Documentation can be weaponised to subjugate, to surveil. Deliberate self-erasure occurs in rock flight as well. When the section ‘one more’ opens, Hourani recalls coming home from a writing residency and going to work the next day only to find out with dismay that the office had been kitted out with Hewlett-Packard equipment, but not before giving us an overview in plain terms:
hp provides maintains controls ١*the identification system in israel2 ٢*the control mechanism at checkpoints3 ٣*administration for their navy’s IT infrastructure4 ٤*digital storage systems for their illegal settlements5 ١*it takes seven years, out of 27 companies, hp’s offer was the only one to comply with the ministry of interior’s public tender ٢*it reads facial dimensions and hand geometry ٣*this infrastructure was a pilot for implementing the same system into the entire army ٤*and the mayor said that without this system, the settlement could never have advanced into a city (17-18)
Juxtaposed with Hourani’s desperate tone just a few lines prior (‘we cannot live like this but it can’ (17)), this now comes across as painfully matter-of-fact, with a few footnotes in case a reader requires evidence as to why HP features so prominently in the list of brands to boycott. Look up the rest yourself; the tools are in front of you. Also juxtaposed are the Arabic numerals from one to four, a reminder that this mathematical system preceded Western numerals.
(Source: ‘Act Now Against These Companies Profiting from the Genocide of the Palestinian People,’ BDS)
But the story, of course, doesn’t just end here. Upon seeing the office filled with HP technology, Hourani tries to make sense of it, only to realise:
my ears and armpits are hot
i am setting up a fingerprint passcode
and now hp has my finger
and the army that chokes us has my finger
and the police that chokes us has my finger
and my finger
is on a list somewhere
so i go to the settings and then
DELETE
(20)
