How to Disappear

OUT OF PRINT

The homes are eternally wounded, covering up their lesions with ever more drapes and veils. A man passes his whole life within them concealed behind walls, until, one day, a distant sound comes to his ears, a sound that flows through all these obstacles, overleaps and is channeled through them. How did this sound make it in here? he ponders, silently, searches for the chink through which it entered and stops it up. The waves of sound, its unseen frequencies, spread out about him and wheel at supernatural speeds, reflecting back of certain rooftops and penetrating others. The sound waves from without tangle with those already present within and they swell and gather and flow out in all directions. For an instant, everything vanishes before these joyous waves.

How to disappear
by Haytham El-Wardany 

This publication proposes a set of aural exercises that show readers how to disappear, reappear, join a group, or leave a group. Its annex is a lexicon of some of the sounds that dwell in or are banished from the middle-class household. 

Text: Haytham El-Wardany
Editors: Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis
Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Peterson (Preliminary Exercises) and Robin Moger (Sounds of the Middle Classes)

Editions 1–4:
English editions: 2000 copies / Zagreb, 500 copies / Hong Kong, 200 copies / Beirut
11.5 x 17 cm, 60 pages, softcover, 2013.
Design: Lisa Maria Kreutzer
Printed also in Arabic
Produced with support from Young Arab Theatre Fund (YATF) and Meeting Points 7: “Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks”, curated by WHW. 

latest edition, 2021
Co-published by Kayfa ta
64 pages, 9.6 x 14.8 cm, 3000 copies, Printed in Beirut, ISBN 978-1-955702-06-5
Design: Julie Peeters