Rimi Garbua receives a flower from Yael at our exhibition opening in Jaffa, Sunday. You can see more of Rimi's work here, and text and image from the exhibition here.
If you would like to help us continue the Jaffa Photography Project, click on the 'donate' button, right.
There is an article on the Guardian website about the exhibition, here, by Seth Freedman.
Our exhibition, Following the home, opens Sunday (tomorrow) at New Horizon centre, 59 Kedem St, Jaffa. On show is the work of six girls from the Jaffa Photography Project - Jamilah, Sama, Jiana, Mor, Walaa and Rimi - photography developed over a series of workshops exploring 'home', 'community' and 'the other'. Please come, and bring your friends, to see this moving, exciting work - image and text from girls in Jaffa, who have not been heard before.
Here is some of the work on show:
Friday night (Sama Shakra)
'On Friday night everyone in the family comes to my house to relax and eat. In this picture you see my mum, my older brother Ibrahim and his wife Wardeh, which means ‘rose’, and their daughter Aida, named after my mother.
'On the left is my aunt Nawal and her husband Ahmed. Nawal is a healer through the Qur'an. A lot of people from Jaffa come to her and ask her to read for them. If you have stomach ache, feel anxious or suffer from the evil eye. When you hear her read from the Qur'an you feel really good. She feels what you feel. Once she read to me – and knew everything I felt. I was hot and she became red.
'I love it when Nawal comes to my home. You feel as if an angel came through the door. I have never seen a woman with so much strength apart from my mother. Nawal and Ahmed are living proof that love exists and lasts for years.'
My father (Jiana Ashkar)
'This is a happy picture. It is important to my father that the family should be happy and smile. He says, 'if you smile the world smiles back at you, if you don't smile, the world steps away'. I agree.'
Washing (Rimi Garbua)
‘This is beautiful because you can see here washing and it
reminds me of home and family. You see colours and the blue sky but next to
that you see the barbed wire that is closed and is trying to save the children
and the family from the bad environment. It’s a shield for them and it stops
people coming in, but it’s bad that we need such a shield.’
Amir by the window (Rimi Garbua)
‘In this picture we don’t see my brother’s face because of
the light, which is behind him. It’s black and white but beyond that you see
colours, and after that you see Jaffa. The child is kept safely in his warm
house but beyond him, open the door and you see all the garbage, cigarettes,
drugs and poor families.
‘Black is normally bad. Maybe this house is a place where the child is locked and must stay inside. Maybe the home is not a good place for him.’
Your way (Mor Levy)
‘This woman is a survivor because she did it her way - she made her choices. You can see in her eyes that she's a happy person - she is not wearing a mask. She told us that she could see the future. One day she woke up and a voice in her head told her not to drive. She ignored it and then had an accident. After that she decided not to ignore the voice inside - and to help other people do the same.’
Lina sleeping (Jamilah Siksik)
‘I love this picture because Lina looks like an angel
when she's asleep. I took this picture because she is beautiful and you can see
the intimacy of home and she is calm. But outside there is a whole war - many
problems, chaos. When I look at this picture I feel I can resolve all the
problems outside.’
Following the home is open for one month, from May 4
To support our work, click on the 'donate' button, right.
This image is by Jamilah Siksik, one of the Palestinian participants in the Jaffa Photography Project. She has called it Free speech.
Yael and I went to a demonstration outside the Etzel Museum, where a celebration was taking place for the 60th anniversary of the 'liberation of Jaffa', and we took Jamilah. It was the first time she ever did anything like this. We took her with the camera, and she photographed the demonstration - she's only 14 years old.
The photograph shows a man who has just been arrested by the police, because he ran to the crowd and shouted 'why should the Palestinians pay for the Holocaust?'. Police immediately dragged him away. Jamilah said this: 'I think that everyone has the right to oppose and say what he thinks especially if it's a demonstration. This man only said what he thought and the police took him.'
I worked with Rimi. Here are her pictures, and the story she told:
'I feel at home everywhere
but my home. My house is very noisy – I have three brothers always yelling. I
like to come to the beach to sit and feel the wind. I am so free here. I come by myself to get away from the confusion
at home.
'My mother is Jewish, my
father Arab. My mother’s family didn’t like it. Her brothers don’t like it. She
was pregnant and her brothers tried to make her have an abortion. Her family
didn’t go to the wedding. Now that my father has died, my mother’s family they
want to reconnect. But I don’t feel they are my family now.
'In Jaffa there is trash everywhere. Drugs and violence. A lot of people I know don’t like to be at home. They steal and do drugs. My father was like that. He had 14 brothers and sisters. When my father died, at the funeral all these people came up to me who I didn’t know and started to hug and kiss me, and my mother was upstairs crying and pregnant with twins.
'I made this drawing for my mother, after my father died.
'This is my father when he was young, before he met my mother. He is the one on the left. They met on the beach in Jaffa. He tried to stop another man taking my mother's photograph – a stranger walking past.
'And this is me with him when I was a baby. My father was an amazing man, I loved him so much. He saw if I was sad and made things better.
'He smoked all the time. He
was in and out of jail. Had he been Jewish this would not have happened.
'My father's family think I'm Arab and my mother's family say I'm Jewish. It's confusing. It's a problem. When I get married, if it is to an Arab there will be another fight with my mother's family. And the army – the first thing they check is if you're Jewish or not. I want to do the army – I need the experience for my job – but my father's family don't want me to.
'My brother hates the Arabs. He's scared because when he was a child he saw Arabs throwing rocks on cars and all that.
'My father had so many friends – not just in Jaffa. Until now they come to the house and ask for him, some of them who don't know he died. It's really sad. Me and my father were all the time together.
'My mother's family is from Iraq. She tells us nothing about her life. There is just this one picture from her past.'
I am in Jaffa, working with the girls on their photography project, towards an exhibition at the end of the month. This image is by Jamileh Siksik. Taken for our 'Home' workshop, it shows graffiti on Yefet St, which runs through Jaffa's heart - graffiti one sees everywhere in Tel Aviv, but less here. It says Am Yisrael chai - People of Israel, live.
'I took this picture because the words have been crossed out,' Jamileh said. 'This used to be the home of the Arabs, but the Jews came and took it from us. I am upset when I see this graffiti.'
Lisa Goldman at On the
Face brings to our attention an inspiring blog,
Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot,
written by two friends, one Palestinian one Israeli, who met 18 months ago when
Gazans could still enter Israel. Read it for real voices, beyond rhetoric, of
those who live this conflict:
‘ First Post – 20 January, 2008
‘Today has been quiet so far.
Only one siren went off. I heard one faint rocket fall in a far distance and
another somewhat closer. Not too close. I was glad that all my kids were
already in school and not anywhere near the falling rockets.
‘The past week was very
difficult. Probably close to 200 rockets with several people wounded. A couple
rockets fell in a range of 40-60 meters from our home. One fell without any
preparation (siren) and caught me in the shower.
‘This morning I called my friend
"Peace man" from Gaza. He told me that things have been quiet today.
Israel has cut all fuel and goods supply to Gaza. This means that they have
electricity only an hour or so a day. He fears that the electricity will shut
down completely. I asked about food. He told me that prices have gone up even
more due to the lack of goods.
‘In the past week Israel has
been using more force than in the past few months. This has brought about a new
chain of violence with many Palestinians killed. About half of them unarmed
civilians. As a result the Hamas which has stopped firing rockets to Israel for
several months has once again started shelling Sderot.
‘We decided to start this Blog
to bring to people's awareness the true nature of what 2 peace seeking people
on both sides of this insane situation are feeling, thinking and going through.
‘We will both try to write here
on as often as possible. I hope Peace man will have electricity to write.’
I am walking in the park in London, just arrived. Blue fingertips, crescent moon, a different light.
On the plane back, I sat next to a Muslim woman whom Israel had refused entry. The air hostess came at the start of the flight and took the woman's passport away. She entered the plane from a separate door, driven straight across the tarmac from her prison cell – two days’ incarceration with, as her interrogator told her, ‘no rights’.
You have no rights, is what he said, upon the woman’s suggestion that he tell her – indeed that she was entitled to know – what would happen next.
The woman, J, had intended to travel via Israel to the West Bank. It was not her first visit but this time she arrived on the same plane as a Muslim man who frightened security. They said that he and J were together in a plot. He was being deported too and sat on my other side, ranting throughout the flight about Yahud, and the gun his son was building to take them out.
‘That is the definition of bad luck,’ says J. Meaning that because by chance she and the man had shared a flight, the West Bank is closed to her now.
J lowers her voice to barely audible when she says ‘West Bank’ or names a town in Palestine. She drops her head to say it too. I can hardly hear her at one point. And she checks to see that no one’s listening while we speak.
There were three others in her cell. One, from the Philippines, cried all night. A Russian woman never said anything, only rocked back and forth and moaned. She spoke neither English nor Hebrew and no one knew what she thought.
The prison graffitti was shocking. It said I hate the Jews. Over and over. I hate the Jews. Not the Israelis but the Jews.
‘Israel has made people everywhere dislike Jews,’ says J.
‘Why can’t they distinguish between Israelis and the Jews?’ I ask.
‘Because Israel is the country that’s meant to look after the Jews. If you’re Jewish you can go there and get everything you need – a home, money. There was a Christian woman in the jail who’d been servant to an Israeli Jewish woman. They were from the same place in Russia. The Jewish woman got everything and the Christian woman was cleaning up after her.
‘When the Jewish woman died, the Christian woman had to leave Israel. Four years’ work – she paid for the visa, did Hebrew courses first – but the woman is not allowed to stay.’
The jailors, when they wanted something, shouted your nationality: You! Philippino! Come here! Or Russian! But they didn’t know how to refer to the British J. They called her nothing. Not even by her name. ‘I can understand it, why they don’t like someone who looks like me,’ J motions to her hijab. 'I mean, I am the other. I represent everything they fear.’
But why? Why did that security guy, the Israeli who had been so kind and talked about his Arab friends, why did he remain silent when the interrogator shouted in J’s face? Told her she had blood in her eyes. Said that the reason she was tired was because she was a liar, and lying takes hard work. How could someone be so kind one minute, so callous the next?
J shifts under her black jilbab, which has small pink roses sewn in a line all the way down the front.
We are in Tel Aviv and it’s late. Jabali takes me to this ace burger place where they do really good meat. We’ve just been in Shesek drinking vodka and listening to grubby soul.
‘Which burger do you want?’ the waitress asks. I just want the quickest one. I want the one that’s ready now. It’s been about eight hours and food is on my mind.
As we wait for the burger to fry, the big man at our side – this bar is full only of men – starts to talk. And I want to take his picture so I do.
‘The other day,’ he says, ‘a woman half your size came in here and ordered the maximum burger. She put it all away. I don’t know where. And her man – he was bigger than you – had only the small. You know what I said? I told him, it’s clear who wears the trousers in your house.’
My burger arrives. Raphael, for that is the man’s name, wants to see the pictures that I took.
‘That’s not good. I could do better with my phone,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘I’m a photographer,’ I say. ‘Working in Jaffa with Sadaka Reut.’
He looks blank.
‘It’s an Arab-Jewish partnership.’
The waitress snakes her eyes.
‘A what?’
‘A-rab Jew-ish partnership.’ I spell it out.
It’s like the moment when someone says ‘I’m gay’ at the family Christmas in front of all the aunts.
But then Raphael circles one huge arm, stands in front of his chair and shouts, ‘I believe in that! That is good! You know what – this land doesn’t belong to anybody just because God says. Not this one. Not that one. We all come from our mother's womb.’
We are listening.
‘This land belongs to all of us. I’ve seen too much death already!’ he shouts.
Sama and I went for a walk around Jaffa. She had the camera. Here are the pictures that she took, and the words that she said:
‘This is my mother. Her name is Aida, like the opera. Mum
grew up in one house in Ajami (my grandfather lives there now and I have no
connection with him). Grandfather used to work in the French embassy and spend
summer inside with all the children when the ambassador was away.
‘Mum was born in 1957. The family lived in a big beautiful
house in Jaffa – in '48 the Jewish army broke into the house at night and the family ran away with only their clothes – to a house nearby
that was destroyed. This is where my grandfather lives in now.
‘I don’t know exactly where the old home is. I asked my
mother and she told me the area, but not the house.
‘My grandfather was a tough man – violent. My grandmother was the best mother – everybody in the street loved her. What a good woman she was. She died of brain cancer at 60 and my mother fell apart.
‘This is the house my parents lived in after they married.
They lived on the ground floor and my aunt lived upstairs.
‘Just this year, I discovered Jaffa again. I didn’t know about a lot of places. When my brothers lived in my house, they didn’t let me go out very much. It’s like I grew up under the shadow of my brothers. Because I was their sister. Everyone knew them. They are very strong and have a lot of friends.
‘I have known the girl in the centre of this picture since she was a baby – she is the sister of someone who used to be my best friend.
‘This man works at Humus Asli. I don’t want to stop here with him for too long because people will start to talk. It’s always like that in Jaffa. I don’t feel comfortable walking in the street because I don’t feel at home here – not to the place but to the people.
‘Have you heard about the ‘city behind bars’ – Andromeda? It’s a new apartment complex that is completely closed behind gates. You can only go inside if you live there. It’s in Jaffa. They build something that doesn’t relate to Jaffa and they put a wall …
‘… Arabs build these places. It’s so cold this metal, so easy to break but no one does it – they are afraid. Why would anyone want to live like this when they are so unwelcome here? They are taking our city. It is against our will. The people here know that they have so much strength but they are scared: did you hear that quote, our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure? It’s from the film Coach Carter… it is our light, not our darkness, that we fear the most.
‘Look at this mural – it’s painted like a children’s book. It’s like Jaffa now – people are killing each other with their guns.
‘Can you believe this is Jaffa? All the construction… It looks just like the Palestinian part of Jerusalem – the villages.
‘I like to see this, it’s like old times.
‘This boat is call Najach – which means
‘success’ in Arabic. It’s ironic, because the boat is lying on a wasteland. And
the wasteland is like a sea – the division between the old and the new. Look at
the – what do you call that? The mast. It demonstrates pride.
‘I feel like a stranger in my own city – the Arabs think I’m Jewish. It’s funny because the people who accept me as I am are Jews - like I go around Jaffa and they say I’m Jewish because I don’t walk in that arrogant way the other Arabic girls do.
‘But my mother taught me to be this natural. I want to be loved for who I am.’
It is Friday. Sama and I are going to visit a group of refugees who have just arrived from the Ivory Coast and are living in our bomb shelter. Yesterday Sama went to visit the refugees by herself when she heard that they were there and didn't have anything - food, clean clothes or a place to wash. When we arrive, most are outside, some playing football, others just sitting in the cold winter sun.
The shelter, two underground rooms with no heat or shower, has been home to 25 men since Monday. Some speak English, some Arabic, some French. We ask what they need - rice, sugar and soap - and get it from a local shop. I explain to the shopkeeper what the food is for. He says: 'There are Palestinian refugees who don't have anything - and no one helps them,' but he gives us extra rice for free.
Then I talk to Kourouma, who is 22. 'We left everything behind because of the war,' he says. 'We have lost all our families - some are dead, the rest have disappeared.
'We came through six countries to get here. It took us four years. First Guinea, then Mali, Niger, Algeria, Lybia and Egypt. In each place we were clandestine, working until we could move on to the next, until we got to Israel, when the army took us at the border and brought us here. This is the first country to accept us.
'Israel is a paradise. Nobody can do bad to us here.'
Please help the refugees. If you live locally and can offer food, clothing or any other assistance, please email me (link above).
