Rob
Williams blogs about his 26:50 piece on Sihem Bensedrine
I
agonised over my fifty words on Sihem Bensedrine. But probably not in the same way as many of
the writers in this project. That is,
not in the writing of them. That actually came very easily after the initial
idea. The agonizing started after I’d sent them to Tom. Would people think I’m being flippant? I’m guilty of flippancy far too often yet
even I recognize that this is not the ideal forum for such a dubious gift. Sihem Bensedrine is, after all, a journalist
and human rights activist whose fight for freedom of the press in
In my
defence, however, I can assure you that I have taken both 26:50 and my subject
very seriously indeed. The absolute
beauty of this project is that every participant would almost certainly have
taken a different approach to me given the same source material. But I suppose what I was struck by more than
anything as I found out more about Sihem’s struggles was the very thing that
seems to keep her fighting: the power of even a single letter let alone a whole
word to change the context of everything.
Absolutely right, Rob. The great joy and strength of 26:50 is that everyone approaches it in a different way. Whereas all these PEN writers have been persecuted for not writing in the uniform way dictated by repressive thinking. No need for us to side with repressive thinking.
Posted by: John Simmons | 22 March 2010 at 11:56