The caged bird sings
Art provides many outlets for the children of
Aida refugee camp, finds Amina
Elbendary
Palestinian children are
like other children.
It is, alas, necessary to begin with such a
banality if only to explain why so many people
were disappointed (they confided in regret) with
Al-Rowwad Theatre group who visited Cairo last
week. And while the opening statement
might sound ridiculous it should be kept in mind
whenever we approach any thing labelled
"Palestinian". The fate of people like
the Palestinians is that they are stamped and
exceptionalised by their predicament, labels are
affixed that place them on pedestals or in pits,
both places they would
probably much rather not be, thank you.
Al-Rowwad is, simply, a community service centre
at the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Founded in
1998 and managed by Abdel-Fattah Abu Surour (who
has a PhD from France in biological engineering)
its aim is to provide services
for young people in the camp.
Confined children are something out of horror
fiction, as anyone who's had children on their
hands during an interminable heat wave or snow
storm knows full well. You just want to open the
doors and let them kick their energies
out there. But the children of Aida are often
confined by the diktats of less- than-divine
powers; curfews and seiges imposed by the Israeli
occupation forces make such emergencies everyday
occurrences. And even when
they are not confined indoors there is not much
outdoors at Aida camp as several of the visiting
children explained last Tuesday during an evening
of testimonies. The camp is a large slum of
tightly packed shacks and houses -- you can hear
everything the neighbours say and do, they told
us.
"We don't have parks and gardens like other
children," several of them repeated.
"We are denied such basic rights of
children." And "we live in cages, like
birds," as eight-year-old Salam (literally:
Peace) put it.
Al-Rowwad is a two-room community centre where
some 150 children can spend several hours
playing. The centre offers a variety of
activities -- theatre, puppet theatre, dabka,
language and computer classes.
For a few hours a week families know their
children are safe. Playing on the streets in Aida
means facing the provocation of Israeli soldiers,
followed by stone throwing orgies. Hundreds of
children have died over the past years following
such clashes and community leaders like the
Al-Rowwad want to bring the numbers down. As Abu
Surour explained, they don't want their children
to supplement the lists of martyrs. They want
them to grow up into educated, cultured citizens
of Palestine who could lead the struggle for
independence. But among the many drawbacks of
occupation and siege are the interruptions to
regular schooling which have affected the quality
of education of younger generations.
Palestinian children, then, are like other
children. And they are not like other children.
Twenty-four kids and seven supervisors from the
Al-Rowwad centre came to Cairo last week at the
invitation of the American University in Cairo's
Faculty for Palestine group and with support from
the Canada Fund, Ford Foundation-Egypt and
UNDP-Jerusalem. They presented a theatrical
performance, We are the Children of the Camp, a
dabka dance and puppet show.
We are the Children of the Camp is a series of
sketches, a potted history of Palestine in the
20th century. It starts with an idyllic view of
pre-Zionist Palestine: children playing and
having fun. (And indeed, Abu Surour refers to a
"paradise lost and regained on stage".)
With minimal props the children
act out the various types of generic
Palestinians. There are the families whose homes
were pulled down, their villages demolished; the
women giving birth on the road to refugee camps;
the children denied medical care and dying at
roadblocks and -- inevitably -- provocations and
insults by
menacing soldiers that lead to stone throwing. A
screen on the side of the stage shows a home
video of sorts, pasting documentary and
television footage from various decades of the
20th century.
On the one hand the aim of such sketches is to
keep the children off the streets; if they must
throw stones (and they are frustrated enough to
want to do that a lot, judging by their
testimonies, and despite the apparent objections
of their supervisors) let them throw them on
stage; if they must
die young let them die -- and rise again -- on
stage. On the other hand We also familiarises
these children with the essential story of
Palestine. In one sketch the children recite the
names of villages that have been demolished by
occupation forces and the Israeli towns and
settlements that have risen in their stead. Every
child in the camp, every
refugee, traces his lineage to such a place: such
rituals are necessary to keep the memory alive
and strengthen the desire and hope for return. It
stretches their horizons beyond the confines of a
miserable refugee camp. Indeed, the performance
also allows the children -- performers and
audience alike -- to place themselves within that
simple national narrative and to make some sense
of the horrors of refugee life. And so,
10-year-old Wu'ud (literally: Promises) can tell
us of how her young mother was killed, inside
their home, during a wall-to-wall IDF operation
targeting a neighbour.
We are the Children is therefore about more --
and less -- than
entertainment.
Al-Rowwad's visit was postponed several times
because of political and security considerations.
When they finally embarked on the journey it took
them three days to get to Cairo from Bethlehem.
"We had to stop at roadblocks almost every
100 metres on our way to Jordan. We were
thoroughly checked at every point," the
children explained. And when they finally made
it, it was exam time in Cairo, which is perhaps
why not that many children their ages were able
to attend the performances held at AUC and
Hanager. The troupe have previously performed in
Sweden and Denmark and are scheduled to travel to
France this summer. Regardless of the
outcomes of summits and roadmaps, we hope they
continue to sing.
Related Web site:
http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net
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Slavery at its best
published: Friday | June 13, 2003
by Desmond Henry
THE TITLE of my piece this week is a contradiction in
terms. It is a deliberate oxymoron designed to describe
the best exhibition I have ever seen of that vast human
tragedy, slavery.
'Captive Passage' is the name of a current exhibition by
the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. of the
transatlantic slave trade, and the inhumane routing of
artisans, farmers, religious leaders and families from
Africa to the Americas (North, Central, South) to build a
world economy. The display at the Anacostia branch of the
Smithsonian, should be a 'must see' by as many living
human beings as possible. In my view, it has outdone
anything ever attempted so far whether in graphics, print
or movie. It is exceptional.
 Slavery, as the exhibition points
out, was no different from any of today's business
leaders waking up with a novel idea of a way to improve
and expand his business. The business was world trade.
The idea was how best to do it, at minimal cost. The
answer was free human labour. Within this context, the
owners of capital in Europe forcibly used free labour
from Africa to develop products in the Americas for
transshipment and trading in the rest of the world,
mainly Europe. In our history in our schools, we were
taught about its somewhat sketchily. Nothing like what
'Captive Passage' illustrates.
THE REAL BEAUTY
The real beauty of this exhibition, I found, was its
frankness and authenticity. No one was concerned about
embarrassment, shame or emotional injury. It is an honest
display of the way it was.
As the exhibition points out, the development of much of
the Americas and Europe was realised through the concept
of forced labour. The labour of enslaved Africans made
possible the taming of the wilderness, the construction
of cities, the excavation of mines, the development of
powerful plantation economies, and the building of huge
empires. It points out that the original Africans were
not 'slaves' in their own lands, but were former
merchants, farmers, priests, husbands, mothers and sons
who were forcibly uprooted from their homes and dispersed
across the Americas without concern for their personal
lives or humanity. They were transported by the ships of
Europe.
Diagram for
Shipping Slaves, 18th Century
Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society
The first slaves
arrived in Loudoun shortly after the first Europeans in
the 1720s. Purchased in Alexandria, Virginia, most of
these slaves came straight from Africa.
THE SQUALOR UNBELIEVABLE
The scale of the human squalor in the transatlantic
crossing, is something else. Pictures and graphics of the
squalor are unbelievable. Known as the 'Middle Passage',
it took somewhere between six to twelve weeks to
complete. Once in the Americas, the surviving slaves were
off-loaded and sold in the markets. The ships, in turn,
returned to Europe with sugar, tobacco, mahogany, spices
and other goods produced by the free labour.
The exhibition points out that while historians do not
agree on the number of Africans who were forcibly
transported, it is generally conceded that the number
exceeded 10 million. The total number killed or abducted,
however, is far in excess of 50 million. The mode of the
journey living quarters, chains, food and social
amenities are undescribable. Graphics of some of the
final destinations, including Jamaica, are very fetching.
Others include Cuba and Brazil. References to
seasickness, dehydration, hunger and suffocation abound.
The favourite transatlantic food was yam.
After the tour, I spoke to the curators at the museum and
enquired about the possibility of moving the entire
exhibition to Jamaica and the Caribbean. They liked the
idea and thought it entirely possible. My challenge,
therefore, is to our embassy in Washington to make
contact with the Smithsonian and determine what is
feasible. I have no doubt that a well conceived and put
together programme funded by public and private interests
could eventually materialise. I have some idea about
getting in here, and would be willing to participate. Our
schools, teachers, leaders, and citizens should all be
able to see this. Again, the exhibition itself is nothing
short of slavery at its best.
The Bottom Line: Anger is energy that has not yet found
its proper channel.
Desmond Henry is a marketing consultant formerly based in
Treasure Beach,
St. Elizabeth, now resident in north Florida.
COMMENTS
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/feedback.html
Venue for an Artist
What to the Slave is 4th of July?
By Frederick Douglass. Here are selected excerpts from a
July 5, 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass. Born a
slave in 1818, when Douglass died in 1895, he was
recognized as the foremost black spokesperson of
the 19th century. A human rights activist, orator,
author, journalist, publisher and social reformer,
Douglass has been called the father of the civil rights
movement.
Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I
called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I
represent, to do with your national independence? Are the
great principles of political freedom and natural
justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence,
extended to us?...Would to God, both for your sakes and
ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully
returned to these questions! Then, would my task be light
and my burden easy and delightful...But such is not the
state of the case.
I declare with all my soul that the character and conduct
of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this
4th of July! Whether we turn to declarations of the past
or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the
nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is
false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly
binds herself to be false to the future.
Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on
this occasion, I will...call in question and to denounce,
with all the emphasis I can command, everything that
serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of
America! ... it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob
them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to
keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow
men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with
the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them
with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their
families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh,
to starve them into obedience and submission to their
masters. Must I argue that a system thus marked
with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong?
No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and
strength than such arguments would imply....
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I
answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other
days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to
which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration
is a sham, your boasted liberty, an unholy license, your
national greatness, swelling vanity, your sounds of
rejoicing are empty and heartless, your denunciation of
tyrants, brass-fronted impudence, your shouts of liberty
and equality, hollow mockery, your prayers and hymns,
your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious
parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud,
deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up
crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is
not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the
earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than
are the people of the United States at this very
hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all
the monarchies and despots- of the Old World, travel
through South America, search out every abuse, and when
you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of
the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say
with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless
hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
..Thanks to Dot Visit
The DISH online at http://www.thedish.ws
Beaconsfield
22 Newport Street
London
SE11 6AY
T. 0207 582 6465
F. 0207 582 6486
www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk
Engineer is a project in six consecutive parts which will
evolve through to the end of March 2004. Over this
period the various exhibition sites at Beaconsfield will
be brought into play by individual artists, each piece
remaining until the end.
For Part One, Georgina Batty has architecturally adjusted
the volume and perspective of Beaconsfield's upper
gallery to allow access to a normally inaccessible part
of the building. She draws attention to the
exploitable value of urban space by applying the same
restrictive proportions as a standard domestic
redevelopment to the volume of the gallery.
Engineer - Part Two, Susan
Collis
10 July 2003 - 28 March 2004
preview Thursday 10 July 6-9pm
For Part Two, Susan Collis introduces her preoccupation
with artifice to the lower gallery space by superimposing
inlay and veneer on existing and installed fixtures and
fittings.
Gallery opening times: Thursday - Sunday 12 -
6pm
For further information contact the gallery on 0207 582
6465 or info@beaconsfield.ltd.uk
Gallery opening times: Thursday - Sunday 12 - 6pm.
Engineer end date: 28 March 2004
For any further information please contact the gallery on
020 7582 6465 or info@beaconsfield.ltd.uk
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