One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

When reading nonfiction, I don’t necessarily have an expectation of stylistic flair. I think of data, of facts, of figures. I think of research that makes the case for how things are and how things need to be done differently. Every once in a while, though, I’m astounded by the power of words as people tell real stories about the world. Such is the case for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.

Born in Cairo, El Akkad then grew up in Qatar before moving to Canada. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an account of his personal experiences, his work as a journalist and author, and it all runs parallel to his outrage about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I love the balance of the personal and broad focus of the book. Discussing his own history, his concerns for his daughter, and his own personally quandaries with navigating the literary institution, is beautifully rendered. The context for the book, the destruction of Palestine, is rendered with unflinching courage.

Incidentally, there was a quote from the book that really resonated with me. He discussed the images of the starved and dead that are readily available for Palestinians. He gives an account for the images in grim detail and offers a justification for forcing people to look: when we close our eyes, it flexes the muscle to close our eyes and ignore what is happening; when we keep our eyes open, that flexes another muscle—the one that compels us towards action. Apologies that I don’t have the exact quotation (I forgot to take notes, I was so engrossed and read the book in about two sittings). That quotation, if nothing else, is something I will continue forward with in my life. I want to be the kind of person that flexes the muscles that keep my eyes open. That takes action in small ways until it becomes reflex.

I appreciate the candor of Omar El Akkad’s feelings of hopelessness. I think it’s a pervasive feeling right now. We keep advocating, and progress, at the best of times, does not seem to be forthcoming—and, at the worst of times, we seem to be backsliding. El Akkad wrestles with the question: why bother writing? What’s the point. Nothing matters. El Akkad points out, though, how everything seems futile until we can look back and see that it made a difference. Sit-ins during the American Civil Rights movement weren’t seen as being useful in the moment, but long after the fact we look back as though they were an integral stage in the movement. So, the small things we do now are something. I hope.

The book hits home in particular because of my interest in literature. El Akkad is an author, of course, and there are several parts of the book that address his writing career. For instance, he gives an account of his book American War (written before Trump’s first election, published after) being optioned for a film and then being dropped because the actual political landscape shifted. El Akkad also talks about the way the literary institution routinely ignores the plight of Palestine. One example that caught my attention is the brief reference to Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, which is a novelization of the true story of a gang rape and murder of a young Arab girl by Israeli soldiers. Shibli won for the Literaturpreis award but the organizers chose to “postpone” the award ceremony, citing it as a “joint decision” with the author in response to the “war between Israel and Hamas” (El Akkad points out that it wasn’t and that the “postponement” turned into a cancellation). The literary world saw the book and flinched. Closer to home, El Akkad talks about the protest at the Giller Prize dinner where protestors interrupted because of Scotiabank’s stake in Israeli arms manufacturing. El Akkad talks about the invite to attend the dinner; he talks about not going at the last minute; he talks about the lack of reaction, the lack of voices added to the protest, and he wonders how he would have participated. I appreciate how El Akkad is so honest about the challenges of the writing world—everyone is barely scraping by, and the allure of a major award can be truly life changing, but at what cost?

He emphasizes that in order to protest the ongoing genocide, there are several options. One that seems to gain favour is ‘negative’ participation. That is, withdrawing from the game entirely. This means things like arts institutions refusing to accept money from people invested in the Israeli war machine. Corporations and politicians want their names on awards to give themselves legitimacy and a representative response is to just not let them be involved. It seems inconsequential, but, as El Akkad points out again and again—all these minor youth movements seemed inconsequential until their results were achieved.

The way El Akkad uses language is so powerful; I really ought to have taken notes. I can’t speak highly enough of the prose. What made the book even more engaging for me are the familiar historical and cultural touchstones peppered throughout the book. At the personal level, El Akkad talks about being a student at Queen’s, my alma mater, and living in Kingston. He talks about Guantánamo Bay, which was a watershed moment in my political awakening. As an extension, he draws on the story of Omar Khadr, whom I was very lucky to learn about through my grade 12 politics teacher. Reading One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This provided additional context to my formative years and the way anti-Arab and Islamophobic perceptions infiltrated the Canadian mainstream—incidentally, El Akkad brings together issues intersectionality, discussing the plight of Canada’s Indigenous people as a parallel to the Palestinian experience.

The central conceit of the book is that Western liberalism is ineffectual in standing up to injustice because the privileged will not forgo their own self-interest. No one wants to be vulnerable. No one wants to be accountable. No one wants to risk their own position. While horrible things are happening, Western liberals pay lip service to the idea with sympathetic nods but will fail to take a stand. It’s only when it’s too late to do anything that we will revere those who protested. El Akkad writes that “While the terrible thing is happening—while the land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed—any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight.” The political cache to be gained by looking back and decrying that which we did nothing to prevent is cynical and embarrassing. Denouncing events like the genocide in Gaza become a matter of expedience, we “say the right thing” long after we have any chance to do anything about it.

In a weird way, I find this book inspiring. It calls me out and I think it’s important to acknowledge how little I’m really doing to make an impact on world issues. I also don’t put my own livelihood on the line to take a stand. (There’s a silencing effect, even in education.) It does inspire me to do better and continue to build community around people who will not wait until Palestine has been totally erased from the map and then say, “Yes, that was too bad. I always knew that was bad.”

I really recommend this one. My review doesn’t do it justice and for that I apologize.

Happy reading and resisting.