Middle East’s Untold Story: Why Documentation Matters

Middle East‘s Untold Story: Why Documentation Matters

RUBA AYYASH

The Middle East has been going through one of its most complex historical milestones for years, specifically during the past two years.

To date, no clear national or humanitarian project has emerged, there is no political, economic or social structure to resist the projects implemented on its territory, nor even a long-term administrative vision.

With barely sustaining states, societies exhausted by wars and cross-interest alliances, history is being written without them, and sometimes against them.

Hence the questions of what we will leave behind, and how the future will deal with us? And here I am talking about the Middle East. What memory will immortalize us? Will generations remember us as nations that collapsed and disappeared for unknown reasons?

Or as nations that have melted throughout history into new administrative, social, political, and perhaps cultural and intellectual structures without any resistance? Or will it remind us as souls who have resisted the hell created by the colonial superpowers on their land over the years?

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History that is neither documented nor archived may turn into a myth, or be reduced to an oral epic that is passed down through generations with exaggeration or distortion. What is not written down becomes a raw material consumed by the victors, just as it has happened to nations and human societies throughout the ages.

The Middle East in the future may be treated as we treat some ancient civilizations today; as ambiguous, confused, primitive, laggard, unable to establish real systems. But this view seems reduced, dangerous and distorted.

Documentation is not limited to the classification of “victorious” or “defeated”, nor can it be satisfied with an individual memory based on personal suffering or fleeting news. It should not be random, nor reduced to digital memory for which we do not have the keys, but should be systematic, written, and preserved.

The legitimacy of the peoples of this land has long been questioned, simply because their systems did not conform to the model of the European nation-state. The saying “a land without a people” is still repeated, in updated versions, by figures such as US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who ignorantly denied the existence of real peoples in the region, considering them mere primitive entities without roots.

The region, because of repeated occupations and because of its different nature and experience, its social, administrative and political composition and the concept of the state were very different from what the European experience produced.

“The region, from Palestine to Syria and Lebanon to Iraq, has never been without order or society, nor has it been ruled by chaos, but has had a different model of organization and administration. Hence the flaw in Western assessment, hence the importance of the local narrative, and the importance of narrating events and visions, documenting ideas and embodying insight in immortal words, especially at this time when the structure of values and ethics has collapsed, and the distortion of the truth has become easy, and making the lie wear the dress of prophecy is acceptable.”

The region, from Palestine to Syria and Lebanon to Iraq, has never been without order or society, nor has it been ruled by chaos, but has had a different model of organization and administration.

Hence the flaw in Western assessment, hence the importance of the local narrative, and the importance of narrating events and visions, documenting ideas and embodying insight in immortal words, especially at this time when the structure of values and ethics has collapsed, and the distortion of the truth has become easy, and making the lie wear the dress of prophecy is acceptable.

This is what happened centuries ago, and so history is repeating itself now. We have to recognize that our ancestors were not inferior or valuable to us, and perhaps they were no less resistant either, but perhaps they neglected to document and celebrate their personal experience.

Therefore, there is a common destiny between us and the peoples of the past, and that is that future generations may interpret monuments, documents, history and events in a wrong way, or based on inaccurate notions about our identity, reality, politics, conflicts and tragedies.

In light of this growing hell, the division that is being carried out in full view of the world in the entire region, the violation of the borders of States, the redefinition of the identity of the region and its components, and the attempt to dissolve, integrate and distort many regions, their people, culture and history, the next will be even more dangerous.

RUBA AYYASH: Multimedia Journalist @ Sky News Arabia ; Master’s in Journalism, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates

06-06-2025

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