Abdallah Al-Khatib, through his documentary Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege, shows a people enduring, in comparison to the Palestinian genocide taking place today, seemed like the worst. In those circumstances, there is still room for different kinds of reactions, like angst or art or compassion. Compassion wins though, as one of his subjects is a Palestinian-Syrian nurse caring for the aged so they won’t starve. As I write these lofty words, I do realise that the documentary and the piece requires some context. All of this goes back to the Nakba, a historical event that, among other things, forced Palestinians into Syria. These Palestinians found a home in a ‘camp’ or a neighbourhood in Damascus that they call Yarmouk, where they lived comfortably for generations. That was until the Arab Spring which caused the Syrian Civil War, when Assad closed off Yarmouk from the rest of Damascus.

Through this documentary, Abdallah Al-Khatib shows just how cognizant he is of people and human resilience despite everything. As a resident of Yarmouk, he returns to certain streets where people walk and accompanies that visual with his narration. Just like some of his frank visuals, his narrations can get pretty graphic, describing things that children endure. Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege tells the story of the daily lives of people who do what they can. They have to flee at the sound of aeroplanes and eventually find them as part of their daily lives. It feels strange to even say positive things about Al-Khatib’s cadence while discussing these things but there’s poetry here. As viewers we also have to keep religion in mind, as people keep their dignity when evil tempts them to act out of desperation.

In chronicling a people during hunger Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege captures memorable members of a community that persists. One of these subjects is an old man making soup out of a hot plate and a pot. Al-Khatib asks the man about the last time he had rice, a question that the latter can’t give an answer to. He craves something that, despite everything, people in the West can still have on a daily basis. This is a documentary that makes me question my Westernised gaze that both compares and aestheticizes others’ suffering. That scene follows another where young men unfold fabric where they write slogans about asking for humanitarian asylum from Yarmouk. And another where boys tell the camera their simple dreams. These visuals exist to reach out to the world, hoping that that world sees Palestinians as human beings.

Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege comes soon to OVID.