gypsies in Ontario

I found this photo in the online Archives of Ontario. The photo is dated 1926. The women and girls are carrying water on Humber Drive, in southern Ontario. I don't think Humber Drive looks anything as rural as this anymore as its been swallowed up by Toronto, I believe. The title of the photo is: "Gypsies carrying water on Humber Drive." I think these women are Syrian or Lebanese immigrants to Canada. At the turn of the century, Syrians and Lebanese (as well as Armenians, Kurds, and others) were considered Turks by the Canadian government. This polyglot of Arab peoples or other peoples from the Arab region were known as gypsies, I guess, to the anglo settlers to Canada. The archives have other racialized images. I wonder who put the captions on the photos?

Christian truth against occupation

The Western media never fails to focus on "clashes" and "conflict" in the Holy Land, making sure to frame their news in a suppposedly balanced way, but which is anything but. Western media routinely fails to place into the public mind Palestinian non-violent resistance to occupation. In this video, you can see Christian Palestinians' non-violent protest including prayer against the illegal building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank area of Beit Sahour, their home. What is the reaction to their legitimate and peaceful opposition? You can clearly witness the Israeli forces use of tear gas and concussion grenades against these unarmed people standing up for their legal human rights.

Christians of Palestine, KAIROS PALESTINE, have issued a statement, The Moment of Truth, in many languages, asking support from Christians around the world. "In this historic document, we Palestinian Christians declare that the military occupation of our land is a sin against God and humanity". Here is part of their statement in its English language version. I will print it up for my mother, who is a devout Christian, to read:

"This document is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine. It is written at this time when we wanted to see the Glory of the grace of God in this land and in the sufferings of its people. In this spirit the document requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades. The suffering continues while the international community silently looks on at the occupying State, Israel. Our word is a cry of hope, with love, prayer and faith in God. We address it first of all to ourselves and then to all the churches and Christians in the world, asking them to stand against injustice and apartheid, urging them to work for a just peace in our region, calling on them to revisit theologies that justify crimes perpetrated against our people and the dispossession of the land."

please read the entire text in English here.

branding Guinness

Today, I invite you to visit the blog of my sister Katja, to enjoy the pictures she took while in Ireland last year. Her short photo essay captures a sense of place beyond typical tourist shots that strip context. We all know those photos; we've probably taken some ourselves. We go somewhere and try to capture the amazing breadth of spirit and place in which we are enveloped, but later when we share our photo with others, very little of the spirit of place transfers. Sometimes, however, magic happens. This magic is in my sister's photos of Ireland, and I think you will agree.

I thought that her starting her post with the runaway Guinness truck sets a humorous introduction! Of course, we're in the rain that makes Ireland so emerald. Of course, we are traveling in a vehicle, looking out of glass (3x--once through the windshield, second through the camera lens, third through our computer screens--and maybe even fourth if you are wearing glasses or other lenses). Since the invention of trains, the way we see as we journey across a landscape changed, as fast moving vehicles allow scanning of the environment in a way that was not previously part of how we see. It allows consuming the landscape as if outside of it.

The photo of the Guinness truck disappearing into the tunnel of trees that arch over some of the roads of rural Ireland really gave me a chuckle. First, it captures some of the quirky humour that the Irish are so famous for, and second, it calls up the idea of chasing the dream at the bottom of that tall glass of Guinness. For sure, what it promises is always illusive. When I was in Belfast a few years back, when I went out early Saturday morning to walk, I could not believe the number of empty alcohol bottles littered all over the sidewalks. It was like something quite wild had happened at night that I had no inkling of. I only saw the leftovers.

And, of course, my sister's photo captures the embeddedness of capitalism in landscape. There is no escape from it, even while in our tourist jaunts we seek some 'natural' place somehow untouched by the consumer culture we leave behind. The success of branding. The Guinness brand name has been imprinted in our minds as Ireland. Who has not visited Ireland, gone to a pub, and ordered a Guinness for an "authentic experience"? Seriously. If there is someone who has visited Ireland and not gone to a pub, I think that would be rare. Why do we equate jovial drinking in cosy places with Ireland? The Guinness corporation has definitely been incredibly successful at branding an experience, not just a beer; of making us believe in the promise of the swirling power and living magic of entering Ireland through drinking their beer.

Sorry, the link above does not go to the Guinness site because of age restrictions. Please visit http://guinness.com/

red silk coats

Coats using silk materials from Palestine, late 19th, early 20th c. The first caption states the coat is probably Druze, the second caption states the coat is from Galilee.

The red brightness of the coats really contrasts with the black that today blankets the minds of many who imagine the women of Palestine. The image on the cover of Ilan Pappe's book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which I have a link to in the right margin of my blog, also shows the lightness of colour that was Palestinian women's dress before the traumatic changes brought in by the Balfour Declaration, the Nakba, the creation of the state of Israel, 1967, Black September, multiple sieges, the Apartheid Wall, dispossession, and other ongoing traumas, difficult to keep up with.

As I have been thinking about silk, the Silk Road, women, and the Levant, especially Palestinian and Lebanese women, while I was searching for books on a totally unrelated area, I stumbled upon the page above, from a book depicting silk clothing from Palestine. It's a page from the book Palestinian Costume by Shelagh Weir published by Interlink Books. A short overview of the book below:

"The product of over 20 years of serious research, this lavishly illustrated work discusses Palestinian textiles and men's and women's dress during the 30-year period of British rule prior to 1948. Weir also touches upon 19th-century and modern Palestinian costume while discussing pertinent cultural background and meaning behind changing design and styles. Particular emphasis is given to the wedding ritual and garments of Beit Dajan, a village located about 12 kilometers southeast of Jaffa. The great variety of costumes, illustrated in 200 color and 100 black-and-white photographs, and the excellent interpretive text contribute to a unique and valuable work that should be a part of most research, art, textiles, or Middle East collections."
-- Library Journal (reviewer Paula I. Nielson, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, Ut)


my note: the 8 point rosette, which follows a red thread through Astarte and Ishtar to Inanna.

the black silk of dreams

Homes for the Disembodied, 50 continuous yards of silk, 2000 by Mary Tuma

I was searching for the text of a spoken word poem by Nathalie Handal that she read at her performance at Arabesque at the Kennedy Center last year (type her name into Archives to watch it), which led me to an art exhibit that was held in the US in 2003, Made in Palestine.

Looking through the list of contributing artists, I randomly clicked on a female name, Mary Tuma, and found the above image of her installation. I find her visual text interesting to read on so many levels. It could be read as re-signifying the black abaya as seen from behind the Western gaze that homogenizes the diversity and wipes out the agency of women from the Middle East, Arab world, and Muslim world. It could be read as a comment on the silk industry that had been introduced to parts of the Levant, directing us to think about women's work within it, and how the introduction of the mulberry tree led to many new cultural forms (like making toot juice!), but also how the collapse of the silk industry lead to economic difficulties, struggles, migrations, and other social changes. What was women's role in the silk economy? How were their lives affected by the introduction of mulberry trees and silkworms? I do not know about the impact of silk in Palestine, but Tuma's use of silk provokes questions for further thought.

The dresses are tall, suggesting standing tall. The strength of Palestinian women to continue to persist, resist. Adapt to whatever life and occupation throws their way. Long dresses. A long time. 60 plus years of dark dreams.

That all the dresses are made from one continuous piece of silk, joining the forms, speaks of the connections between women; how taken together, these 'bodies' make a meaning beyond their individual forms. The dream of the collective -- yet in black, in mourning. Although the text beneath the image of the installation says that the bolt of silk is 50 yards long, in Tuma's artist's statement she states the dresses are made from one 48 meter long roll. That the black river of cloth streams for 48 meters may refer to 1948, the year of the Nakba, the catastrophe of dispossession and death.

Of course, the dresses have no bodies. They hang in the air like ethereal ghosts, wafting in the air. The installation is of Palestinian women specifically, of that there is no question. So, the forms are a haunting of bodies that no longer exist, of women who have been killed, murdered, dispossessed, expelled from neighbourhoods, exiled and forbidden to return, thrown into solitary confinement for years with no windows, no doors.

Women who we, the people of the Western world and of Israel, continue not to see.

Mary Tuma links her installation with the displaced of Jerusalem specifically as noted below in her artist's statement. Her work is prescient; what have 7 years brought the people of Palestine? The situation in Jerusalem is getting worse, Israeli encroachment into East Jerusalm through more illegal settlements displacing more Palestinians, sending the youth out into the streets with stones in resistance to their disappearance.

Homes for the Disembodied
This is a tribute to Palestinian women who provide strength in terrible circumstances, but who receive little recognition. A place for the spirits of those forced out of Jerusalem to dwell. The dresses are sewn from one continuous 48 meter length of fabric. Mary Tuma

The description of her installation states:

Mary Tuma’s dresses make notice of the absence of the human form, and by so doing, provide a metaphor for the status of a people who are known more for the shadow they cast on current events than for their own personalities and culture. Tuma teaches art at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.


one of the images from the series Negative Incursion (2002) by Rula Halawani

One of the other names I clicked on was Rula Halawani. I was stunned to see how her words echoed the text of the poem by Handal that I had been looking for. In Handal's poem the line between dream and reality is ambiguous -- is her poem a reflection on a dream she once had? -- yet the nightmare of reality for the Palestinian people is unmistakably clear: it is negative.

Negative Incursion

"Ten years ago when the peace process first started, I like many other Palestinians was ready to give peace a chance. As the peace process developed, the events that followed filled me with worry: the worry of losing my city, Jerusalem, and the right of exiled Palestinians to return to their home land. The days went by and in my eyes things only got worse: more of the land was taken; more Israeli settlements appeared on Palestinian land, more killings.

On the 28th of March 2002 I was in Ramallah when the major Israeli Incursion happened, I was shocked; everything around me looked so different. Every street and square I visited was dark and empty; no one was in the streets that day except the Israeli army and its tanks. I felt depressed and cold. The only Palestinian I met on the road that day was an old man. He was shot dead. I never knew his name, but I had seen him walking around those same streets before. That night I could not take away his face from my memory, and many questions without answers rushed inside my head. It was that night that my hopes for peace died."
Rula Halawani

Here is the text of the poem by Nathalie Handal that I was searching for:

Bethlehem

Secrets live in the space between our footsteps.
The words of my grandfather echoed in my dreams,
as the years kept his beads and town.
I saw Bethlehem, all in dust, an empty town
with a torn piece of newspaper lost in its narrow streets.
Where could everyone be? Graffiti and stones answered.
And where was the real Bethlehem--the one my grandfather came from?
Handkerchiefs dried the pain from my hands. Olive trees and tears continued to remember.
I walked the town until I reached an old Arab man dressed in a white robe.
I stopped him and asked, "Aren't you the man I saw in my grandfather's stories?"
He looked at me and left. I followed him--asked him why he left? He continued walking.
I stopped, turned around and realized he had left me the secrets
in the space between his footsteps.

About dreams and reality, for more about the exhibit, here are some excerpts from Santiago Nasar's
The Stuff of Dreams…The Stuff of Nightmares

It is said that dreams represent the mythology of the individual and that the mythology of a people in its different cultural forms, i.e., art, literature, and music represents the dream of the collective. This cannot be truer than in the case of Made in Palestine, a group show at the Station in Houston, Texas, comprised of Palestinian artists from across the world, currently the homeland of their Diaspora. True, but for an exception, and not a minor one at that. The exception being that the art presented in the show does by no means reflect the dream of the Palestinian collective. To the contrary, it reflects the nightmares of a people that have been disinherited and subjected to occupation and humiliation since 1948. 1948 is when the Palestinian people were uprooted from their land to make room for the European Jews to have a country of their own in the land and in the very homes of the Palestinians who had lived there from time immemorial.

The Palestinians call the events of 1948 Al-Nakba, the catastrophe. And can there be anything more catastrophic than waking up to find that you have no home, no country and no means for subsistence? .....

This dream is entwined with the nightmare of an occupation. An occupation that wants to make sure that, now that the land has been taken, the people and all that belongs to them, including their very way of life, cease to exist. ....

The world is divided into three camps: the active participants in the Palestinian tragedy, the zealous supporters and the silent majority. The show at the Station is meant for all three groups. Look into any of the works and you will see yourself somewhere. Whether you look away or you look down or you just stand there and stare through the work and into the vast space above or into a mental image of your grocery list, you are there. .....

We are there. We are here, on the web, looking at the dream/nightmare dresses hanging behind Emily Jacir's tent.