Event #10

The word ‘monster’ comes from the Latin ‘monstrum’, meaning miracle, amazement, a phenomenon against the laws of nature between men and the earth. Is wonder possible during war? At war, one is forced to be amazed; to observe every corruption of the human soul, every brutality and, at the same time, every resistance to life, every act of survival as the miracle of life that endures. Narrating wonder, in wartime, means not surrendering to the habit of others’ pain, of considering normal, ordinary, what we have already seen. After seeing five, ten, too many refugee camps, those two words become one, an idea, a normalised concept: refugeecamp. Narrating men’s despair is instead a reminder that we must not accustom our eyes, our spirit, to this. Narrating war means remembering the amazement, preserving – through memory – the struggle of those who survive.