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Goethe-Institut im Exil

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7:00 PM

The Sea Is There, But We Are Not: Literature from Palestine

Reading & Conversation|A Literary Encounter with Contemporary Palestinian Writing

  • ACUD Studio, Berlin

  • English
  • Free entrance (registration required)
Registration

© Alaa Alqaisi © Alaa Alqaisi

© Alaa Alqaisi © Alaa Alqaisi

As Goethe-Institut in Exile, our focus is on communities in exile and diaspora: their ruptures, languages, and aesthetic forms. Across Germany and Europe, a Palestinian exile community is growing — scattered across cities and countries, yet connected through shared experiences of loss, displacement, and new beginnings. We are here to listen to their stories and the literary strategies through which they are told.

This evening opens a space of resonance for three Palestinian authors who have recently arrived in Europe. Their work emerges from the tension between shrinking living spaces, forced displacement, and profound societal upheaval. Their writing transforms these experiences into language that speaks to the present, treating literature as a practice of presence, preservation, and resistance.

Curation of the evening and introductory text by Abdalrahman Alqalaq:

Recently fled from Gaza to Dublin and currently a guest writer at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, the author and translator Alaa Alqaisi explores, in poems and essays, the fractures of memory and language, showing how words probe the unspeakable, a poet who writes “as someone whose hands have sifted through broken glass for signs of life”.

At the same thres hold carries the London-based poet Asmaa Azaizeh a banished earth with in her body: The Meadow of Ibn Amir, and swallows that circle above her father’s olive groves, shielding them from the encroaching asphalt of gentrification.

Travelling from Brussels, the poet Ahmed Saleh tells, in his poems, how on a sunny day in Gaza a bicycle turned into  “a stretcher for the dead”, sidewalks into “coffins”, and sea into “a graveyard”, and yet he insists on teaching his readers how, in Gaza, prisons and cells, weapons factories and curses can still be transformed into fields, gardens and songs.

How can one speak today of a “Palestinian literature” when, since 1948, it has emerged from dispossession, genocide, and disappearance, written from many places and yet about a single one? On this evening, the three Palestinian poets and authors read from their work and speak with literary critic Maha El Hissy about a literature whose body is torn apart, its limbs scattered between occupation and diaspora, and which persistently attempt stocon front, traverse, and resist this fragmented geography.

Musical intervention by Cham Saloum.

In cooperation with Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.


Accessibility:
ACUD has step-free access to both upper floors. Please contact us in advance at im-exil@goethe.de, or speak to a member of the Goethe-Institut in Exile team on-site, so that elevator access can be arranged.
 

Authors

  • Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza with an MA in Translation Studies. She is currently living and working in exile with the support of the Goethe-Institut as a resident fellow at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB). In her literary and academic work — published in ArabLit, ArabLitQuarterly, and Encounters in Translation, among others — she deals with questions of translation as a practice, but also in terms of resistance and survival.

  • Abdalrahman Alqalaq, born in 1997 in Alyarmouk near Damascus, lives in Berlin.
    The Palestinian-Syrian writer, poet, and performance artist studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice with a focus on Theatre and Literature, as well as International Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim and Université MV in Rabat. In 2022, his debut poetry collection "Twenty-Four" was published in Arabic by Elles Publishing House in Cairo. His first book in German, "Übergangsritus" (Rite of Passage), followed in 2024 with Wallstein Verlag and earned him the Chamisso Publication Grant. In 2025, his second Arabic poetry collection The Thieves Beat Me to Haifa was published by Khan Aljanub in Berlin. Most recently, he brought his play "Absentee Law" to the stage at the Burgtheater in Hildesheim.
     

  • Asmaa Azaizeh is a Palestinian poet, writer, and editor, based in London. She is an author of four poetry collections and one memoir. In 2010 she received the Debutant Writer Award from Al Qattan Foundation for her volume of poetry “Liwa”, (2011, Alahlia). Her 2018 collection, “Don’t Believe me if I talk of war” (Al-Mutawaset, 2018) was translated into Dutch and Swedish and an audio-visual performance based on it premiered at the official selectionat the Avignon theatre festival in 2022 and is currently touring. Her first memoir “A Year of Small Museums” was recently published by Rewayat, UAE.

  • Maha El Hissy is an independent literary critic, curator, and moderator in Berlin. She taught modern German literature in Cairo, Munich, London, and New York. As a critic, she writes for Berlin Review of Books, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, among others. She is the editor of the book “Die ganze Geschichte fasse ich an der Hand. Literatur und Kunst zur Einwanderung ins Nachkriegsdeutschland” (Verbrecher, 2025). Maha is the curator of the event series ‘Vorzeichen’ (2024) and the Arabic-language podcast series “Ne7ki” with Palestinian authors in and outside Gaza (2025).
     

  • Ahmed Saleh: Poet and writer from Gaza based in Brussels. Author of "Gaza on the Cross" and the forthcoming "Remember That I Was a Good Man." Working at the International House of Literature (Passa Porta) and Founder & CEO of Rihla Magazine.

  • Cham Saloum is an acclaimed musician, composer, oud player, and singer whose work blends traditional Middle Eastern music with contemporary influences such as jazz and electronic sounds. Rooted in the musical traditions of the Mediterranean and the Levant, her compositions explore themes of identity, exile, and cultural exchange. Trained in classical Arabic music as well as Western music theory, she is known for her virtuosity on the oud and her evocative, cinematic sound.

    Born in 1996, Cham Saloum began studying the oud in 2010 at the Arabic Oud House with Schrine Tohamy and Naseer Shamma. After graduating in 2015, she moved to Germany, where she has since performed solo and with numerous orchestras and ensembles across Europe, including the Cottbus Orchestra, Syrian Ornina Orchestra, Bridges – Music Connects, and Trickster Orchestra. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in World Music with a major in oud in 2021 and is currently based in Berlin, working on new compositions and collaborative projects.