Before you scroll down to this month’s dispatch, I’d love to direct your attention to The Sameer Project. They are currently doing life-saving work in Gaza. If you are in a position to direct funds their way, I urge you to do so.
I spent the second half of January into early February at a residency in a small village in Switzerland. The mountains blanketed in snow stood in the distance behind the house, and everywhere I looked, sprawling green fields, lush and alive in what seems like a rapidly decaying world. Most mornings, the fog covered everything in sight outside my window, and for a few hours, I’d lose myself in the comfort of opacity. Occasionally, car headlights race across the nebulous mass like fireflies then disappear from view. Swiss folklore speaks of spirits from Mount Rigi in central Switzerland that can occasionally take on the form of ethereal lights appearing on foggy dawns or dusks tasked with protecting travelers from harm.
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about freedom of movement and manufactured hierarchy surrounding the right to cross a border, I often interrogate my position as a traveler. In Switzerland, my questions to locals rule me out as someone of that place, but my language fluency and my light features position me as someone who likely wandered in from France or Belgium. And, so, my transience is welcomed. I am seen as kin, deserving of cordiality. At the airport, where both my light features and language skills are invisibilized by my passport, I become an object of scrutiny. One that must be treated with urgency and firmness. I clutch a pouch containing supporting documents, a return ticket, proof of insurance policy. Once cleared, I make my way to the train and overhear an older couple behind me commenting on the number of hijabi women waiting in line at passport control: “Did you see how many there were? I can’t believe what’s become of Switzerland.”
In a small bookstore in Nyon, I come across a Dolores Marat monograph and spend half an hour immersed in the
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