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Our Eyes
by Jim Miles
 The pictures arrive at first in the sad multi-tones of greys, the ever-present grey concrete walls of the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, the shadows and lines on faces, the abstract shadows of wire and fence on concrete, and the loom of the Wall that separates the camp from its outlying fields.
At first sombre within all that grey, the pictures reveal many levels of understanding and feeling, as if each shade has it own significance, each texture its own meaning, each face its own hopes and dreams clouded by narrow horizons.
As described in the introduction “the idea behind this project was for the young people of the Lajee to constructively and creatively respond to the environment in which they live…producing…an international voice that transcends borders and languages…that can get over the Wall…pass through checkpoints…louder than gunfire.”
Our Eyes and “Dreams of Home” created by the children of Lajee
Center with Rich Wiles Lajee Center, Bethlehem, Palestine 2007
The photographs by the children of Lajee Center have been
displayed at different sites around the world and are now available in
this evocative book from the Lajee Center. The centre is a volunteer
centre, established eight years ago to provide children of the camp
with constructive educational activities to help them develop knowledge
and skills. Set in Aida Refugee Camp, established after the 1948
Nakba, Aida camp, with a population of about 4,500 - over half of whom
are children - is located 8 kilometres south of Jerusalem, bordering
the city of Bethlehem. The children of the camp, provided with
minimalist photography equipment, participated in several work-study
camps over the past few years to produce these thematically organized
images of life in the camp.
Photography, much more so than the
written word, is open to several levels of interpretation. First
impressions come from the visual image, the tone, the physical
perspective, and the objects themselves. Beyond that is the wonderful
world of introspection and changing perspectives: the photographers
physical perspective but also the emotional perspective (Why that
particular subject at that particular place?); the perspective of the
subject, if other than just the immutable, intractable presence of
concrete and stone (What is the girl thinking? Why is she here at this
place and this time? Where is she from? What are her hopes, dreams,
and nightmares?) Finally there is the overall composition, the
interplay of elements, human and physical, what inferences can be drawn
from the photo?
The first of the four sections of photos, “A
Window to Our World”, begins with a full spread photo representing all
the elements described above and all the possible aspirations of youth
anywhere in the world. As a written description here of course, I
cannot capture those elements and aspirations as effectively as simply
viewing the photo, but let me try to verbally present the various
messages the photo carries. At first, a young girl stands slightly off
centre, dressed in a simple yet elegant clean white dress, a white
headband pulling back on long straight black hair, and clean white
footwear. In the background, a narrow road, a concrete wall, and
further down the road a group of boys, teens, and young men walking
away down the road, and further in the background, sunlit concrete
block buildings.
It is not a rich environment, devoid of
grasses, trees, shrubs and not even so much as a hint of weeds, and
also devoid of any symbols of what for most would be signs of a rich
culture or commercial milieu. It is the girl’s face and body posture
that draws the most introspection, leads to many questions and
inferences.
She stands, eyes sad, without tears, mouth smiling
but not truly joyful, someone’s daughter, sister, future wife and
mother. She stands with a touch of adult femininity, her hips and back
slightly curved with one foot forward. It is truly a wistful posture,
expressing the true definition of that word, showing vague yearnings or
mournfulness or unsatisfied desire to understand. In her moment of
beauty she stands amid all that is grey and barren. Who knows her
actual thoughts? What are her desires and wishes? What are her
anguishes and despairs? Does she feel all this without truly
comprehending it? Or contrarily, does she fully understand her unique
presence, beyond her years, beyond what any child should have to face
in life?
In the background, the group of boys – brothers,
friends, none old enough to be a parent – walking away. More
questions, more inferences. Walking where…and why? Is there a purpose
– a game, a school - or is it more simply youth, caged, wandering with
no real purpose? They are not running, their motions are not panicked
or in flight or attack.
Only three hundred and eighty words,
far short of the thousand a picture is worth. But to fill in the
thousand would only be my mind making conjectures about what is
happening, denying almost completely the emotional impact of the
picture, for I could fill it all in with background information drawn
from many sources and more than likely take away from the impact of the
photo itself. Trite as the saying is, it is better to let the picture
speak for itself.
The subsequent photos in the section show
daily life as experienced and expressed by the children of Aida camp,
the narrow streets, the Wall, the people, young and old, none of whom
seem truly comfortable or at peace. The final photo perhaps explains
why.
The Wall, eight metres high, its dark shadows looming over
the foreground, fading into sunlit brightness in the distance. In the
foreground, one small boy facing the camera, seemingly lost in thought,
or as with most young people, lost in unverbalized emotions and
experiences, stands on a ground of rocks and rubble, where again, no
life thrives.
The caption, provided by the photographer, Layan Al
Azza, states simply “My favourite thing was that people liked me and
let me take photos of them. I don’t like life in the camp.”
The
second section presents photos from a workshop with the theme on “A
Child’s Rights in Palestine.” The short commentary at the beginning of
the section ends with the poignant comment “A couple of hours after the
exhibition had opened in Aida Camp a 13 year old child was shot in the
head with a rubber coated steel bullet by the Israeli army less than
100 metres from the gallery in which children had proudly showed their
work discussing human rights protection for children, a child’s rights
in Palestine…”
The photos do not show the blood and the wounds
to the body. Instead they show the wounds to a society struggling to
survive. They show children laughing, sad, the Wall graffitied with
“Stop Apartheid” and “Stop the Racist Wall”, a young man waving the
Palestinian flag in front of the wall, posters, a street scene, more
walls, a classroom with one smile among many faces against more grey
walls, more narrow alleys, girls giggling, peeking over a railing, more
concrete, pock-marked with bullet holes, a child crying, playing
marbles, cooking, more Wall with thistles, and finally, a round steel
gate with metal fences and concrete walls to represent Article 37 –
“The Right to Protection from Torture and Deprivation of Liberty.”
The
final section, “Our Dreams and Nightmares” was photographed in
August-October 2007. Basic dreams – the right to a home, to be a
farmer, to travel, to play volleyball, and most prominently, freedom
and to have an education to make a better society – the dreams of all
children around the world. The nightmares – of losing a home for the
second time, of a worsening economic situation and no work (the
simplicity and depth of children’s thinking), the killing of a family
and friends by soldiers, prison, suffering.
The final four
photos summarize it all: a smiling face with candles, “My dream to live
in a world full of innocence and hope;” next, a gnarly tree with the
vague outline of an old face, “Time is passing and I’m afraid that one
day this face [lonely and old] will be mine.…”
The final two,
simple and powerful, perhaps show the height of the dreams and the
depth of the nightmare. First a photo of books, one titled “English
for Palestine” and the caption “…with my culture and my studies I will
build a better future.” In contrast the final picture of a shoe lying
on its side on a gravelly street, dark shadows in the background, and
further back, again, the Wall. Under the shoe lie the dark splashes of
blood pooled in the roadway: “My nightmares are full of blood…Last
year my brother was shot whilst playing in my bedroom.”
Is this
what the world allows for its children? Is this the price of our
western lives lived in relative luxury, our own children “full of
innocence and hope” to be denied to others?
Dreams of Home
The
fourth set of photographs from the workshops involved the children at
Lajee Center interviewing the elders of the camp, the underlying theme
clearly and simply as with the title, dreams of home, of the right of
return. While those over sixteen could not enter Israeli occupied
territory, the youth of the camp were allowed to return and visit the
sites of their grandparent’s homes and villages. The photos in this
section are colour, and they do not carry the grainy gritty
evocativeness of the black and white of life in the camps, but the
ongoing wish to return to home, to where the heart is, to where life at
one time flourished and passed peacefully.
It is a book that
expresses in words and photos the basic dignity of the older
generation, all of whom had to flee their homes in the Nakba, most
taking little but the clothes on their backs. Throughout though, two
symbolic elements seem constant: the keys to the houses left behind,
and the deeds of land that showed ownership. The main theme is of
course the wish to return, of the importance of a home and land and the
culture that goes with those elements. Accompanying this are the
connections made between the original refugees and their grandchildren,
passing on their memories, but more importantly their hopes and dreams
of a return to a better future. For all the children it is pride and
hope, as expressed by one participant Suhaib, “I get very excited and
proud; as this house stood, my family and I will continue withstanding
until we return.”
The photographs show the full range of human
emotion and the geographic beauty of the land, including the remains of
houses and buildings slowly succumbing to nature. For the refugees, a
stoic pride, a dignity, shows in their clothes, demeanour, and facial
expressions. For the youth, the full range from sullen hostility to
the innocence of mugging for a camera. For the landscape, the beauty
of the flowers and trees, the rock walls and crumbling houses that give
lie to the Israeli myth of a barren land without people. The irony of
“The Silver Family Nature Trail” plaque set in concrete in what used to
be a Palestinian village. The ever-present, fences, barriers, metal
spike belts in the roadway, and inevitably, the Wall. And in the
distant background, the flash of a modern high speed train, an image of
freedom and travel denied to the refugees behind the wall.
Above all, strength, dreams of a better future, and hope.
All
the photographs in both books are a wonderful testament to the will of
a people to survive in a hostile environment, not geographically, but
imposed on them by an occupying force that denies them the basic
elements of human rights. The work continually reveals different levels
of emotion and understanding within the viewer as well as within the
photographer. It is through the eyes of children, of being able to
stand back from our supposedly adult intelligence and knowledge (but
mostly our ingrained prejudices and unmoving ignorance), of renewing
our vision of a better future and hope, of knowing with child-like
conviction and emotion that the world can be a better place, a place of
freedom and love.
These two books provide us with a wonderful
opportunity to enter that vision, that world, to realize that the
wishes of children are not just foolish immature desires and dreams but
the expression of humanities strongest goal – to have a land and a
culture that we call our own, to live in peace and in harmony with our
neighbours near and far, and to know and feel free, to have friends, to
love and be loved in a secure environment.
Jim Miles is
a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion
pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is
also presented globally through other alternative websites and news
publications.
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