13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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100 names, 100 faces
100 Shaheed -- 100 Lives, Adila Laïdi, ed., Ramallah, Palestine: Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, 2001. pp209
The Al-Aqsa Intifada, which celebrates its first anniversary this month, has claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives, and, as this death toll rises, standing at 621 at the end of August 2001, there is a danger that these martyrs will be reduced to statistics, faceless figures on lists. Thus, in an effort to remember these individuals and this legacy of martyrdom, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah, Palestine, earlier this year organised a memorial exhibition commemorating the first 100 of these martyrs. This present volume is the catalogue of that exhibition.
The late Nizar Eideh's birdcage
At the exhibition the Palestinian martyrs were not seen in the abstract. Instead, the reality of their lives was revealed and their stories written. These 100 Palestinians were, after all, each someone's child, someone's sibling, friend or lover, and it was this aspect of their lives that the exhibition sought to celebrate. There are stories here of simple, mundane existence as well as of resistance and heroism.
As the editor of the volume, Adila Laïdi, explains in the book's introduction, "one of the project's goals was to give back to each shaheed (martyr) his or her individuality...[hence] each [was given] his or her own personal space, featuring his or her name, photograph and personal object. The Shuhada [are] also presented in order of age. The objects and photographs ... speak for themselves, on their own terms, going beyond death to recreate a life without the clutter of text or obtrusive display devices." Each individual's family provided a selection of their loved one's favourite personal objects, and so at the exhibition in addition to photographs there were wallets, baseball caps, t-shirts, favourite pairs of jeans, CDs, official documents, notebooks, prayer beads and bottles of cologne.
The book is arranged so that each of the 100 shaheeds is given two pages, the left-hand page featuring a photograph and a short note on the person in English and Arabic, and the right-hand page including photographs of the personal objects displayed at the exhibition in his or her memory. All the photographs are sepia, and the two pages are separated by a thin, transparent piece of paper, which seems to act as a kind of veil, or shroud, referring to the way in which the items featured in the book were originally displayed.
The book celebrates the lives of men, women and children. It includes old people and young people, Palestinians from Jerusalem, from the West Bank and from Gaza, people from cities and from villages. What binds all these people together within the covers of this book is the fact that they are all Palestinians who lost their lives during the Al-Aqsa Intifada defending their right to existence and to self- determination. The overwhelming majority of the hundred victims listed here are teenagers.
The first person to be commemorated in the volume is Mohamed Al-Dorra, who was only 12 years old at the time of his death. Until the untimely death of four- month-old Iman Hijjo on 7 May, Mohamed was the child martyr of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Mohamed's death, captured on film, was replayed on television screens worldwide, the photograph of his dying in his father's arms printed in almost every newspaper. This is the image we have of Mohamed. Yet, in this volume we are also able to see him as he was in life -- living in the Breji refugee camp, playing football and swimming in the sea and caring for his pets, especially for his birds. The object displayed here for Mohamed is his pair of sneakers with "2000" printed on them.
The book contains many other individual stories. Among these is that of Musleh Abu Jarad, 16, who had trained as a carpenter and had gone to work inside Israel without a permit to help his family make both ends meet. His wallet, displayed at the exhibition and reproduced here, bears the simple inscription "Love and Peace." We also learn about Nizar Eideh, 15, "an active young boy, who kept himself busy with aquaculture, swimming, horse riding and breeding birds and pigeons." He had bought a bird three days before he was killed, but on the morning of that day he released the bird, saying he "didn't want the bird's mother to miss it." A photograph of the birdcage is included in the exhibition under Nizar's name. We read that Shadi Alwawi, 21, was killed while talking to his mother in Saudi Arabia on a mobile phone. He had climbed onto the roof of the house to get a better signal, and it was here that he died.
We learn that Walid Abu Saleh, 23, had been engaged to Nelly, and that Muhammad Jabareen had contracted an architect to build his dream house and was about to get engaged to his girlfriend. We learn that Mahmoud El-Emwasi, 24, "leaves behind his wife of two days, his parents, five brothers and two sisters." His wife, 17-year-old Maraam, has since returned to school and hopes to become a journalist. Khadra Abu Salame, 56, was praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on 29 September when clashes broke out between worshippers and Israeli border police. She died of tear gas inhalation.
What is perhaps most striking, even refreshing, about this otherwise sober exhibition and catalogue is that the organisers and editor have been able to place the Al-Aqsa Intifada in its human context and to retain the dignity of its victims. Information is presented matter of factly, without sensationalism, and the reader is able easily to identify with the martyrs presented here and to empathise with their plight. In so doing, he or she is able to realise more fully the human circumstances of those angry, rebellious young men we see daily on our television screens, resisting any temptation to reduce their deaths to statistics or to forget their martyrdom.
Reviewed by Amina Elbendary
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