The Silence Issue

THE SILENCE ISSUE vo l .14 ΦM A G A Z I N E

MAGAZINE Φ

THE Silence ISSUE VOLUME 14

Throughout time silence has been both the canvas and the paintbrush, the muse and the masterpiece. From the resounding quiet of an empty page, to the serene hush of a bustling library, silence has woven itself into the very fabric of our living, breathing tapestry of life. In the pages of this issue, our contributors have fearlessly dived into the depths of silence, unearthing hidden treasures and inviting us to ponder the quiet spaces that define our lives. Ironically given our theme, this will be the last time you will be hearing from me as the founding editor. After five extraordinary years of curating the wonders within Phi Magazine, it is time for me to bid you farewell. And as I step away from this cherished role, I hand over to our long time editor Julie. In her capable hands, I have no doubt that its future will be boundless and beautiful. I can’t believe how far we’ve come. And there are so many people to thank. To all the brilliant minds and skilled hands that have edited our pages, I extend my heartfelt gratitude. To our brilliant writers, whose words danced across the blank canvas and found their voice in the silence, thank you for sharing your thoughts, dreams, and occasional hilarity. To our tireless artists, thank you for breathing life into our pages. To our readers, who have picked up Phi time and time again, thank you for your unwavering support and for sharing in our reverence for creativity, culture and curiosity. Your open minds have been the fuel that propelled us forward, and for that, we are eternally grateful. With a twinkle in my eye, I bid you farewell, dear readers. May the quiet moments between the noise lead you to untold adventures, unexplored dimensions, and that quiet space where creativity blooms. CHIARA ZUCCHELLI EDITOR IN CHIEF DEAR READERS, The Silence Issue | Φ 2

The front and back covers for this issue were created by Leonor Almeida. For enquiries, and more of her work, see @quechata_ on Instagram. Art by Anna Papadopoulou 6 The Doublet by Bradley William Holder 7 8 White Tara by Namita Maria Herzl 11 12 13 Hush by Kesara Ariyapongpairoj 14 Unveiling Urban Landscapes by Matilde Pietrabissa, photography by Julie Uszpolewicz 15 Next to Youth by Somreeta Paul 17 18 In the Quiet, I Was Cured by Stephanie Ritzema, art by Sarah-June Brehm 20 Operation by Áron Gyenge, art by Emin Zargarian Art by Emin Zargarian / @dandy_emin 32 Louder Than Bombs by Julie Uszpolewicz 28 Photography by Serhii Tyaglovsky 30 31 25 Man with Candle by Fabian Kerj 36 39 Human Destruction by Josie Chaplow The Domestics by Kaj O'Connell 26 All Your Gentleness by Samuel Adrian, art by Wayan Chan 5 38 Speech Acts & Silencing the Past by Georgie Malone The Silencing of Leslie Harris by Barney Nuttall 24 42 40 Victim of Protocol by Conor Perry The Grave Tender by James Green Scene 1 Shot 1 Take 6 by Himangi Karumathil-Mokkilmadam, art by Sarah-June Brehm Photography by Yantong She Speaking of Which by Ekasmayi Naresh Photography by Joseph Chan Art by Anna Papadopoulou 46 43 The Bishop of California by VCK Lailah by Estelle Allen, with art by Estelle Allen 3 CONTENTS

The Silence Issue | Φ 4 ART by Wayan Chan

5 sitting, folded on the bedroom floor you have become so profoundly small (in all your enormity) I cup your face gently in my hands and it is as if I were to hold the whole of your being in my palm and your being is the whole of the world. the room aches with quiet and it is your quiet, or it is you that is the quiet a quiet that is close to deafening; still, I listen to the wings of the butterfly your eyes closed so softly my ears ring and in the small drawn folds of flesh at the corners of your mouth I become caught in the maelstrom of all your gentleness. I can but hear myself think, can barely put one word in front of the other as I long to make all the noise in the world but possess the power only for silence; I shall speak it with my fingers and listen well for still you fit in the palm of my hand even as you are the whole of the world. All Your Gentleness by Samuel Adrian

The Silence Issue | The Silence Issue | Φ Φ 66 ART by Anna Papadopoulou

7 Round the back end, Its low-carb kerb cliffed to cobblestone— The thing just now beginning to turn— The street, twilit by talk of summer, Stacks its white-washed sandstone tenements Against another entrance, or exit, we’ve lately taken. Colours are greyish but not unsaturated. The door is wide-mouthed yet close-lipped. Those leaving, for a fag or another pub, Kick it open so hard the handle strikes the other wall, Each time making more of a mark. To many, save the recently admitted, Daytime is a half-realised daydream. To the left, out past the park— Which will be, come midnight, the darkest place on earth— The university’s tallest and oldest building is felt but not seen. How lonesome to arrive when everybody else is fixing to go. by Bradley William Holder The Doublet 7

The Silence Issue | Φ 8 by Áron Gyenge Despite the fluorescent lights, the operating room carried a distinctive grimness to it which was only exaggerated by the sore smell of bleach and the gloomy weather pressing against the scene, making the windows bend inwards in anticipation. The grey cracks in the yellowish white ceramics run thin and tall on the walls. Stainless steel desks hosted a broad selection of cold precision tools, and dim medical screens obstructed even more. The patient was stripped naked. Their heavy body was floating on the purple sea of anaesthetics, attached to a cold, metal bed. Around the room in a similar setting but seemingly in deep sleep laid the friends of the patient. At least a dozen but maybe more of them. The patient saw the dark figure of the operator towering over them. It was the dragon in its lair, the psychopath in its psycho den, the ruler in a surgical gown, a pale blue disposable mob cap and facemask, armed with an inscrutable pair of goggles, ruling over docile bodies. The doctor was at work, silent, walking up and down, operating on others and the patient who was paralysed – too shocked and sedated – to turn their head to observe the process. Lying there, the patient could not make sense of all this and could not remember if they wanted the operation or if it was forced upon them. But eventually, it did not matter. They were sure that being there with friends and the doctor was disturbing. The scene felt so alien and ungrounded it made them nauseous. Their own consciousness felt like the gaze of a security camera projecting a visual narration of the horror of this surgical orgy, it was projecting it onto the screen of the patient’s mind. Consciousness was like an intruder, someone else invading the patient’s own head. To escape from this fever-dream-insanity, the patient tried to anchor themselves in the nearest shard of reality. They tried to reach out to the closest being which was the menace of the doctor. Were they sympathising with the doctor? Or at least trying? After all, the doctor was resembling them. The doctor too was human, must have had childhood memories, a family, opinions on things and have food that they dislike. But can you sympathise with a psychopathic villain? Deep down you have to be psychopathic yourself to do so. And what do two psychopaths have in common? Only the distance and apathy separating them. So, the doctor remained distant and offered no haven from the patient’s hellish visions. The goggles remained inscrutable on an invisible head floating high above the patient. “How long until this finishes?” “Do I feel pain?” “Why is everyone here?” “Am I losing blood?” “Is that cut deep?” “What if it is critical?” “Am I in pain?” The patient was opened up and exposed on that table. “Would this mean the doctor knows and understands me?”, the patient thought. Sinking their eyes deep in the flesh and inner parts of the other seemed like a promising start. At that moment the patient felt complex, and took pride in that someone had to go to med school to understand all that they were and that the doctor operated on them knowing that all this complexity is at stake. After all, it was possible to sympathise with psychopaths who knew us so well. (Somewhat) joyous, the patient’s eyes involuntarily tracked the cracks in the wall tiles that caged them and followed them through the ceiling, around the doctor’s head. Lost in thought and want, the patient seemed to have remembered waiting in the doctor’s office at the hospital a few days ago. It was a grey, pastel building; an old first-floor office in a timeworn city: «On the floor laid a faded persian carpet. The rosewood desk and bookcases gave a dark contrast to the block of golden rays piercing through the open window. By the desk, was an empty upholstered amboyna armchair. Its dark green fabric took on an opal quality as the light reflected on and back from its surroundings. Despite the buzzing amberness, the room was silent. Nested in the busy set, hung a dark birdcage from its post. In it, a little canary was flying from side-to-side clinging onto the wire cage – its rapidly flapping wings gently cut through the stillness. Light was playing around and the patient took a few steps closer to the cage, observing the delicate, greenish yellow animal.» OPERAT ON

9 only the doctor who would occasionally consider looking at the patient, laying open on the table. “It is nice to be open sometimes. It is nice to be vulnerable and embarrassing with others – but it is tricky to achieve.” The patient once tried to court someone they met online by revealing their diary. A diary that mainly consisted of reviews of B-rated horror movies. Creations of the mind as grotesque, brutal, awkward and cheap as the reality inspiring them. This diarying was all jolly good until The Human Centipede was to be logged. “The Human Centipede is great for checking one’s sado-masochistic tendencies – by one’s preferred index / position within the centipede – and one’s promiscuity – by one’s preferred number of centipedees. For my friends I would definitely be the last in line”, the patient thought. “Though true friendship requires a circular design. For that, one needs at least three people, each equally committed to every other person. Therefore, increasing the size of the centipede is exponentially difficult. I could not do it with all the people here.” Thought the patient, and directed a gaze of “Please put me at the back!” at the doctor, but they did not seem to pick the signal up. Alas, the rendezvous candidate did not pick up either. «…water was dripping into the cage. “A canary surely cannot fly or live underwater. But, it would not matter as it is impossible to fill up a cage with water – one needs aquariums for that.” Yet, water kept dripping into the cage as the bird rapidly flapped its wings and kept turning its head in anticipation. The patient felt uneasy and their heart was beating in their throat as they watched the drops creating ripples in the bottom tray of the cage. The water seemed deep and murky of a dark grey colour, its surface glowed silverly, broken by the dark, centric curves of its movement. It almost looked like a pool of mercury. A sense of dread that has only been creeping until now suddenly overcame the patient. As their gaze was skimming the face of the water, they spotted the canary trapped in it. The bird was beating fast with its wings and its fragile body spasmed urgently. The patient could see its beak above the liquid gasping for air as the animal was slowly drowning. They wanted to help but were unable to do anything. The bird’s expression distorted into a grimace familiar from religious works of art. Its head was turning red and its eyes were shut. Its eyes were shut really tight and it did not move anymore.» “Where am I?” “Will they wake up?” “Am I trapped?” “Is it cold or is it just the lights?” “Do I feel pain?” “When can I go?” “Am I in pain?” The patient tried to ask but was unable to open their mouth. The impossibility of speech yielded a desperate conclusion in them. Was it ever worth trying to communicate something that one feels so clearly and strikingly, and whether anybody understood this will not change the fact how obviously right these sentiments are. Maybe communication was even betraying one’s existence? Telling about feelings that are present yet fleeting; anchoring them in the memory of others but letting them slip away in life. “Here are around twenty friends. That’s twenty different versions of me”, thought the patient. “Ready to surface and collide under the pressure that I am here and am none of these versions – and what if they are all incompatible?! The fission will create enough energy to melt us all – maybe even the doctor’s goggles – and blow this place up.” «From somewhere, water was dripping into the cage…» But how can anyone connect to this world if even the act of opening up only achieves slow erosion of one’s existence – thought the patient. The outside seemed threatening. A bunch of people in deep sleep with a mad scientist circling around. Yet, it encompassed everything, even the patient. In fact, all these people made the patient through their various actions. For this, gratitude was never really expressed. “But maybe you cannot express gratitude for such things.” In the middle of it all was the operator waltzing from one table to the next, from side-to-side, end-to-end. “In this light, it is quite nice from the doctor trying to save us. I think.” It was admittedly hard to reason in such a strange setting. But it seemed that this setting, this life was not something to be understood. It simply was. The patient who was closest to their life tried to understand, grasp and define this thing in vain. It slipped away through their hands out into the very obscure outside that created the patient. “Maybe if my friends were awake and could see this… Yes, that would help.” But all these thoughts remained futile. The friends remained asleep and it was ART by Emin Zargarian

The Silence Issue | Φ 10 Warm waves of overwhelming distress washed through the patient and took control of them. Open on the operation table, they erratically sat up and started to scream. “WHY THE FUCK IS IT THAT EVERY TIME WE TRY TO GET TO SOMETHING WE JUST DESTROY IT?!” They looked for the doctor. “Why you had to have a canary caged?! You thought it was your privilege? To take something inferior, trap it, looking at it every day, studying it from the perspective of the superior man of learning?” The doctor was looking at them through the same inscrutable pair of goggles, expressionless behind the mask. “You could not even fucking save it! You destroyed it! And what the hell are you even doing here? Playing the same expert, playing the same superior role?! Sure, you are the only one who can save us. You are so special. So fucking doctor! It’s not cool!” The operator did not move. They stood in the same way, goggles directed at the patient. Silent. “Don’t just fucking look at me! Explain yourself!” And in those blind goggles, the patient suddenly realised themselves. Like the doctor, they tried to understand this thing: the patient. Trying to understand something, trying to fix something, carrying out an operation to make it right. And by doing so, making it alien, making it an object, making it external and making it inferior. The patient became distinct from themselves, different to what they were. And now they began realising it. The patient suddenly felt the icy touch of the gloves of the operator. This threw them off from their union. The gloves pulled them through a vortex of hazy lights, both cold and warm, and the sudden motion took off the invisible and immaterial weight that was laying on their chest this entire time. Light was drizzling through their lashes as they opened their eyelids. The patient woke up in a hospital bedroom. Still upset and breathing heavily, with exhausted teary eyes. It was a state of paralysing shock and self-sufficient relief. The mental images of recollection came in ever weakening waves until there was no more movement and no disturbance. Peace belonged to the patient now. It was little past breakfast time. Only the heavy breathing of the sick and the blunt whirring of kitchen trolleys followed by muted steps broke the silence. Outside, a gloomy brass atmosphere embraced everything with a warm spring rain as birds hastily scattered to find shelter. Without the fluorescent lights, the walls took on a pale brown shade and the cracks disappeared if one gazed at them long enough. ϕ

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The Silence Issue | Φ 12 WHITE TARA by Namita Maria Herzl This work was painted with menstrual blood.

13 The countless things we do to win over death, often ending up a victim – “all your life, nothing but a simple business arrangement,” my grandfather used to say – a man of his word, neither liked by his peers nor disrespected. Men in our family have always conceived of love as weakness. Silence had their hearts, those who traded clear skies for crow’s meat – it makes your blood all noisy, sends a lone shiver down the spine. Years come and go – who cares how long your juvenile slumbers lasted so long as they didn’t span the whole summer, losing the only true childhood friend to riverside casinos on full moon nights. Now as I pass by my neighbors, they pause in greeting – I do not yell but smile with cardinal delight. Smiling is always an easy choice in life, happiness even easier. I practice and preach happiness, breathe and tread lightly next to youth I don’t intend to lose my soil; my calm. by Somreeta Paul NEXT TO YOUTH

The Silence Issue | Φ 14 hush. shut your mouth, seal them, zip them up. i see the thread and needle already in your hands. the silver glint pricks my eyes so i shut them tight, i am wise now. my mouth is heavy with saliva, weighs down my tongue, i swallow. it scratches my throat. the sore spreads, I felt sorry for myself. dread washes over and i find myself under, i forget how to swim. you watch and wait for me to wash ashore. hush, hear the river crash onto the rocks of a strange land, I am estranged now. washed up on faraway shores, my sores scarlet, then brown. by Kesara Ariyapongpairoj Hush HUMAN DESTRUCTION by Josie Chaplow

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The Silence Issue | Φ 16 PHOTOGRAPHY by Julie Uszpolewicz

17 I n the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities around the world experienced a temporary transformation; the relentless hum of urban life was replaced by an unexpected hush. The once bustling streets and avenues, accustomed to the ceaseless symphony of car horns, conversations, and footsteps, were now shrouded in an unusual stillness. Amidst this newfound silence, an opportunity arose to reflect upon the impact of architecture on the perception of sound, and how the absence of noise unveiled hidden layers of our built environment. For years, the unyielding soundscape of cities had become an intrinsic part of our daily lives. The cacophony, although, at times, overwhelming, provided a sense of vitality, indicating that life was pulsating through every corner. However, as the pandemic forced people indoors and reduced traffic to a mere whisper, the architecture of silence unfolded, revealing a beauty that had often gone unnoticed. In the absence of the usual clamour, the architectural elements once overshadowed by noise began to stand out. The subtle whispers of historical facades, the rhythmic interplay of light and shadow on towering skyscrapers, and the intricate details of ornate structures all became more pronounced. The silence offered a chance to observe and appreciate the craftsmanship and design that had shaped our urban landscapes. Within residential neighbourhoods, the temporary silence became a gateway to a deeper connection with nature. Without the usual honking cars and crowds, the delicate melodies of birdsong and the soothing rustle of the wind through the leaves took centre stage. Architecture, acting as a mediator between indoors and outdoors, allowed people confined to their homes to experience the harmony of the natural world. It provided a visual and acoustic connection to the outdoor environment, offering solace and a sense of tranquillity. The profound effects of the hush on emotional wellbeing stem from the reduction of noise pollution during the pandemic. The constant barrage of noise in cities often goes unnoticed until it subsides, revealing the toll it has taken on our mental health. The sudden tranquillity served as a respite from the relentless stress and sensory overload of the urban lifestyle. It provided an opportunity for individuals to pause, reflect, and reconnect with themselves, fostering a sense of inner peace that is easily drowned out in the commotion of city life. When referring to the "architecture of silence," it encompasses both the urban landscape of buildings and the deliberate design choices made to create peaceful environments. The interplay between architecture and silence highlights the importance of thoughtful urban design that considers the auditory experience of its inhabitants. It involves incorporating elements that minimize noise pollution, such as sound-absorbing materials, strategic layout planning, and green spaces, to create a more harmonious and soothing environment. Silence, in this context, allows individuals to regain balance by providing a break from the constant auditory stimuli and creating a space for introspection and rejuvenation. It enables people to disconnect from external noise and distractions, promoting mental clarity and a sense of calm. Silence acts as a counterbalance to the overstimulation and stress of a noisy urban environment, allowing individuals to find moments of tranquillity and regain a sense of inner harmony. As the pandemic ebbed and life gradually returned to its familiar rhythm, the architecture of silence began to recede. The vibrant energy of cities resurfaced and along with it the sounds accompanied. However, the temporary reprieve instilled a newfound appreciation for the interplay between architecture and silence. It reminded us of the need for thoughtful urban design that considers not only aesthetics and functionality but also the impact on the auditory experience of its inhabitants. The pandemic's effect on cities serves as a poignant reminder that silence is a precious resource. It prompts architects and urban planners to prioritize acoustic design as an integral part of their vision for cities. By considering the impact of architecture on soundscapes and creating spaces that offer respite from noise, architects can contribute to the well-being and quality of life of city dwellers. Through the lens of silence, the pandemic offered a glimpse of a more harmonious urban future, where architecture and tranquillity converge to create spaces that nurture and inspire.ϕ Unveiling Urban Landscapes by Matilde Pietrabissa

The Silence Issue | Φ 18 Have you ever cracked the window, just a sliver in the sifting simmered morning and stayed dead mute ? But not only mute - mathematically inert? Have you ever let the sounds flow through the perforated brain space like blue crystal sand through a sieve, jostling about and plinking through the mushy gaps? The day stretches out in front of you like some coquettish yoga mat : you let the silence s l o w l y s l o u g h off t h o s e nigglings p e c s o f who said what who went where does your mother hate you? Stephanie Ritzema The Silence Issue | Φ 18

19 In the absence of it all, you can focus on others. The wind in the trees and different flavours of silence envelop the rough and coarse thoughts making them soft as wet paper towels. In the rumble of the nothing-hum In the cowtown where the water towers fizz and croak like an old weather beaten crow In the lilting shrieks of mothers surfing on air that pull from far off places and houses you have never seen This is where the mind makes its rest curls up tight as a fox-warren and lets the heavy doe eye down; (if only for a little while) 19 ART by Sarah-June Brehm

The Silence Issue | Φ 20 I n 1993, Charlie Rose sat down to interview filmmaker Leslie Harris. Sitting across from the veteran interviewer, in his iconic carpeted void space, Harris wears a beret adorned with a yellow badge. Difficult to read through the 90s TV grain, the badge sports the letters “I.R.T.”, all in a red, bubbled font. At times, the beret takes on the appearance of a soldier’s beret, a mark of allegiance to her Brooklyn base. “It is like going to war, it really is,” remarks Harris about filmmaking in a later interview. Her choice of headwear is no accident. That is not to say that Harris is a soldier. Following orders isn’t her style. Instead, determination is at the centre of her being. Just listen to her answers during the Rose interview, each of which is charmingly decisive. Throughout the interview, she maintains a cool exterior, never shaken by Rose’s questioning. Her eyes are intensely poised on the heritage broadcaster, volleying answers back at Rose with ease. Thankfully, she meets little resistance. The interview is pleasant enough, both participants playing their parts well. This interview was part of the intense promotional strategy Miramax put Harris through when distributing her film Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. As Rose notes, Harris was firmly in the zeitgeist, even more so after the film won multiple awards at Sundance. Harris was poised for the big leagues. The rocket ship to auteur-stardom was readied. Jet fuel had been pumped by Miramax, the ship itself constructed by Harris’ painstaking work. Then, just as she was about to enter, admission was denied. The cockpit door had been slammed in her face. In 1993, Leslie Harris, a young African American filmmaker, made the film Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. The film follows Chantel (Ariyan A. Johnson), a young Brooklyn-based, African American teen girl who gets pregnant, casting her high-flung aspirations into doubt. Instead of dealing with the baby-shaped roadblock, Chantel ignores the problem, pushing through with her plans to the horror of those around her. The Silencing of Leslie Harris by Barney Nuttall Just Another Girl is a really important film. It addresses teen pregnancy and sexual education in a nuanced way, allowing Chantel to be unapologetically ignorant, impulsive, and admirable all at once. Harris crossfades between genres, remixing the hilarious into the horrifying. In doing so, Harris creates a commentary on reproductive rights, amongst many other topics, that is rightfully layered. This is not just an important film for Harris but for young people everywhere, especially women because it does not talk down to the issues at hand. Instead, the heavy themes which Just Another Girl handles are allowed to be complicated, shunting them to the forefront of the conversation, away from ageist, sexist belittling. The end of the film is tagged, much like the graffitibombed Brooklyn setting. “A Film Hollywood Dared Not Do.” These words end Just Another Girl, a pre-credits mic-drop from a young director who was not afraid to say what should not be said. The determination that calmly crackled during her interview with Charlie Rose is present here. In fact, in looking into the production of Just Another Girl, it becomes clear that Harris is a real grafter. From working jobs to finance the film in the mornings, to volunteering in the evenings to get access to filming equipment, Harris’ weekdays circulated entirely around work; this being all in service of shooting at the weekends. I haven’t even touched on the financing process, this in itself is the Iliad to her later Odyssey. “You have to keep on going, nothing can really stop you,” she tells an audience at BFI Southbank in 2022. It isn’t clear whether she is referring to the audience or herself. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. was a success, with Harris taking home the Special Jury Recognition award from Sundance, as well as a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize. As Harris bathed in the glory, a group of suits watched from the sidelines. For Harris, commercial success had been part of a grander scheme, choreographed by Miramax. This began with The Crying Game, a thriller which, before Miramax acquired it, had bombed in the UK box office. So, the prospects of the

21 film in the US market weren’t exactly promising. With a plot following a soldier kidnapped by the IRA and mostly British stars unknown to US audiences, aside from the conspicuous casting of Forest Whitaker as a British soldier, The Crying Game hardly seemed like a slam dunk. Yet, after purchasing the property, Miramax managed to turn it into a well-liked, awards season favourite with the help of, as professor Alisa Perren puts it, “a brilliant manipulation of the commercial press.” This consisted of screening the film at American film festivals and asking audiences not to reveal the twist that comes at the end of the movie. Thus, the conceptual seed of a secret surrounding The Crying Game was planted in North America, perpetuating a growing interest in the film. After managing to spin The Crying Game into a smash hit in the ‘90s, Miramax decided to run with its creative marketing strategy. The Crying Game had been a massive critical success in North America due to its creative marketing and had kickstarted talks with other film behemoths, such as Disney. Miramax became hungry for niche goods, eager to feed indie cinema through its marketing machine. These indie films were high concept and had, as film scholar Christina Lane puts it, “an easily synopsized hook that heightened marketability.” Gender and race were constantly being written in and out of marketing campaigns, each used as thermometers for audience temperaments. With Just Another Girl falling into these categories, and Harris as a bonus diversity hire, Miramax opened the door for distribution. This was a financial decision. In this case, it just so happened to benefit both parties. That is not to say that Harris was unaware of this. In an interview with journalist Natalia Keogan, Harris Still from Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992)

The Silence Issue | Φ 22 remarks on how male the ‘90s was, making the film industry inhospitable for women of colour, stating that it is “perhaps even afraid of Black women’s uncompromised visions.” In such a hostile environment, it would be foolish to pass up on any offers. So, while Harris was let in on this occasion, the fear to which she refers is not easily dispelled. Despite her success at Sundance, Harris struggled to get her career off the ground. At the BFI, she recalls Showtime calling her, asking if she would work with them, on the impetus of Black History Month. When she pitched a biopic about Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman and Leslie Harris, director of Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., directs Ebony Jeride Indigenous American to hold a pilot licence, the phone went dead. Showtime had gone cold. It is hard to say exactly why Showtime was so hesitant to greenlight this project. Biopics weren’t as snappy when it came to the genre, the term sounding more like a history lesson than entertainment. Thrillers and gangster films reigned supreme, much like the westerns had in decades before, each genre typically associated with men, another reason to explain the hesitancy of Showtime. The Coleman documentary was also less visually distinct from Just Another Girl. With its popping 90s visuals and sun-drenched Brooklyn vistas, Just Another Girl is an easy visual pitch. A biopic about an unknown aviator lacks that instinctual visual

23 flair. In her interview at the BFI, Harris seems to suggest that there was a discriminatory factor at play. In the eyes of the likely predominately white, male Showtime executives, perhaps giving a woman of colour the opportunity to tell stories of black women was a step too far, even for Black History Month. Black women have been absent from cinema since its birth and it could be that executives wanted to keep it that way. Showtime later seceded, choosing to work with Harris. But, there had been a wobble, one which showed that the racialised, gendered stigma which had been pinned on Harris lingered. She was branded as unworkable. Talking to the Los Angeles Times in the late ‘80s, Harvey Weinstein stated “it’s the distributor’s responsibility to find the audience.” By the late ‘90s, that audience had been cemented, one which was white and male. With the invention of the ‘mini-major’, the ‘independent’ in ‘indie’ had been surrogated for a safer Hollywood blueprint, one which conformed to racialised, gendered prejudice. Harris directed some television, a field which she attributes to being more accepting, and created a handful of smaller films. But, despite wanting to, Hollywood had shut her out and silenced her. She didn’t fit the mould. She knew it whilst making Just Another Girl, “A Film Hollywood Dared Not Do.” Indie no longer meant niche voices, morphing into a marker for prestige, award-season fodder. After being so brutally silenced, no one would have blamed Harris for backing down. Well, no one aside from Harris herself. “If Hollywood wasn’t going to knock on my door, I was going to knock down their door,” she tenaciously tells Charlie Rose. Whilst Just Another Girl knocked down one door, Harris was only met by more on the other side. This is the unstoppable force, Harris, meeting the immovable object, Hollywood. This may seem like an easy win for Hollywood. As long as the doors stay closed, Harris remains silenced. But determination, as that within Harris, is not easily suppressed. Nowadays, aside from working in television, Harris continually promotes her film. Her Twitter feed is mostly photos of her outside cinemas, all of which displaying the title Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. in bold, black lettering. Her gratification in promoting Just Another Girl is overwhelming: after thirty years her pride has never waned. Perhaps even more miraculously, the film is still something that inspires her. In the confines of the DVD-stacked Criterion closet, Harris gushes over her cinematic heroes. “It feels like I am in the presence of geniuses,” stating this with a weighted sense of awe. Watching her aforementioned BFI interview, Harris carries herself with easy self-assurance. She fondly recalls production mishaps on Just Another Girl, laughs off her brutal silencing, and relishes the love for her film in the room. But most of all, she speaks up, continually kicking against the doors of Hollywood, edging closer and closer to breaking through with every scratch and dent. After the upheaval of Roe v. Wade, Just Another Girl takes on a whole new significance. Despite being distinctly nineties, the politics in the film seem forward-thinking in an America which seems to be going backwards. Roe v. Wade allowed women to have a say, and to be able to choose what may happen to their bodies. Chantel is empowered enough to make her own decision. It may seem puzzling but it is her own and she holds it close. For the US Supreme Court to strip women of that right is to silence them. The events of Just Another Girl would be much darker if they took place in the America of today. Chantel’s decision would not be her own, it wouldn’t even be a decision. That mouthy teenager would have to be much quieter, a great big court ruling taped over her mouth, signed by the powers that be. Of course, that is why I love this film. It cannot be silenced. It is unapologetically noisy, as is its director. Silencing is partly a regressive act, a choice to retract rather than add. When faced with someone as creative and noisy as Leslie Harris, silencing seems futile. No matter how much is retracted, Harris will never stop shouting. After America succumbed to such a conservative gut punch, the hints of a sequel to Just Another Girl promise a much-needed livid outcry to such an aggressive silencing of women’s bodies. That dynamo determinism inside Harris would be well used in the battle against a silencing state. But, the war is not over. Harris is still wearing her beret, sporting Just Another Girl as a badge of pride and determination for change. While the doors to Hollywood may still stand tall, Harris will never back down. This would be an impossibility. She is simply too loud to be silenced. ϕ

The Silence Issue | Φ 24 An ordinary person, going about their business random, violent, disruptive nonsense. Confusion, mistreatment, and systematic error – It’s a Security Breach. Everyone has to get on their hands and knees. No questions will be answered and water will not be provided. You will remain vigilant, alert, and ready to do as instructed. An orange in a bowl of apples cognisant disobedience and disproportionate responses. Frustration, derision, and a hint of malevolence – Finally, News; You will be shepherded inches closer to the nearest exit. You will not receive an apology. The explanation: It was standard protocol. by Conor Perry Victim of Protocol

25 MAN WITH CANDLE by Fabian Kerj

The Silence Issue | Φ 26 The Domestics is a photographic study of a family and the silence that takes their place as they endure the process of moving out of their first home. The study is a set of five pairs, each showing a time before and after exodus has taken place. THE DOMESTICS

27 by Kaj O'Connell View the full series at phimag.org/thedomestics Silence is often conceptualized as a “lack of”, however this study works to demonstrate the corporeal nature of silence.

The Silence Issue | Φ 28 ¶ An accidental metaphor. The light bulb in the Camden Art Centre went off and now it is making a steady, electrical hum which fills the rooms of Mohammad Sami’s exhibition Point 0 with a certain sense of unease. Nobody speaks. We listen to the noise of the electrical circuit as if it was a purposeful soundtrack to the serene paintings. Sami’s paintings talk about war without war. His still world is haunted by the very absence of people. ¶ I immediately think of Susan Sontag’s essays on photography. I think of how she says that looking at images of suffering victimises and objectifies. It turns us, she claims, into passive spectators of the fact that somewhere, which is, thankfully, not here, people die. Her argument in Regarding The Pain Of Others is, naturally, much more elaborate than that — she talks about our complicity and about our guilt. In a true fashion of critical theory, she talks about how the image is just an image so it always leaves everything else behind. But I think about whether she would have liked this exhibition as much as I do. I silently nod to myself in agreement. I start looking at the exhibition as a certain play with Sontag’s arguments or a commentary of sorts. Sami shows war exactly by not showing war, by showing everything else but war. ¶ If looking at vivid images of cities under siege distances us from the horrors of it, what is it that looking at cities, soon but not yet ruined, does to us? I am looking at a piece titled “Ashfall,” a nighttime cityscape of an Iraqi city or maybe a suburb of Baghdad covered with golden specks. I thought it was beautiful and as I move closer I feel bad for thinking that. Catching myself that I have fallen for Sami’s artful deceit, I now know that this is a piece about war, but I cannot explain how. Is it because it is somewhere in the Middle East? ¶ My mind goes to the images of Aleppo I saw in the New York Times feature during the first 2020 lockdown. I think about how Susan Sontag would have hated that I was scrolling through those images still cuddled by the warmth of my own covers. At this point, I have already seen plenty of images of empty cities. But seeing a half-ruined Aleppo was different, because of the inescapable feeling that at any given point that calmness will be destroyed and there will be no one to see it. It was the silence of war, and not its violence, that made it so powerful. ¶ Something else comes to mind. Alejandro Zambra writes about his experience as a Chilean reader of Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio. It is a story about a host of a radio show with a mission to help families find those who disappeared. Admittedly, I have never read anything by Alarcón, but I know that Zambra praises the way the book makes use of silence. He says that through silence we can hear all that remains unsaid. This must apply to Sami’s work as much as it does to the imagined South American radio. ¶ Mohammad Sami’s silence is fragile. His paintings are mere impressions of calm bound by a conviction that stillness is always elusive. The mind begins to wander. In the shadows of the idyllic landscapes hides uncertainty. There is nothing more dangerous than our imagination. Sami knows that painfully well. ϕ Louder Than Bombs Unfinished Thoughts on Mohammed Sami by Julie Uszpolewicz THE PRAYING ROOM by Mohammed Sami

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31 In Memoriam P.S.G. To visit a graveyard is a literary thing, for dying is a literary event. To sit among the dead is to sit in an archive of closed cases, guarded by little statues of angels who hide their faces, not in lamentation but in shame, the editors who could do naught to stop a stanza cutting short. The symbolism of it all, how on-the-nose: The lone black bird, the black-clad child’s unanswered call. How futile, how absurd to adorn with fear the unseen morn, to slice the atmosphere of silence with sympathetic, idle talk. In days spent watching in this way, in the library of bodies, you notice in the eyes of the left-behind the reckonings, the grief, the questioning that nimble thief whose keeping score the dead don’t mind: Death, who, in his princely robe gallivants around the globe, making scholars of those who see the oxymoron in a phrase like ‘LOVING MEMORY’. Silence in the graveyard, as from life we are unshelved and packed away, as though with an end-stop to a story that might continue in another volume, provided we have written us a child. Now, on the inside of my jacket is my author’s photograph, the old man with a wry look in his eye that seems to say: ‘Today and tomorrow, my son, the books must go on. In sorrow, in mirth, go on, go on’. That gleam, that magic, for all that it’s worth, like something from a fairytale tome, was put down to be mine at the time of my birth, when the old man— my old man with green eyes— saw brown eyes, mine, that nevertheless belonged to him. Death now becomes him, and he Death, and I him, as old stock makes way for new. And just like the monuments to abandoned wealth, with their inscriptions of expired health, Ex Libris stamps, just like the old and toppled stones, lit at night by oil lamps, the catacomb athenaeums, the tombs of back issue bones, like each crumbling headboard of the dead (That one day we too might make a decent footnote in the annals, the records of quietus) do we await the grave tender. The Grave Tender by James Green PHOTOGRAPHY by Serhii Tyaglovsky

The Silence Issue | Φ 32 One of the most enduring insights of the great philosopher of language, J.L. Austin, was to point out that we don’t only use words to say things but also to do things: we assert, we condemn, we promise, we forgive. Importantly, these aren’t just consequences of the things we say but, rather, things we do in the very act of saying. They are ‘speech acts’. One of Austin’s classic examples was saying ‘I do’ during a wedding ceremony. Saying just the right words in just the right context, in this case, constitutes the act of marrying one’s partner, and it is an act one performs through speech. It is the speech act of marrying. Another clear example is promise-making: when someone says ‘I promise’ in sincerity, they perform the speech act of promising. In both cases, one’s speech is clearly more than just words as it commits one to things with significant real-world consequences. The class of speech acts is unimaginably large as there are all sorts of things we do with our words. But one important thing we do with our words is hurt others. We can use our words to perform speech acts like shunning, humiliating, or subordinating. These kinds of speech acts have been at the centre of many feminist applications of Austin’s philosophy. This is partly because thinking about them causes problems for anyone who wants to assert a strong distinction between word and deed, and because asserting such a distinction is often a cynical way of shirking responsibility for what one’s speech does. Not only do deeds have implications and consequences; words do too. Someone might, for example, defend a sexist joke by proclaiming that ‘it’s only words!’ or a racist cartoon by declaring that ‘it’s just a drawing!’. Indeed, this kind of bad-faith posturing is precisely what many feminist philosophers think is going on in the so-called ‘free speech defences’ of things such as hate speech or misogynist pornography that contains graphic depictions of women subjected to violence and submission. These philosophers argue that the ‘free speech defence’ is a cynical move to protect hateful words or harmful media as speech, even while they do damage in their capacity as acts. Debates of this nature about free speech rage on in our current moment. Take, for example, the recent selection of philosopher Arif Ahmed as the UK government’s first ‘free-speech tsar’ vested with the power to investigate universities and student unions for supposed breaches of free speech. In this climate, it is important that we continue to meditate upon this feminist-Austinian insight. Why, we should ask ourselves, are some people so invested in denying that words have the power to do anything at all? One of the ways feminists have argued that words can do harm is by silencing others. The most wellknown argument of this sort is Rae Langton’s argument that misogynist pornography performs the speech act of silencing women. Langton doesn’t mean by this that women are literally rendered silent, as in quiet or unable to speak. Rather, she means that they are prevented from reliably being able to secure the understanding of others when they speak which has the effect of silencing the meaning they intended to convey. Before moving on, let me address the reader’s possible worry that pornography isn’t speech at all, and thus surely cannot qualify as performing speech acts. First, while it’s certainly true that construing pornography as speech is a strange thing, it’s the move that ‘free speech defenders’ consistently make. This means that it is dialectically canny to accept these terms and see what can be argued from there – that way an argument is built that addresses these ‘free speech defenders’ head-on. Second, it’s important to clarify that it is quite natural to think of things that aren’t speech as, nonetheless, speech-like. The most common examples are works of art. We’re very used to suggesting that artworks ‘speak to us’, ‘say’ things, and ‘mean’ things. We regularly Speech Acts & Silencing the past by Georgie Malone

33 ask questions like: what is the movie telling us? What does the painting mean? So we can think about the speech-like acts of pornography, and other things, in this way. If the reader is not so convinced by this, it’s worth bearing in mind that it has become a very common, if not entirely uncontroversial, position among philosophers. Since now is not the time to get into the details, let’s press forward having, I hope, secured at least the plausibility of the analogy. Now, why does Langton think that pornography can perform the speech-like act of silencing? Specifically, she says that misogynist pornography has the power to silence women’s attempts to refuse sex by repeatedly representing women as saying ‘no’ when they really mean yes. She argues that this familiar pornographic trope of the woman who refuses sex when, deep down, she really wants it suggests to men that a woman who refuses sex is just playing a game, egging them on, or deceiving themselves. This can prevent women from being able to use the word ‘no’ to successfully refuse, thus silencing them. This suggests that some speech can have the force of silencing the speech of others. This insight immediately complicates the seemingly straightforward ‘free speech defences’ by encouraging us to ask whether it’s acceptable to protect speech that silences the future speech of others. This was all a rather elaborate process of stagesetting for what I really want to talk about here: as the title suggests, the idea of silencing the past. While the argument I’ve just recounted about silencing is well-worn in philosophy, I’ve been thinking recently about how we might apply it to pressing questions about history, such as ‘who gets to narrate history?’ and ‘whose histories have been silenced?’. I’ve discovered that a helpful way to think about these questions is by combining the feminist-Austinian perspective with historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s theory of silencing the past and the production of history. Trouillot teaches us that the production of history is far from neutral because it is heavily influenced by power dynamics that function to promote some historical narratives as objective facts, while shrouding others in silence. One of his main examples is the Haitian Revolution. The Haitian Revolution of 1791 happened between two other famous revolutions: the 1789 French Revolution and the 1776 American Revolution. While both the French and the American Revolutions utilised the language of freedom, the newly reformed countries, nevertheless, continued to practice slavery and further their colonial projects. The Haitian revolution, on the other hand, not only utilised the language of freedom but also practiced it. The Haitian Revolution was a ‘dual revolution’ – the First Revolution was the slave revolt in 1791 and the Second was the struggle for independence from France which was concluded by 1804. It thus moved towards ending both enslavement and colonial rule. This arguably makes it the most revolutionary revolution of the period, and yet, readers might ask themselves which of the three revolutions they spent the most time learning about in school, that is if they spent any time at all on the Haitian Revolution. According to Trouillot, what we have here is a case of a silenced past. Since Haiti was the richest colony in the entire colonial world, the revolution was thought impossible by its contemporaries: how could Haiti possibly fall? Subsequently, it has been rendered silent by Western historians due to the inconvenient themes to which it’s inextricably linked: racism, slavery, and colonialism. It is for this reason that Trouillot says the revolution has been transformed into what he calls a ‘non-event’, that is, an event which is unthinkable at the time of its occurrence, and that is subsequently erased through exclusion from dominant historical accounts. There are plenty of other examples of this kind of silencing available, including in more recent history. Having recently read Vincent Bevins’ excellent book The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anti-communist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped our World, another candidate for a ‘non-event’ comes to mind. I refer here to the mass killing of communists and perceived communist sympathisers, along with some targeted ethnic groups, in 1965 Indonesia. Some historians estimate that up to 3 million people were killed throughout the incident. As a result, the massacre entirely disarmed what had been, until then, the third largest communist party in the world, following the Soviet Union’s

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35 Thinking about statues in this way is useful because there is an analogue to the ‘free speech defence’ we discussed above that frequently crops us in debates about statues. Most often we hear people arguing that these unsavoury statues must be protected because removing them ‘erases history.’ The idea that, in fact, the statues already silence history by staying where they are is a powerful antidote to this argument. Again, we should think about why some people are so invested in these monuments. At a protest in 2021, I chanted alongside fellow feminists the words ‘protect women, not statues!’ as police encircled a statue of Winston Churchill. It’s worth pausing to ask what business the police have standing around protecting inanimate statues. The answer is that statues serve the important ideological function of promoting a sanitised version of history, and the police will protect this official ideology by means of force if needed. Pulling these threads together, it is no coincidence that the ‘free speech defenders’ are often in the same camp as the so-called ‘defenders of history’ in debates about statues. This is because the ideological function is present in both cases: the ‘speech’ of the dominant group is protected at the expense of those it harms because the dominant speech maintains the status quo. It’s vital to see that, in both cases, we’re faced with a red herring. Caring about freedom of speech and history properly demands that we care, first and foremost, about whose speech or history is being silenced when that of dominant groups in society is protected at all costs. This suggests that maybe it is our duty to seek out those histories which have been shrouded in silence, unlearning and re-learning from historical actors and narrators deemed troublesome by dominant powers. By engaging in this work, we help to move towards disabling speech-like acts that silence the past and, importantly, we also discover that attending to silence can be a powerful way of attending to justice. ϕ CPSU and Chinese CCP. Significantly, the party also had aspirations to build collective third-world resistance to neo-colonialism. In this case, too, we might ask ourselves what we were taught about Indonesia in school, if anything. If we know little or nothing about this event, it is possible that we should be asking questions about what might be being silenced and why. Combining all these ideas together gives us an interesting way to think about the silencing of the past. Just as feminists have argued, using Austin’s ideas, that hate speech and pornography can perform silencing speech acts, so, too, we might argue that historical documents or monuments can perform speech acts that silence the past. The idea is that everything from textbooks to popular writings to statues and monuments might be said to perform speech-like acts of silencing. Specifically, they silence the historical actors left out of their histories as well as the historical narrators who try to tell their stories. It’s important to see that by leaving out those parts of history that might be uncomfortable for a Western sensibility to confront, or by valorising historical figures with ties to imperialism and the slave trade, such documents and objects collude in the active production of ignorance as opposed to knowledge. Statues and monuments are both fascinating and topical examples as they’ve been subject to highly visible contestation by popular movements in recent years. The most high-profile case in the UK involved the statue of slave trader Edward Colston being torn down and thrown in the river by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol. According to what I’ve been saying, we can understand these kinds of statues as objects that silence the past by honouring dishonourable figures and obscuring the historical narratives of their victims. This silencing can be understood as a speech-like act that does harm in an analogous way to silencing in more familiar cases in the philosophy of hate speech and pornography.

The Silence Issue | Φ 36 I take a step i n t o my flat kitchen seven chairs around the table eight pairs of cabinets along the wall to my right my two little feet walk to the white fridge in the corner life at uni feels like a movie. I calculate every breath I soften every step everyone has a boom mic and a camera and I’m stuck on set by Himangi Karumathil-Mokkilmadam I don’t know how to get out and I don’t know who to ask I speak too loud and all the pieces crumble, the dolly f a l l s through the hole in the wooden floor CUT someone yells WHO THE FUCK IS HERE KNOWING FULLY WELL THEY DON’T BELONG and the spotlight, dangling on a black wire, f a l l s on me Scene 1 Shot 1 Take 6 The Silence Issue | Φ 36

37 ART by Sarah-June Brehm

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39 I am fast running out of excuses to talk about you a whole roster of friends, every single one of them, caught up to speed having ensured I embroidered your details in every text of mine I have them read. Desultory conversations with a cousin awaiting her first child, and I, between recalling my day long vacation and areas my work’s focus is in, tie you in as the appropriate aside. My mother could inquire about my plans for Saturday, the next or two winters from now I’d brandish something vague but not before a blurb on how people make monumental moves – naming every country that can arrogantly archive your name in its history. I am fast running out of excuses to talk about you, I shudder at the thought of the unabashed assertion that is to come that could draw me into evoking you without cause or the still scarier third act which brings your memories and my motives to a pause. SPeaking of which by Ekasmayi Naresh PHOTOGRAPHY by Yantong She

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41 PHOTOGRAPHY by Joseph Chan

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43 The Bishop of California by VCK “Doves are just white pigeons.” It is the summer of 1971, and I am melting by the pool of the American Colony Hotel in Palestine. A small man with brown skin and teeth the color of myrrh lies on the vermillion sun lounger next to me. He has also spotted the pair of bright white birds perched above the towering archway leading to the bar. “Palestine didn’t have white pigeons until the third century,” he continues. “All those paintings of Jesus are wrong. They probably looked closer to your average street pigeon than those things.” I grunt and push my sunglasses further up the sweaty bridge of my new nose. Rhinoplasty is cheap in the Middle East, especially for young women with parents eager to show off how much they’ve made since leaving the holy land. I have come here to visit family, supposedly, and it’s only a coincidence that I am to return to America exactly one day after the recommended recovery time for surgery. The man peers at me over his dark glasses and lets out a soft giggle. “You know the ones I am talking about?” he asks. “Sure.” I answer irritably. “The big ones. Italian. Renaissance. All that jazz. I read Art History at Columbia.” I use my tightest academic Americano, hoping equally to deter and impress. I’m not one of you. Not anymore. He laughs again and it irritates me. “I meant the pigeons. I’m sure you have plenty of them in New York. Do you smoke?” he asks, suddenly. “Like all those American girls?” He takes out a silver cigarette case, a brilliantly garish whitegold artifact covered in lurid turquoise stones that wouldn’t look out of place in the Wunderkammer of a sixteenth century collector. He flicks it open to reveal a row of perfectly rolled joints. I look around for an attendant or a glimpse of their deep emerald uniforms, but we are totally alone. The only noises come from the pool’s lapping waves and the doves’ gentle cooing.My nose throbs. “Sure.” I reach across the small wooden table between us, laden with a half eaten quesadilla and two full bottles of Coca Cola. He pushes the joint between my lips and lights it with an equally gaudy lighter. The smoke hits the back of my throat like a hurricane and I spend the next minute coughing violently into my hands. “What on God’s green earth—?” “It’s called Bishops Silence. New strain.” “Bishops silence?” “You’ll see.” I lie back, head spinning. My nose is bleeding. I close my eyes. ϕ It’s hot. Too hot. The canyon is deep and wide and there is no shade from the Jordanian sun amongst the boulders and rocks. My husband is dead. The ashtray we glued to the dashboard has shattered and the car is upside down. My contact lens case is nestled amongst the glass. I am thirsty, I am bleeding. Inexplicably, the radio stills works and pumps out an occasional static burst of Eddy Arnold’s It’s a Sin. My husband is dead. There is no other sound out here, no birds, no trees, no water. Only Coca Cola. I sit on the overturned chassis of the once-white Ford Cortina, which has turned gold in the desert dust. The hot metal burns my thighs. It’s so quiet out here. My husband is dead. “Doves are just white pigeons.” A man with myrrh-yellow teeth is standing by the car. He opens a silver cigarette case and passes me a thin, brown cigarette. “My husband is dead.” I reply. The man tucks the case into the front pocket of his white linen suit and shrugs. Two dark scars, one in the center of each upturned palm, catch the light and cast shadows along the sand. In 1969, James Albert Pike married a young woman. She was twenty years younger than him, with hair the color of the Sahara. Nine months later, he booked out a white Ford Cortina from the Avis at Amman Airport and drove them to the middle of the Jordanian Desert with nothing but a bible and two bottles of Coca Cola. He would die out there; his wife would not. ART by Anna Papadopoulou

The Silence Issue | Φ 44 “He was the Bishop of California.” I continue. He lights the cigarette for me. “James Albert Pike. Did you know him?” “I’m afraid I don’t listen as much as I should these days. A good preacher, was he?” he asks as he settles himself beside me. I nod. “The Los Angeles Times said he was the greatest talker since Kennedy. They liked how quiet he was. He didn’t shout, wasn’t mean, nothin’ like that. Just said things that made people think. Then gave ‘em some time to think about it. Some silence.” I pause. The cigarette does not taste right. “Guess he’s real quiet now, huh?” I add. He doesn’t laugh. My husband is dead, after all. “I’ve met you before.” I say suddenly. My voice is rasped from thirst. Years later, long after my death, people would say I crawled all the way to Quamran so nobody thought it was a suicide, and that James would resurrect himself to follow my trail – a map, undershorts, sunglasses, a contact lens case. “In Palestine. By the pool.” ϕ I am surrounded by a forest of emerald. A crowd of attendants has gathered around me; somebody is calling for a doctor. A pile of scarlet napkins lie on the table next to a half eaten quesadilla and a single bottle of Coca Cola. I have lost much of my Arabic but I catch a few phrases— silly American bitches, they always do this… drink too much, still pumped full of anesthetic from their nasty little surgeries… okay, okay, she’s coming round... I watch two doves, brilliant white, take off into the bright blue sky as they help me to my feet and whisk me away to my room. The doctor tells me not to travel. Airplane air is bad for you, she crackles down the phone. I telephone my parents in the evening, who wire me enough money to stay for another fortnight. Indulgences. They tell me I should visit my grandmother. I tell them I can never understand her. I spend the next few days locked away in the Grand Ambassador suite, fasting like Elijah. On the third day I begin subsiding on room-service cheeseburgers and minibar Coca Colas. The only book I have to read is the small leather-bound copy of the Old Testament tucked away in the bedside table, presumably for posterity’s sake. No Quran, no Torah. I dream of white cars falling down wine-brown cliffs. On the seventh day I feel well enough to return to the pool. “You’re still here.” I say reproachfully to the small dark man on the vermillion sunlounger. He grins mischievously as I settle myself on the seat next to him and pull a towel around my shoulders, draping it over my head like a Madonna’s veil. “I’m always here.” he smiles. He is smoking his horrible drug again. “And so, it seems, are you. Back for more?” “I dreamt of you last night.” I confess. He waves the cigarette under my nose and for some reason I bend my head forward, as if in prayer, to take a long, steady drag. “Nothing unholy, I hope?” he chuckles as I start coughing again. The smoke clears and a single gray pigeon lands on the undulating cloth of the parasol between us. “We were in the back of a car.” I say as I lean back to watch the beast. “In the desert. And the driver drove us both off a cliff.” ϕ “King Kennedy, they called him.” the man in the linen suit says. He’s flicking his lighter, a beautiful silver object. It looks like a minuscule version of those beautiful little boxes they would show James at all those fancy Christian places back in Europe. ‘They told him they had bits of dead Saints and Heroes in them, and I had squealed

45 at the idea.’ “The Court of Camelot at the White House, they wrote. All those paintings of me were wrong. He was a good speaker too, you know.” “Who was?” I ask. “King Arthur,” he sighs. “Threw one hell of a party.” “I need a drink.” I say. I clamber off the car and crawl into the overturned passenger seat. There are two hot bottles of Coca Cola lying against the roof amongst the shattered glass of the ashtray. My husband is dead. He lies on a flat rock a few feet away, arms crossed, as if sleeping. He has begun to smell. “Do you have a bottle opener?” I call pleadingly. I can feel him smile, and a sensation of overwhelming sadness overcomes me for a moment. I stand straight to find a white tablecloth draped over the rotting carcass of the upside-down Ford Cortina. I place the two bottles gingerly on the chassis amongst a feast of fish and bread. A dark scar flickers over us — a plane has passed, bright white against the viciously blue sky. It’s as if someone has waved a single giant palm over the table. We watch the beast disappear. “Airplane air is bad for you.” I mutter. “That’s why we took the car, you know?” He bites off the caps and hands me a bottle. “Bon appétit, as they say in America.” he says. “My momma always told me that’s only something slaves and sailors do.” I note reproachfully. He raises his eyebrows inquisitorially. I add, “Bitin’ off bottle caps.” I take a strong, steady sip and burst out laughing at the unexpected taste. “I’ve only ever drunk wine at Communion.” I admit, lifting the now ruby-red drink to the light. Scarlet shadows dance amongst the glass. “Momma would always ask for seconds. I asked James about it once. He said wine was for sinners.” He clinks his bottle to mine and a beautiful ringing fills the desert, if only for a moment. I take a bite of fish, fresh as if just plucked from the Adriatic Sea. “And which ones are we?” he asks, picking up a loaf of golden bread and breaking a piece off for me. “Slave, sailor or sinner?” I take a few more gulps, relieved at the softness it brings to my sand-burned throat, before accepting the bread. “Sailors, I think.” I say after a long, silent think. My voice is slurred. “We sure traveled a long way.” ϕ My parents wire me yet more money, more indulgences for my sins. A doctor is brought in, who tells me to keep away from the sun lest it happen a third time. The attendants skitter around me like mice and against all my better instincts I begin tipping more, ridiculous amounts, stuffing blank hundred dollar traveller’s cheques into the carcasses of Coca Cola bottles that I send back to the room service kitchen. I write to the Dean of Columbia via the Poste Restante letting him know I would have to defer my term until next year. He writes back coolly, letting me know that as long as my parents continue sponsoring the construction of the new Western Theology Library I was welcome to take whichever liberties I please. I finish reading The Bible and fly my hairdresser in from Milan, and he bleaches the black roots of my hair the color of the Sahara in the bathroom sink. I return to the pool like a pilgrimage and am unsurprised to find the short, ever-smoking Palestinian lying on the wine-coloured sunlounger. “One last time?” he asks. “One last time.” I say. Two white planes pass overhead. ϕ ART by Anna Papadopoulou

The Silence Issue | Φ 46 in the evening – the watery sun through your hair, puddles in the bed sheets, the spindles of your sleep, uncurling in the movement of a pearled throat, at the hollow of your lip I say it is the mark of holy things, pressed, unspeaking, a frenectomy in the bedroom, blue and brackish in the night, you prefer the unspeaking – Lailah at our side when I wait for her answer, the shuckling weathered fingers, come weave inside the bones and coil of ears, a gut stringing inside my own could she press in the night to the lips we dream of Lailah by Estelle Allen ART by Estelle Allen

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