Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

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1. #1 in 3 years ago by Lucia

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   Crystal clear

   It was delightful to be present in this conference. When Nawal el Saadawi entered the room someone said next to me: “She has this Obi-Wan Kenobi kind of thing” and I had to laugh. But It was true, she looked wise, like a wise witch on a fairy tale .
   She talked about many things with the same message on the background: “We shouldn’t be glorifying the difference, but pay attention to what we have in common”. “We” as referring to cultures, classes, genders, etc… This confused me in the beginning, because I thought: “Well, that will be kind of boring, If we will be all the time focused on being equal to each other” but while she explained herself better (it was anyway a really short speech, no time for nuance) I understood that what she was suggesting is that only once you know, really understand how equal you are to anybody next to you, rich, poor, educated or not , man, woman, child, ancient, muslim, Christian, powerful or defenseless… only then you will stop being afraid of the difference, and start enjoying it.
   At least that was what I understood.

   Something else is that a certain point when she was talking I surprised myself thinking:” Well, yeah, we all know that, what she is saying is so simple”. And then right after that another thought stroked me: “Yeah, well, maybe we all here in this little tiny room know this, but this woman has the courage to say this same words wherever she is, to whoever would be listening. And in most of the rest of the world what she is saying can put your personal security in danger. In big parts of the world the people have never listened to things like she is now saying, in part because no one dares to talk about it”.
   That blow me up. So crystal clear it was.

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