{"id":165,"date":"2025-11-09T22:45:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T03:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/?p=165"},"modified":"2025-11-09T22:45:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T03:45:56","slug":"freya-stark-playlist-what-she-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/freya-stark-playlist-what-she-missed\/","title":{"rendered":"Freya Stark Playlist: What She Missed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Honestly, the more I read Freya Stark and watched the films about her, the more uneasy I felt. She\u2019s clearly brilliant and bold (there\u2019s no denying that) but something about her voice never sits right with me. She notices everything, but it\u2019s like she never actually feels what she\u2019s seeing. There\u2019s a constant distance, as if she wants to understand the world, but only on her own terms, only while she\u2019s still the one holding the map.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I made this playlist to respond to what she couldn\u2019t say, what she couldn\u2019t feel.<\/span><\/p>\n

1) Marcel Khalife \u2013 \u201cUmmi (My Mother)\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(Linked to: Letters from Syria and Beyond Euphrates)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Letters from Syria<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Beyond Euphrates<\/span><\/i>, Stark walks through Damascus and Baghdad describing every detail: the graveyards, the veils, the \u201cthree separate quarters.\u201d She\u2019s observant to the point of precision, but she never really steps inside what she\u2019s seeing. When I listen to Khalife\u2019s <\/span>\u201cUmmi (My Mother),\u201d<\/span><\/i> that distance completely disappears. His voice feels like warmth, like home. When he sings, <\/span>\u201cI long for my mother\u2019s bread, my mother\u2019s coffee,\u201d<\/span><\/i> it\u2019s belonging. Khalife makes what Stark calls \u201cthe Orient\u201d feel human again. He sings from within what she only describes. Reading her after hearing him, I realized how often she confuses curiosity for connection.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Ahmad Kaabour \u2013 \u201cOunadikum (I Call to You)\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(Linked to: Passionate Nomad, Chapter 19)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

There\u2019s one line from <\/span>Passionate Nomad<\/span><\/i> that stuck with me: <\/span>\u201cIt hardly made sense to make the Palestinians pay with their homes and lands for injuries done to Jews by European Christians.\u201d<\/span><\/i> She\u2019s right, but she says it like an observer writing a report, not someone grieving a people\u2019s loss. Ahmad Kaabour\u2019s <\/span>\u201cOunadikum\u201d<\/span><\/i> is the exact opposite of that. When he sings, <\/span>\u201cI call to you, my people,\u201d<\/span><\/i> it\u2019s urgent, not detached. His voice makes her writing feel distant, like moral language without emotion. Stark\u2019s \u201cthey\u201d never becomes \u201cwe,\u201d and that\u2019s the difference.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) Fairuz \u2013 \u201cZahrat al-Mad\u0101\u2019in (The Flower of the Cities)\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(Linked to: Passionate Nomad and her 1944 press comments)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

When Stark writes about Jerusalem, she does it with a kind of calm that\u2019s almost cold. She calls it \u201cfriction between Jews and Arabs,\u201d as if she\u2019s describing weather. Fairuz\u2019s <\/span>\u201cZahrat al-Mad\u0101\u2019in\u201d<\/span><\/i> destroys that calm completely. When she sings, <\/span>\u201cJerusalem, flower of cities,\u201d<\/span><\/i> it\u2019s both a prayer and a cry. You can feel the heartbreak in every word. She aches, grieves, and feels (unlike Stark who seems to only be analyzing).<\/span><\/p>\n

4) Tracy Chapman \u2013 \u201cTalkin\u2019 \u2019Bout a Revolution\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(Linked to: Freya Stark\u2019s 1944 press tour comments)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

During her 1944 press tour, Stark calls the Arabs \u201cthe rightful owners of Palestine,\u201d which sounds bold until you realize she\u2019s still speaking as part of the British machine that made the whole crisis possible. She names the problem but never challenges the power behind it. Tracy Chapman\u2019s <\/span>\u201cTalkin\u2019 \u2019Bout a Revolution\u201d<\/span><\/i> is like that silence finally breaking open. Chapman doesn\u2019t stop at moral awareness; she pushes toward change. Her song says what I wish Stark had the courage to: not just this is wrong, but this must end.<\/span><\/p>\n

5) Le Trio Joubran \u2013 \u201cMas\u0101r\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Linked to: Towards the Unknown Land \u2013 Nepal)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In Stark\u2019s final film, she\u2019s carried through the mountains of Nepal by a team of porters. She looks fragile but composed, smiling faintly as she says, <\/span>\u201cIf it fails, it fails.\u201d<\/span><\/i> The moment is framed as graceful acceptance: an aging traveler facing limits with humility. However, to me, it felt like comfort disguised as wisdom. Even at the end of her life, she\u2019s still being carried (literally) by others whose presence is unnamed. <\/span>Le Trio Joubran\u2019s <\/span>\u201cMas\u0101r\u201d<\/span><\/i> sounds like that scene. It\u2019s beautiful, but it refuses peace. It feels like remembering something you can\u2019t fix. When I listen to it, I imagine it filling the silence in Stark\u2019s film: not judging her, but not forgiving her either. Just holding her quietness up to the light and asking what\u2019s underneath it. <\/span>It made me think about how reflection isn\u2019t the same as reckoning. Stark reflects endlessly (on landscapes, people, herself) but her reflections never really cost her anything. <\/span>Mas\u0101r<\/span><\/i> feels like what real reckoning would sound like: the moment when beauty stops protecting you, and you finally have to sit with what you\u2019ve done.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Honestly, the more I read Freya Stark and watched the films about her, the more uneasy I felt. She\u2019s clearly brilliant and bold (there\u2019s no denying that) but something about her voice never sits right with me. She notices everything, but it\u2019s like she never actually feels what she\u2019s seeing. There\u2019s a constant distance, as … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Freya Stark Playlist: What She Missed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,10,13,14,11,4,3],"tags":[35,33,30,32,34,29,25,31],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-colonial-fantasies","category-desire","category-empire","category-imperialism","category-self-and-other","category-solitude","category-travel","tag-aesthetics-of-empire","tag-empathy-vs-solidarity","tag-empire","tag-moral-distance","tag-observation","tag-orientalism","tag-palestine","tag-postcolonial-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gss206-f25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}