Part 10-Final
June 14th, Friday-Jummah day
We prayed in communion, the sun burned on my sore back except on this day it burned with a flicker of hope for a new one. As we concluded the midday prayer the kids scattered toffees across the excess tarp we used for praying on the mud. I sat on it for a few minutes after the men left to get started on the fire for food. I collected my thoughts, the catastrophizing of which got steadily better in the weeks after the execution. I also made duas for my partner Yazan, whom I was informed had been martyred two days after the incident.
Hasbunā Allah wa ni'ma al-wakīl, I whispered into my palms, concluding my own prayer as I watched the children try to convince the adults to join in for the Eid festivities they prematurely planned.
(Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs)
They grew tired of not having others to play with, not having an air filled sphere to kick around obsessively and so they often lingered around me; sometimes acting as paintbrush caddies when my hands were caked with clay. I made my salawat and picked up the shiny rolls of chocolate, scooping them into my shirt. “Why didn’t you use the money to buy a ball? We have the Eid game to play on sunday” I said looking at the page of the calendar waving in the warm wind to the right of our rows. Hamza crossed his arms confidently, I was happy to see him like this.
“We won’t give you our chocolates for free!” he beamed, holding out his hand. I grinned at his business acumen and dug the pockets of loose harem pants.
‘Pay up!’ said Hossam, smiling broadly as we swung his arms around his friend’s neck, jokingly holding a finger gun to his head. The humour of the Palestinian children is dark, I reflected as I forked up 4 shekels for each of them.
The kids, especially Hamza, grinned contently at their earnings until Sarah snuck by, wearing a black baseball cap speckled with excess paint from my brush, and smacked the back of Hossam’s neck with her stump, making him drop the coins into her one intact hand cupped below his. It seems the cutting of her limbs didn’t take away her playful cunningness. I met her eyes as they sparkled with that delightful naughtiness I’d last seen before the war.
‘Haad mish 'adil!’ complained Hamza, with only one of the four shekels I gave him in his hand.
(that’s not fair)
‘Heik hu!’ she stood firmly, balling up the coins in her one fist. ‘Biddak akel, mish heik?’ she posed to the boys, who surrendered to her logic; you really couldn’t make men, even the little ones- choose anything over food.
(that’s how it is! you want food don’t you?)
In the distance, smoke- the good kind, emanated from the cooking of wholesome food made its way towards us, filling our senses and amplifying one of them. My stomach made a sound, the children laughed at all together, I had no siblings and even at the age of 24 with Alhamdullilah- a sizable circle of friends, I was not used to this kind of teasing.
I went back into the ceremony hall I had been living in for the past few weeks, with the exception of coming out to pray and eat the food made by this girl Renad, a pre teen who was practising making some dishes for eid, the costs for which the kids argued about outside as I returned to the product of my pain.
I stepped up the side of the stage, scrubbed clean of the dust and reconstructed it to the best of my and Mahmoud’s ability. Mahmoud was a student here before the place was bombed. He was devastated to see the condition of the place upon returning from his temporary living situation east of Rafah, in the aftermath of the ground invasion.
Despite mopping the grooves of the wood deeply and vigorously with a stick and dishcloth we used as a mop, you could still see the patches and marks of where the blood soaked in, to reside in the foundation of the performance stage forever.
I tiptoed around the clothes like I did that day with Farouq after the extermination, this time however, I was minding my step around sculptures I made in their places.
For starters, I feel like I have to tell you– these are not the type of sculptures that come to mind when you think of a tribute.
I nearly tripped over the still wet sleeve of Mohanned, the shiny black paint I sprayed in layers dripped slowly through the cracks in the floorboard. I need to get to repainting that as well, I winced thinking about my Eid spent detailing wood in the crevices under the sculptures.
This was worth it, I told myself, marvelling at the scattered clothes around the room cast in plaster, immortalised. They were worth it.
I kneeled down between the two poles that were screwed into the ground. The chains that bound a human here were flung haphazardly, the metal rusting from the water exposure on that very first night after the massacre.
I leaned forward to get the helmet used to break them, I stared at it for a minute- thinking about those vindictive and crazed ones that used to stare back through the screen. I wiped it with the sleeve of my simple qamis, dyed pale yellow, and tossed it aside with a metallic roll to take out my tools soaking in a mixture of vinegar and olive oil. The pungent smell immediately hit me in the face so I quickly got the tools I needed, shaking off the excess fluid and covering the mixture back up with the helmet. Some would say it’s in bad taste to use the armour of a soldier to protect my senses but I would argue that it’s being put to better use now. All that thing did while it rested on the neck of men like that was shield their eyes and ears to the horrid things they were committing. Things like this, I thought as I looked at the piles of clothing surrounding my feet, encased in plaster that we mixed from the rubble.
We were making dreams out of our nightmares, I thought fondly, gripping the handle of my scalper harder. I hadn’t felt this in tune with everything around me since the dhur salat me and Farouq prayed on the day it happened. In the days that came after I worked mechanically towards a clear goal. I’d realised that there was no point in returning “home” and coming back to document the next siege. Because they obviously weren’t done yet, if the drilling and land pillaging from dusk to dawn meant anything, but we were done. The people here, notwithstanding me, were tired of convincing the world of something they would never be able to see for themselves, convincing them of horrors they could banish with a swipe.
Still, the young Samir- the boy who unstuck his grades from the fridge to put his drawings on it would want the world to see something, to feel anything for my people hiding and crying undercover. Again, it’s not like I could abandon all these memories, however horrific they were. How could I return “home” with my Danish passport and stand in front of that refrigerator with drawings made by my younger self pasted on to block it all out? All I would feel is a sense of being forcibly removed from my actual home. Which was the reality of the occupation. Still, I wonder,
What is home?
My thoughts echoed, as abstractly as the tie dye patterns I painted on the sculpture of Roshdi’s shirt, because of course there were no walls for them to bounce between anymore.
I paused the slicing of damp clay I was doing to resemble folds in the white button down shirt Saleem wore until he didn’t. I looked around at the creations of clay surrounding me, this was where I was most myself. In a room, any room, even a place like this that could barely be called that- creating.
But the creating I was doing right now didn’t give me the same empty feelings that first drove me to pursue journalism instead. The low lying buzz of which led me to doing it less and less, until it finally stopped being a hobby that I kept at despite the pressure of studies and started being a memory I don’t even remember making. Until now that is.
I resumed carving the opening of Mr.Nasser’s tan brown “lecture pants” as we joked that day in the absence of the soldiers that we’re in reality, stalking us the whole time, envying our genuine laughs. I looked back at the printed picture I took after they dried, when the sun came out following the brief episode of rain.
I was the most in my element when I was creating…for.. Change? That wasn’t it, I didn’t expect anything to change from this. It was made clear to me by the mural I saw in december that paintings artists poured their blood and sweat into were no different from the home a man spent 40 years to build from the ground up, were no different from the stage so many people's dreams came true on-
I quit thinking so hard about it and fully resumed my role. The only role I was useful for, and was happy to do for the rest of my life.
I breathed in the air, clear in the absence of flood machines filled with toxic gas, or avalanches of dust and dirt off the mountains we tended trees on for generations, generations that were wiped out but remembered by the town folk. The expelled and the exiled.
I sanded a few pebbles I collected while skipping stones on the ocean with the children, to create the buttons of his shirt. I could’ve simply used some real ones but my “neighbors” if you could call them that, when really they tended to me like a beloved son–were already suffering from a shortage of proper clothing. I placed the buttons strategically on the shirt with extra plaster mixed with water to create an adhesive-like consistency. I placed them with the utmost care. I didn’t want to mess anything up, I didn’t want to mess with this snapshot in time I was recreating. I stood up finally, tucking the thin carving knife behind my ear, to see how everything was looking too far. It was almost done with the exception of the paint splattered floorboard, the protective sealant I could only apply when everything was dry and of course, the people who once wore them. I scanned the stage, turned around and looked down to see the cream coloured shirt I had to mould on the floor, because that’s where it was scattered after ripping it off the man. Originally, in the photo, that shirt adorned drops of blood that seeped into the fabric and stayed even after vigorously washing it, but I decided not to paint it after setting the shirt on piled rocks placed to hold its shape when applying the clay and paper mache layers. There was not one drop of red paint used in this entire room. The people who wore these clothes didn’t only die in them, they lived that day out in them and I preferred to portray them in that light, as though they were still alive. Because they were.
وَلَا تَقُولُوا۟ لِمَن يُقْتَلُ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ أَمْوَٰتٌۢ ۚ بَلْ أَحْيَآءٌۭ وَلَـٰكِن لَّا تَشْعُرُونَ • ١٥٤
’Never say that those martyred in the cause of God are dead—in fact, they are alive!
Though you perceive it not.’
A part of me wondered if I should just skip out on the anti-wear layer, and let it age like things do, like the people who wore them were supposed to do. I placed my hand on my hips and wondered what was missing. A twinge of sadness touched me. I realised that I had missed out on the filmmakers pin for Roshdi’s shirt and the scored lines on the seams of the doll they had ripped apart in front of Nabhan.
I offered to have someone mend the scraps of the doll and return the only memento of his dear granddaughter back to him, as I did for the families of everyone involved, the ones I could find at least. Either the memory was too painful for them to keep or they didn’t see the value of holding onto their clothes, and I don’t blame them one bit for those reactions. How would you react, if you spent weeks hiding in a school or tent encampment? Being promised that your loved ones would return to you but when they do it’s in the form of fabric and ashes? Before I left them I told them what I had in mind, if they were okay with it. I was fully prepared to be on the receiving end of their entirely valid expression of misery, or a razor sharp slap to my face. But instead, they welcomed the idea of making something anew from the misery, as opposed to recording night and day only for it to fall on deaf ears. The daughter of the poet and professor Mr.Nasser wrapped me in a hug, pushing her fathers brown suit jacket back to me before she shyly pulled away. ‘He would’ve liked it’ she said in a video call I arranged during the beginning stages of the project, her eyes glistening with tears in the buggy video.
My eyes bounced from the dove while sculpting his shirt to the burst of colour in the sculpture of the beloved filmmaker’s shirt to the void of black worn by the man who no longer saw any beauty in the world, and therefore decided it wasn’t worth enduring any longer. The twinge of sadness shifted to guilt as I wished to have held him off for longer, to keep him here so he could see the beauty return. I wiped blooming tears and took a step back to see what was missing.
The keffiyeh Amir wore hung on the edge of the stage, tassels gently beckoning me. His militant uniform was taken for examination by the authorities and his scarf was the only thing that remained.
An image made itself clear to me. I took the scarf in my hand and folded the corner diagonally, aligning it to make a triangle. I tied the corners along the base of the triangle to the pole that stuck up from the ground, that I simply could not get to unfasten from the floor. I frequently stepped back to examine the scene and felt that the harmony of the statues were disrupted by the black metal poles jutting out of the ground. Not only was the unity disturbed but the black pole served as a reminder of the treachery the forced the crowd to stand speechless in front of that day.
I tied the tassels together on each of the three sides to make a singular triangular sheet. A flag.
The keffiyeh I fashioned into a flag stood limp due to slow wind at first but as I flapped it back and forth, it slowly started to pick up- gently waving in the hot summer air, turning a symbol of destruction into that of triumph and pride. I myself watched proudly at the gentle dancing of the chequered red and white and remembered when I swore that this pattern would never look the same to me again again. That was true still, but in a different way.
‘Ya Samir!’ the voice of Ezz Zead projected from the outside. I turned around to see him standing there with a bottle of soda in his hand, unopened. He directed it’s mouth towards me in offering and I ran to him. Normally I would refuse the bottle and prefer that someone else drink it but on this particular day I was parched, my bad habit of forgetting to eat or drink when engulfed in my craft was one of the many habits I carried from denmark criticised by my family here. He handed me the soda and made his way towards the stage, looking at the fluttering of the flag I just set up. He looked back at me with a soundless expression of…gratitude, I observed, reading his features and the way he fiddled his moustache to hide his lip, biting back a cry.
‘Ya'ṭīk el-'āfyeh ya zalameh, shughul mumtāz’ he said, spreading his arms widely.
(may God bless you, good job man)
I never knew how to take compliments but I knew shrugging as if it was no big deal would be perceived as arrogant and a correct perception of the unnecessary gesture at that. So I stuttered, fiddling with the cap of the soda until he came over and opened it for me, patting my back in a way that said ’’I know what you mean” and I sighed, sucking in the slightly warmed juice that still quenched my thirst with pleasure.
Ezz Zead started heading back towards the tent where food was being served, asking me to come quickly before it was gone.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was delaying their meal, I realised as I stood against the wall, drinking the rest of my soda while watching Omar and Hammad demonstrate dribbling to the pre teen boys who managed to acquire a brand new football during the time I spent working on the sculptures. The boys showed the kids how to tap the ball lightly with the heels of their feet, keeping it close as they moved. Hamza and Hossam, or the ح brothers as we called them, ignored their tips and continued to kick the ball with the same thrill seeking intensity while Abdullah , who actually watched the two older boys intently, hoping to learn something new, mimicked the movements with his own two feet. I emptied my soda and watched him cautiously. The boy just had open heart surgery at the European hospital and was due for another one soon. Luckily Jenan arrived at just the right time, running past the tents to reach the rowdy boys, gold plait tumbling down her back in the dimming sun.
‘Yalla boys!’ she commanded, merging English and Arabic to get their undivided attention, which she did as they stopped the game to address her, the ball rolling away from their feet. She put her hands on her hips and asserted that they halt their game and come for lunch immediately.
‘Renad’s made sumagiyya!’ she exclaimed.
The faces of the five boys all lit up, with Hossam already running towards to smell of it while Hamza looked indecisively between the ball and the steam wafting through between the tents.
Omar, upon hearing the mention of the highly favoured dish, questioned her.
‘Leesh amaltīh il-yom? Kan lazem tkhallīh lil-Eid.’
(why did you decide to make it today? you should have saved it for eid.)
‘Liltadreeb’ she said simply, standing behind her and the young head cook’s decision. She then assured him ‘Ma tiḥtashmi, biykuun aḥla b-il-Eid’.
(For practice. Not to worry, the food will taste even better on eid)
‘Alaysa kadhalik ya ʿam Samir?’ she asked, turning to me for my opinion, catching me off guard.
ṭabaʿan bilttaʾkīd, bilttaʾkīd, I replied fully certain that whatever they decided to try out today would taste lovely on both occasions. She smiled in my direction and started leading the way, at which point I was compelled to follow. Jenan teased Hamza while I was looking for a place to stash my empty bottle.
‘Yalla, lazem takul qabel ma tel'ab diddi’ said Jenan, kissing her muscles and wearing a grin of confidence which Hamza stuck his tongue out at.
(come on, you need to fill your belly before playing against me)
I disposed of the bottle and pocketed the steel bottle cap, having an idea of what to do with it once I returned tomorrow to polish the sculptures. I looked back one last time at the tribute, an understanding of just what I meant to do all along finally dawning on me as I turned on my heel and followed everyone back.
My intentions, frozen behind ice and blurry even to me- thawed and unfogged.
Creating was the one thing that made me a free man,
a free Palestinian, irrespective of how many times the identity has been stripped away from me through denying my right to live and my right to live freely with the pride I saw in all these faces as we sat down to eat. It wasn’t only about that though. I wanted the freedom to leave a mark. To replace the torn down walls of my city with new ones, new ones as resilient as the people I spent the past 6 months of my life with and as unshakeable as the faith each one of them carried, even whilst the matter of their lives were being debated, put up for sale and doubted.
The keffiyeh billowed in the distance and I vowed that each and every stroke of my chisel or my paintbrush would go into making art that would be remembered as anthems for our destined liberation.
the world says
art should not be political
i disagree
for my art to be not political
i have to be able to hear the birds chirping
and not the bombs falling
-El Jones