance that we think about when we think about military
226. confrontations, like men with guns shooting each other. There's a layer in which people who are
227. resisting by just living. And this is a really important arena of resistance that needs to be
228. highlighted because a majority of people in the world who are living in war are resisting this
229. way. It's not the men with guns who are resisting. And the men with guns are usually rooted in the
230. communities, right? They're from the communities that are actually living in these worlds.
231. And they're actually successful as fighters because they are of those worlds, right?
232. So, I mean, the famous dictum, you know, of the guerrilla fighter having to, you know,
233. should the guerrilla fighter has to move through the people like the fish moves through the
234. sea, right, is an important one.
235. And so for me, those resistant ecologies were really key.
236. Now, in the 15 months so-called ceasefire that, you know, we just, you know, saw the
237. end of on March 2nd, our military resistance was presumably dead, right? Nobody really knew what
238. had happened, but we presumed that it was over because they killed all their leadership during
239. the last round of fighting. And so the only thing that was really left were the people.
240. And those people basically rushed back to their villages when the war ended, but they were not
241. allowed back into their villages. And no life was allowed back into those villages. And those
242. villages were then subsequently methodically destroyed. The village that I did fieldwork in,
243. and that centers my book illuminates you know the pages of my book with so much life and love is gone It was blown up on October 20th 2024 And it was blown up boom in a big pillow of smoke And you hear the Israeli soldiers cackling on the video that they took of that detonation
244. And this is just one small village amidst much more.
245. And now they're proceeding to destroy even more.
246. I don't know what the count is now of destroyed villages, but it was around 37 villages last war.
247. so now
248. the resistance ecology that I wrote about in my book
249. came basically in the cross
250. hairs of the war machine
251. that's what the war machine wanted to destroy
252. that's what the war machine wants to eliminate
253. because the war machine cannot deal with
254. any form of resistance towards it
255. and resistance here is life
256. life itself is what the war machine
257. wants to eliminate
258. in order to eliminate all
259. opposition to its desires
260. to control and to
261. consume and to occupy and to expand. And I mean, I'm proud to say that those resistance ecologies
262. really withstood a lot. And right now, it's an open question whether they'll be able to
263. resurge in the aftermath of the massive amounts of destruction that are underway as we speak
264. right now. It's a truly apocalyptic moment. It's remarkable what those war machines are being
265. allowed to do under the watch of the whole world. South Lebanon is being underreported. It is a
266. devastating reality that we are living through to just see the rubble of those ancient and
267. beautiful villages. I mean, this is a multi-religious, you know, ancient land, right,
268. where the monotheistic, you know, faiths were born,
269. where, you know, the sort of the pagan traditions
270. even still resonate in the traditions of the land,
271. where we have, you know, Phoenician ruins
272. and we have Roman ruins
273. and we have gorgeous layers of human history.
274. Even Jewish shrines that are being destroyed
275. by the Israeli army.
276. It's mind-blowing.
277. Thousands of years of history are going,
278. are being turned to dust
279. because of the desires of these expansionist, hubristic, greedy, and murderous settler, colonial, imperial, you know, monsters.
280. What can I say?
281. And, you know, unfortunately, we are short on time.
282. So we want to ask you, though, before we let you go, how can people here help the displaced in Lebanon?
283. Well, for example, my sisters and I have a fundraiser and we've managed to raise quite a nice amount of funds that we are basically giving to mutual aid efforts, families that we know.
284. I mean, in my mom's house alone, we have about 30 people who are living with us, about five or six families.
285. I mean, one thing is to donate.
286. The other is also to advocate, you know, for us and against war with the systems that actually support, you know, financially support these, you know, these machineries of destruction.
287. There's a lot to be done.
288. I mean, we shouldn't only be standing in the barrel, you know, facing the barrel of a gun.
289. I mean, many, many more people in, you know, the heart of empire should be standing up to, you know, the governments that actually wage those monstrous wars.
290. So I always say in my you know my work on war that actually war is never as far as you think it is It also very close by And you you know even though you living at a distance and your day life is a bit different
291. from what you perceive the life of people in war to be,
292. there's a lot that can be done.
293. So much more can be done.
294. And not just symbolic action.
295. Like there needs to be more obstructionist action, honestly.
296. That's the way that I think of it.
297. Thank you, Munira Hayat.
298. Thank you so much.
299. Munira Hayat is an anthropologist and professor at NYU,
300. Abu Dhabi, whose research revolves around life in war, intimate genealogies of empire,
301. and theories from the South. How do we remember victims of genocide? We speak with a Sri Lankan
302. poet, Shah Shrivat, who honors the lives taken in the Tamil genocide that took place
303. during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Stay with us.
304. Welcome back to Radio Intifada. I am Rana Sharif.
305. Shash Trivet wants to make sure we remember the victims of the Tamil genocide.
306. By naming names, she brings back to life those killed, silenced, their bodies violently decimated.
307. She reminds us that during and after genocide, it is not just the bodies that are violated, but language as well.
308. Misha Chowdhury and Antony Antaram host.
309. Shash Trivet is a poet, critic, and a translator of Tamil poetry into English.
310. Born in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, she escaped the civil war and now lives in the UK.
311. In addition to her most recent book, The Naming of Names, she co-edited out of Sri Lanka, Tamil, Sinhala and English poetry from Sri Lanka and its diasporas.
312. Today, Shash joins us in honor of Genocide Awareness Month to talk about her book, The Naming of Names.
313. Thank you so much for being here, Shash.
314. Thank you very much for inviting me.
315. Hello, Shash. Thank you for joining us.
316. The book begins with Black July. What is this event, the event this book is based on, and why did you start with it?
317. So Black July was the nominal start of the Sri Lankan civil war, which lasted for 26 years.
318. In 1981, there was a pogrom against the Tamil population in Colombo, in the capital of Sri Lanka, which was coordinated by the state.
319. people looted and killed tamil people when they came across them they had census records in their
320. hands so they knew which were the tamil houses they burnt tamil houses they killed the people
321. in there and that was in retaliation for some of the events that were taking place in the north of
322. sri lanka where the tamil tigers were a nascent rebel group at that time they weren't the
323. organization they would end up being was one of the organizations of sort of freedom fighters who
324. were trying to fight for a free land for the tamil people in sri lanka so in retaliation for some
325. events that happened in the north there was there was rioting um in colombo i think in the book
326. um i mentioned i'm so fish with with figures but um more than 2 000 tamils were murdered
327. 150,000 were made homeless
328. and it sort of
329. led to the civil war
330. this was in July 19
331. In 83, I started with this poem because when I write, I sort of don't tend to write lots of poems and then try and put them together into a book.
332. I sort of have an idea for a book and then I write the poem.
333. So it's sort of like writing a work of fiction, a sort of prose.
334. But I always thought that I was going to start with Black July.
335. And so that's what I did. And this was something my editor talked to me about as well.
336. because it's not the most memorable of poems to start with.
337. It's not the strongest poem in the book,
338. which is what you'd normally start a collection with.
339. But I wanted to start with Black July because it was so horrific.
340. I mean, the Tamils had suffered since independence, really, 1948,
341. that suffered discrimination and various pogroms.
342. But this was so horrific that I wanted to start with that.
343. And it did start the Civil War.
344. And the book is about the Civil War. And I used accounts of the massacres to to gather names because it's the pity of the loss of names and the loss of heritage and loss of histories when people die.
345. And I I hate the word collateral damage. You know that I think since the Gaza war, people are using it less and less, which I'm thankful for.
346. But during the Civil War in Sri Lanka, it was bandied around so much because people aren't collateral.
347. People are human beings.
348. You know, they're somebody's loved ones.
349. And the loss of names should mean something.
350. And I often think that army soldiers who go around killing civilians, if they were to etch the names of the people they had killed on their skin and carried it with them for the rest of their lives,
351. they would feel the weight of the loss of these lives on them it will bear them down and they will
352. they would not be able to walk upright just for the weight of of suffering and guilt and and the
353. waste and so I wanted to memorize these names in this book absolutely so Black July that was 43
354. three years ago, just about. Can you give a little bit of context as to how that loss and that grief
355. has kind of metastasized since the Sri Lankan Civil War? Well, in a way, it's difficult because
356. the Civil War over 26 years had many milestones that people placed themselves against. And the
357. weight of what they carried depends on where they were, depending on these milestones. Black July
358. It stands out because it was the first major event.
359. And we all remember I was 10.
360. I was, no, I was nine in July.
361. I remember several Tamil people from Colombo,
362. friends of the families just arriving with no food, no clothes, you know, to our house.
363. Our house was full of people who had no place to live.
364. And as a child being told, you be quiet, you do not talk to them,
365. you stay out of sight, you don't bother them, you know,
366. they might be your favourite uncle, but you do not talk to them right now
367. because they're suffering.
368. And that's when you see, we saw suffering in the north arrive on our doorsteps,
369. even though we were dealing with their army there at that time,
370. but it wasn't really aimed at civilians as such.
371. And it was horrific.
372. and I think your question was why is it so significant I don know I think since then the Muley the end of the Civil War in 2009
373. I think that eclipses Black July, because the end was just as, if not more horrific than the beginning of the war.
374. So at various points, various atrocities have happened and people do.
375. we're very good at commemorating we're a people who are we're well well versed in commemorating
376. and remembering that's all we have left really we carry it with us and uh is that why you decided
377. to have this book be in the book of naming the names you could have written it in so many ways
378. and that's what you chose to do.
379. Yes.
380. I was caught up in the war in a horrific way
381. and I was meant to write,
382. I was going to write about that,
383. but I'm not very good at writing about myself.
384. So I sort of put it aside a bit
385. and I think that's going to be the next book.
386. But there was this memorial,
387. I'm reading the Tamil Guardian
388. and there was this massacre in,
389. I think it was 2006 in a place called Senchole
390. where there was a group of school,
391. there's a gathering of schoolgirls who were being taught leadership things,
392. sort of guides, you know, sort of young 16 to 18 year olds on a sort of weekend camp.
393. And they were bombed by the Sri Lankan Air Force and 61 schoolgirls were killed.
394. And there was a memorial for these schoolgirls with their names listed.
395. And I sort of was looking at this list of names
396. and I was noticing surnames that were the same.
397. So they were sisters or cousins.
398. There was no biographical details.
399. There was just the name and the age.
400. And I could start picking out relationships,
401. you know, where they were from,
402. you know, what sort of school they'd gone to.
403. And there was a wealth of stories held in names
404. and that was really the catalyst for writing this book.
405. And from there, I started reading other accounts of the massacre,
406. mainly compiled by the Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights,
407. which is attached to Jaffna University,
408. and they would go to each massacre site and gather names
409. and write down what happened, who survived, who died.
410. So I read their reports and started gathering names, families,
411. seeing where families had died, and then I couldn't use all my names,
412. but I use as many as I could in the book.
413. On that note, we would love to hear some of your poems from the naming of names.
414. Sure. I thought I'd read one of my...
415. There are several poems in the book in which I translate the Tamil names
416. so that you get an idea of what they mean in English.
417. And from that, maybe have a meaning of their lives.
418. I don't know the people who I've named
419. but when you hear little boys called Sivaratnam, a child of light
420. you can sort of imagine a little boy with a bright smile running around
421. so this poem is called These Were Their Names
422. What does it feel like to sound these half-used names of half-lived lives?
423. Arul, Lam, Palam, a golden blessing
424. Arul Muganathan a man with a wondrous face Arunachalam a hill of intense fire Asokan was to live a life without sorrow
425. Bhavani was to be a giver of life.
426. Gita carried the music of the gods in her hair.
427. And so did Ragini.
428. Yasoda was a gift from God.
429. Kavitha, a poem.
430. Hiryalini was a woman in love.
431. Nesadurai, a man filled with love.
432. Chinithambi was a little boy made of sugar.
433. Sivaratnam, a child of light.
434. So many names bound by a thousand soft blessings.
435. So many names turned to dust and ash.
436. Balasundaram was a beautiful child.
437. Darshini, a beautiful offering.
438. which I can read another one straight away
439. And I will ask you to read one at the end, too.
440. Okay. Well, this poem is called Nandikaral Lagoon.
441. The civil war ended by the banks of this lagoon, where the UN estimates that between 40,000 to 70,000 people were killed.
442. Similar to what happened in Gaza, people were corralled into this narrow stretch of land stuck between a lagoon on one side and the sea on the other, where they were shelled by the Sri Lankan army.
443. And when they tried to run away, they were shot by the Tamil Tigers.
444. So they were caught between both.
445. And it was horrific.
446. Nandi Karel Lagoon
447. The waters of the lagoon were brackish with the sweat and tears of twenty-six years.
448. Every eye, every name and story which began as a caress and ended with a sob,
449. made its way in trickles to the lagoon shore.
450. Here the salty lives pooled, filled the mouths of those who swam in them,
451. with bitterness, tried to stop their hearts.
452. Sorrow made a mirror lake of longing in which people found themselves.
453. Sorrow made a peephole offering glimpses of forgotten laughter.
454. Sorrow chronicled a bloody end as the sun dripped fire, emptying itself.
455. come immortal waters
456. Nandini
457. plait my hair with your sodden breastbones
458. and rib cages
459. thank you Sash
460. so profound, beautiful and devastating
461. at the same time
462. so your book is in four parts
463. can you talk about the parts
464. why did you have it that way
465. why did you divide it into the four parts
466. and how do they complete the story of war
467. I think mainly, my main point was to break up the heaviness of the war poems, because readers,
468. nobody can cope with just you know 90 pages of horror and sorrow So I start with the war in Sri Lanka which is the first part
469. And then I move to the second part, which is more about immigration and how we carry our names to new countries and what we do with them.
470. So that gives the readers a bit of a break from war.
471. and then the third part is about women
472. women who were denied names
473. or women who've survived through history
474. with names
475. there's a poem about Noah's wife
476. and how she's just known as Noah's wife
477. we've forgotten her name
478. so I tracked how she was called through history
479. all the names she was called by
480. but now in English she's just Mrs Noah
481. and then I returned to the war at the end
482. but as looking at people dealing with the war now
483. after the war's finished.
484. And going all through that is the refrain of names
485. and what we do with them.
486. You are listening to Radio Indefada
487. on independent and listener-sponsored KPFK.
488. That's 90.7 FM in Los Angeles,
489. 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara,
490. and 93.7 FM in San Diego,
491. as well as streaming live on kpfk.org.
492. I'm Misha Chowdhury,
493. And today, myself and my co-host, Anikinay Andaram, are joined by Shosh Trivet, Sri Lankan-born and UK-based poet and author of The Naming of Names.
494. In honor of Genocide Awareness Month, we are talking to Shosh about how her book honors the lives lost in the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka.
495. I'm still just so struck by that first poem that you read and the way that you kind of give life to names that were found through these sterilized documents of like, here's a list of names and ages of people.
496. certainly something that feels especially resonant having watched
497. just like the names of the deceased
498. grow and grow the past couple of years
499. and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit to the work that
500. the Name Makeup Names does to kind of
501. give voice
502. to Tamil people in Sri Lanka but
503. specifically through the Tamil language? And how is the loss of language also another layer of the
504. violence? Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting. It's so interesting to talk about language,
505. because there are so many, I mean, the Tamil experience is not a monolithic experience.
506. You know, there are so many people who suffered through the war and stayed in Sri Lanka. There's
507. so many people who suffered through the war and left. There's so many people who left before the
508. suffering began but felt the loss of a homeland and suffered while they were away from their
509. homeland um and it's really hard i mean i can't talk about i can't talk for the people who are in
510. sri lanka now i can only speak for myself and my relationship with the tamil language has always
511. been fraught. It's, it's, I won't speak it. I mean, I translate, I'm fluent, I read, I
512. understand. But I can't actually physically speak it. I mean, I cannot say the words,
513. my throat just closes. And I think it's, I haven't actually examined that aspect of what
514. my trauma is as yet. But I think it's a reaction to when with the Indian Army being there, we were
515. told not to speak Tamil and we sort of switched to Hindi and English and try and make friends
516. with these people who are killing us. And Tamil was seen as such a dangerous thing to
517. outwardly express, to carry on your bodies or on your faces or whatever. We had to dress
518. differently. And since I left Sri Lanka, I refused, I refused to speak for about six months.
519. And then when I did start speaking, I spoke in English and that was it. I wouldn't speak Tamil again. And I still don't speak Tamil. So I have so many people I know in this country who really mourn the loss of their mother tongue because they were born here from Tamil refugees.
520. And it's really heartening when you sort of see on Instagram, you know, young people learning the language again, because I do think I am not completely whole because I don't speak my language.
521. I do think that I feel it within myself.
522. And it's always it's empowering to feel your life is full and round and complete by speaking your mother tongue.
523. at the same time I don't look down on anyone who doesn't you know it's it's a language it's more
524. about how we communicate with each other however we do it whether we do it through dance or song
525. whether we do it through different languages whether we do it just through gestures
526. a smile or a hug that's what's important really I think when we were doing our book the
527. out of Sri Lanka, the anthology, what we realised is that Tamil people and Sinhala people don't know each other's languages.
528. I mean, we live in this very small island, but there is no cross translation going on.
529. There's Sinhala people don't know Tamil. Tamil people know some Sinhala, but really they don't.
530. I mean, I was never taught Sinhala at school.
531. until there's dialogue between both people there's not going to be a meeting of minds or hearts
532. really yeah and so language is so important and such i'm interested in the tyrant in your book
533. at a time wars are waging and thousands are killed the tyrants are on our mind i want to
534. quote from your poem, you say, he is the man you should never invite to dinner. He is the man you
535. should never share a joke with. He is not a man you should ever criticize. He also writes, he can
536. transform commas and semicolons into nooses, full stops, and exclamation marks into gravestones.
537. That is I think so fascinating those comparisons Now talk about how the violence that is done to and with language how does that become the violence and sort of like the desecration of language Yeah And is the loss of language also some kind of violence Oh yes absolutely I think another poem I wrote
538. because they outlawed Tamil. In 1956, there was the Sinhala Only Act, which outlawed Tamil. When
539. the British left, they said there were three official languages, English, Sinhala and Tamil.
540. and the Sinhala government tried to outlaw Tamil
541. and then people protested and paid with their blood
542. for the language to exist.
543. I'm very, I mean, when I was writing that poem,
544. I was thinking of all the journalists,
545. Tamil journalists who had been killed,
546. assassinated for writing the truth.
547. The civil war was conducted under a blanket of censorship
548. and repression, really,
549. and people weren't allowed to say what was happening.
550. And there's another poem in the book where I compare a massacre that happened
551. that was reported in the same newspaper, one day apart,
552. but two completely different stories were reported.
553. The first one by Reuters, which was published in the newspaper,
554. which outlines the massacre.
555. The second one by a Sinhala journalist,
556. where the whole the civilians had disappeared and they'd become sea tigers and the the navy
557. hadn't massacred people they'd they'd saved um the waterways it was it's absolutely ridiculous
558. how people twist and um play with language for their own purposes and it's happening now we see
559. it all the time we see it with trump and his madness and i feel a sense of futility that
560. it's got to the stage where we can't actually and it happened during the gaza wars as well
561. say no actually why can't i use my language to refute what you are saying which i know is a lie
562. but at all points if you don't have power the powerless lose access not just to the airways or
563. means of communication but to language itself to to be heard um and it takes poets and writers
564. and people who are safe to be able to speak for the people who can't um and that was one thing
565. that used to that upset a lot of tamil poets in the 1980s when the civil war started because
566. they felt their colleagues in the south the sinhala poets were not speaking up when they
567. could have done and they felt
568. abandoned. So
569. in a way, is it a violence,
570. a loss of language as a violence?
571. Yes.
572. There is a
573. whole Sinhalization of
574. Tamil lands taking place
575. at the moment in Sri Lanka
576. where street signs have Sinhala
577. writing above Tamil writing The military are so involved in schools And the building of Buddhist temples on Hindu land
578. people have been dispossessed of their land
579. and the army and navy have taken it over.
580. Every time we lose our rooting with the soil,
581. we lose our heritage.
582. and every time you remove us from the soil,
583. we lose our language.
584. With each step, we step away from our motherland.
585. And, yeah, I think there's a lot of people
586. who are working hard to keep Tamil alive
587. and it is a vibrant, obviously, a vibrant language
588. that is an ancient language that's still being spoken.
589. It's a living language and it won't disappear
590. no matter what wars are passed to try and suppress it, I think.
591. So we are almost out of time, but would you do us the honour of reading one more poem?
592. Sure. There's a poem. It's basically when I was going through the reports of massacres,
593. I also noted down ways in which Tamil people were killed.
594. So this is a list poem just listing all the ways that I found that Tamil people were disposed of.
595. It's called How to Dispose of Tabels.
596. 6. You can burn them in forests, you can burn them in fields, place them in tires and burn them in the streets.
597. 7. Keep a plentiful supply of kerosene and tar for use in such maneuvers.
598. 8. Throw bodies out of helicopters over jungles
599. 9. Give them spades, make them dig their own graves
600. 10. Make them lie down on the road, drive tanks over them
601. 11. Babies are easily dispatched under hop-nailed boots
602. or by slicing open a pregnant belly
603. 12. Parade able-bodied Tamil men through a Sinhala village.
604. Announce that they are LTTE cadres.
605. When you shoot them your witnesses will swear to the death of combatants 13 Chop off their heads and dump them into the sea no face no name no crime
606. 14. also chop off their hands 15. cluster bombs and claremore mines make your job much easier
607. 16. Wells are usefully located in each garden, also usefully deep
608. 17. Septic tanks too make useful disposal places
609. 18. Use Sinhala prisoners, offer them an amnesty, offer them pay per corpse
610. 19. Remove clothing before disposing bodies. Too many skeletons are identified by them.
611. 20. Use emergency resolution powers to prevent post-mortems. No identification, no accusation,
612. no name, no crime. Thank you. Thank you very much.
613. Thank you so much, Shash Trivet. Shash's book, The Naming of Names, is available wherever you can find books.
614. Thank you.
615. Shash Trivet is a poet, critic, and a translator of Tamil poetry into English.
616. Born in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, she escaped the Civil War and now lives in the UK.
617. In addition to her most recent book, The Naming of Names, she co-edited out of Sri Lanka, Tamil, Sinhala, and English poetry from Sri Lanka and its diaspora.
618. Thank you for listening to Radio Ensefada, produced by the Swanda Region Radio Collective and available to you weekly online at kpfk.org. Remember, while we are temporarily off air, please tune in weekly here on kpfk.org to keep up with Radio Ensefada. Also, our shows are available as podcasts on Spotify, Podchaser, Podcast Addict, and Podbean.
619. Our thanks to Anke Antanom for post-production.
620. My name is Rana Sharif, signing off.
621. Remember, while we are temporarily off air, you can find us here on kpfk.org.
622. Thank you.