The other side

The power of art

 Jamilah Siksik, Jaffa Photography Project participant, with her work

My friend Zayneb Khan asked me to participate in her radio documentary
The Power of Art, which looks at how artists respond to conflict. We talked about the Jaffa Photography Project, and the humanising power of art - a person who truly knows the other, and sees his suffering, can not continue to hate.

You can listen to the documentary here:

The Power of Art aired on Unity FM. It was a joint project of Zayneb Khan, Huda Al Sabahi and Sumay Bakeel, with Muslim women's art collective Ulfah Arts.

Traffic

Shop window, Brixton

Central London. A workshop for women who have been trafficked to the UK. I am teaching them to write. Not literacy. I’m teaching them about voice – how to find one, and that theirs counts. So I teach them what I do – to keep a journal, the place where ideas start. I write in it like a friend – hear things, find things, cry things, all of it in there. We have stories and we tell them. Writing is only that.

They begin by interviewing each other in pairs: Tell me a phrase or saying from your country. Who is an important person to you? What is your dream? Then they write – a story in their journal about who they are.

I’m walking around as they work, and stop to chat to a pair at the back.

‘My dream is–’ says one of them.

‘Hush. You can’t say that!’ Her partner grabs the book from her.

‘What's your dream?’ I ask.

The first woman looks at me, uncertain. ‘I want to be the prime minister. The first black woman prime minister of the UK.’

The whole room breaks into applause. Then they go back to writing and it's quiet again.

All of these women have been betrayed. They were brought here by men they trusted, escaping other men who hurt them, or poverty, or both. Then, instead of a promised job or home, they found themselves enslaved – held prisoner, repeatedly raped and forced into prostitution. Slavery. In our cities; on our streets.

They read out what they've written: Elizabeth, from Chad, wants to be a lawyer. Petite, with curly hair, she has written a passionate opening to her journal: ‘I would like to become a lawyer to catch and bring to justice the men who hurt women.’ Men she has known, men she does not know, so others need not suffer as she did.

So many want to speak. Even the shyest, a Tamil woman in a bright pink tunic and golden scarf, has written a page on making cake for her sister’s wedding. She holds her book out. She wants me to read.

I’ve brought in pictures cut from magazines. For the next exercise, the women break into small groups and look through the images, choosing ones that represent strength. They talk and then they write.

Oboshi, from Togo, has chosen two pictures – one is an African woman, standing, in traditional dress; the other is a headshot of a woman laughing.

‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Why did you choose these?’

She starts to explain. ‘This one’ – she picks up the African woman – ‘she is like me. I was married when I was very young. In my village… domestic violence was normal. All the older woman had it … and I …’

Her face breaks. Her strong hair, tall demeanour, wide open smile, are crushed into small red and she can not speak. I can only hold her hand and let her cry. We put the picture under her journal and look at the second one – the laughing woman. Laughter keeps Oboshi strong. As I leave the table she is taking the first picture, the African woman, out from underneath and sticking it on the cover of her book.

Kutu, from The Gambia, has many slim braids and huge open eyes. When I speak she listens as if she must. She has chosen a picture of men running. They are jumping over a ditch. She stands in front of the class and explains: ‘I chose this picture because they are running away. They are escaping from the people who are trying to catch them. It is strong to get away when people are trying to hurt you.’

But refuge is not enough; there must be reason to live again. Ola, from Nigeria, has chosen a picture of a child: ‘I have a son. Every time I look into his eyes I am strong. I have no reason to live except for him.' 

The session ends. Oboshi is sitting in her place, still looking at her book. ‘Are you ok?’ I ask. ‘Oh yeah. Sometimes I just cry and I don’t know why.’

‘That's what the writing is for.’

She's kind of fresh-looking – like a flower after rain. ‘How can I…’ She points to her journal. ‘How can I take this further?’ she says.

All names, and some identifying details, have been changed

Processing Peace: The Jaffa Photography Project

A beautiful audiovisual piece in The Guardian about our project:

'Based in the Israeli city, the Jaffa Photography Project teaches photography to Arab and Jewish teenagers, allowing them to document their homes, lives and communities for themselves, and aiming to lay a foundation for future peace. Haroon Siddique talks to founder Leila Segal and 19-year-old Sama Shakra about the pictures taken by the group.' - listen here.

Good

Phoenix Café, Brixton

On the bus a child nestled into the crook of his mother's arm. She was a Black woman with simple hair: Afro hair in a bunch. Her child’s was plaited – looked like a girl with eyes shut, nestled into that duffle-coat hood. 

The man in front told his child: 'Sit down like a good boy. Be good – look at her,' pointing to the child behind.

The woman with the bunch looked tired. She barely moved. 'It's a boy,' was all she said.

'I'm sorry,' the man said. 'Be a good boy like him.'

So the little boy sat down in the seat, quiet now, no longer up and awake pointing out things in the window as the bus went by.

The woman pulled her child to her; looked down at his plaited head. She wore a black, market coat. No nails. No hair. They got off in Clapham and went into the Pentacostal church.

The man pulled a sack of Argos stuff from the luggage bin. It was green, seethrough plastic. Very large. I could see the jutting corners of boxes, threatening to tear the thin green plastic of the sack.

He said 'thank you' to the driver and got off the bus. The boy ran alongside him. He wore a little red shirt with white stripes.

The sun was coming and going. There is love, I thought.

A good place in heaven

Shop window, Oxford Street

‘Do you do much of this type of work? Catering?’

The woman looks up at me from under tight gold curls. I am putting out Haggadot at a communal Passover meal in London’s West End. To be honest, I didn’t even know there was a synagogue here until Dan invited me – a synagogue here, between Top Shop, Primark and the filthy grey streets.

I’m putting the Haggadot out because, frankly, I feel really shy. I know no one here apart from Dan – and he’s busy with last-minute stuff. I would rather help Dan and the Macedonian catering crew (‘Matzah – that’s like, the body of Christ, right?’) than stand awkwardly with this well-groomed crowd who are all, apparently, comfortable, and know exactly what to do.

‘Do you do much of this – catering work?’ the woman wants to know. She’s stopped me to ask for a ‘better’ Haggadah – a larger one, with pictures in.

‘I’m not working. I’m here for the Seder like you,’ I say.

‘I didn’t mean anything by it. Come on, dear – sit by me.’ There's space next to her, so I sit. Dan does too. He’s brought his own Haggadah – with hassidic explanations in. We find the place, which I lose again when he goes back to the kitchen to help out.

Nechama is 70. She has bright, lapis-lined eyes and lives off the Holloway Road. She used to be a prison officer – the only Jewish one, ever, in Holloway women’s jail. She stopped going to shul after the rabbi criticised her non-kosher pots. But it’s Pesach, and her sister’s here from New York and she just wanted to, somehow. So she came.

Nechama has crutches and finds it hard to stand. I fetch water so that she can wash for bread. ‘You’ll get a good place in heaven,’ she says. Her sister, Esther, helps serve the food. There are lots of people – maybe a hundred – and the Macedonian crew is finding it hard to keep up. I help serve too, when I’m not talking to Nechama, doling out bowls of watery soup with carrot and matzah meal. People lean back so I can put it down in front of them. They do not say ‘thank you’ or look me in the eye.

‘What’s this?’ says one – a young American with pale blond hair. I look at her. I’m still holding out the soup. She looks at me back. ‘Is this vegetarian? I ordered the vegetarian option.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, holding the bowl out until she takes it. If Passover is about overcoming our limitations, I realise, I’m not doing too well.

Back at the table, Nechama and Esther have scoped the room out for potential mates – for me, that is, not them. ‘What about him?’ asks Esther, through her teeth, nodding at a guy across the table.

‘I think he’s gay,’ I say.

‘The quiet ones are always best.’

‘Or him?’ Nechama says, of a South African to my right, who’s just told me he has a non-Jewish girlfriend with three kids.

Nechama married young. ‘It didn’t work.’ She curls her lip. ‘But’ – she brightens – ‘when I was 40 I met a man. He was much younger – 25 – and we were together until he died. Sixteen years.’ She smiles. ‘Not Jewish,’ she adds, out of the corner of her mouth.

People are leaving. The meal is done. I play with Mendel, the Rabbi’s son, in the kitchen where Dan is. Then Mendel sits on his father's knee wailing for the closing prayers. Except it’s not wailing – he’s crooning along with his dad’s niggunim. This is loud because we’re all silent. A white-faced man with dark circles under his eyes winces as he glances the baby’s way.

I think of the synagogue in Jaffa, near me. Sometimes I walk there on Saturday to hear them sing. Windows always open – raucous prayer flung out to the street. Colourful headscarves and khol. 

Tonight, I listen to the Rabbi sing. I want his voice to reach heaven, and with it carry some of my prayers. 

Nechama has to go – her ride is here. She can hardly walk but will accept no help. Rising onto her crutches, she begins the slow, painful ascent to the street.

Enemies

Demonstrators, Ministry of Defence, Tel Aviv

I almost felt sorry for the security man. Only at the end that is, as I boarded the plane and walked down the aisle and he came towards me and could not look me in the eye.

They’d taken all my things at the check-in and did not give them all back. The security supervisor, a tall balding man with blue eyes, thought I might be a terrorist. A woman asked some questions and then he came and took my passport, disappearing with it round the back of the super-duper El Al X-ray machine.

‘Wait here,’ the woman says.

‘Where’s my passport? Why has he taken it?’

‘Just wait here.’ She ushers me to one side, out of the way of the families and children standing in the security queue.

He’s back. Tall, balding and thin. He stoops, even over me.

‘But you live in England or in Israel? Where do you live?’ he asks, flicking through my passport.

‘London.’

‘When were you last in Israel? How often do you come?’

‘Like many other people’ – I stress the words many and other – ‘I make regular trips.’

He disappears again. The woman returns. ‘Because we’re delaying you,' she says, ‘we’re going to check you in.’ Delaying? There’s a big queue behind me and I’m three hours early. Plenty of time.

‘I’m going to have to take these.’ She picks up my hand luggage and laptop.

‘Why?’

‘Security.’

‘When can I have them back?’

‘At the gate.’

‘You can search them, but I want to be there when you do.’

‘Your choice – we take it, or you don't fly.’

OK, so they’ve got it all now. Passport, computer, notebooks, camera – all of it except my cash and phone. (And probably, says Eyal later, a copy of the computer hard drive too.) Oh, they’ve given my passport back, but it’s marked with a loud red tag.

At the gate, half an hour before we leave, everyone’s showing their passport and ticket again. I’m ushered to one side and asked to sit in a screened-off enclosure where I wait, alone.

A woman carries out further ‘security’ procedures, swabbing me for explosives, swabbing my shopping too. ‘May I?’ she says.

‘Yes, if you really think I’ve managed to construct a bomb in the duty free inside that whisky bottle – go ahead.’

How, exactly, is this necessary? Since I’ve already been X-rayed and stripped of all my belongings, how exactly could I have anything on me that would pose a risk to this flight? I ask this to the security man, when he arrives again, to talk to me after I object to the fact that they’re not going to be returning my ‘suspicious’ laptop charger; that my computer and notebooks – all of my personal possessions, in fact, are still nowhere to be seen.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I don’t have to be nice to you. I don’t have to talk to you. If that’s your attitude you can just sit there. I’m not going to talk to you. I don’t have to tell you anything.’

Nilly afterwards says that the Shabak puts a black dot by anyone’s name who’s left wing – known. ‘Who’s radical left, like you,’ she says. ‘They do it just to make you feel like shit, not because they really have to. You’re so suspicious, after all.’

When I get to the plane – finally, because it takes them another hour to find my ‘lost’ computer and bring it to the gate – and everyone’s sitting there and I’m feeling like some kind of freak, I can understand what a lifetime of bullying could do to your bitter soul.

Yet, as he passes me by for the last time and can not look me in the eye, I almost feel sorry for the security man, and I feel ashamed. What’s it come to? That’s what I want to say. What are we doing? Seventy years after our grandparents fled, yours and mine, we’ve turned each other into enemies. Suspicion and fear. How did we get to this place?

Smells like a Jew

Man on a Tel Aviv street  (Mor Levy)

I'm in the car, and we're travelling along, Zahi, Karim and me, up to Yafa cafe. We've just been to a solidarity meeting with Arabs and Jews where they read poetry in Arabic and Hebrew, and people from the Jaffa community came. It started with a minute's silence for those who died in Gaza. Mohammad, who was leading, had to stop two or three times because he couldn't talk, because he cried.

Jews and Arabs stood in a line on the stage and held each other's hands. System Ali rapped their poetry without music, to mourn. 

And now we're going for something to eat in Yafa cafe.

What no car, Zahi? What happened to your car? Zahi always used to come by and pick me up in a little white car. I don't remember the make. He'd come by when he didn't need to, even, just to be nice. Like, if I could walk there, if it wasn't even far, he'd come by just to take care of me. But anyway, now we're in Karim's car, working out why Zahi doesn't have his.

'Did you write it off?' I ask, turning to Zahi in the back.

'No – it was stolen.' Karim answers for him. Zahi's slow off the mark, he must be tired.

'Stolen–'

'Yeah, stolen. By some Jews.'

What do you mean some Jews? I don't say this. Because I remember the other day, the first day I met Karim, in fact, when we were sitting down to a dinner at Yafa cafe. A dinner with music and oud, and everyone gets up to dance, like Michel the owner and a beautiful girl. And Zahi's asking me if I recognise that kind of dance, if I know what it means, and I say, Zahi, you know some things we have everywhere, and he's, oh you have Arabs in London? And I say, no Zahi – some things are universal. Like what? OK, do I have to spell it out? Some things are universal, like sex.

Karim's to my right at the table, and opposite there's this Jewish woman with very short hair. It's grey and short, and she's always smiling with crinkly bits around her eyes. I think she's the only Jewish woman there, apart from me. This woman asks if we'll light the Hanukah candles. Michel looks around, and there's a menorah, but candles are nowhere to be found.

'Never mind.' Karim leans into me. 'Let's burn some Jews.'

I'm like, what? I don't know what to say. I need some time. Let's burn some Jews. He has a merry twinkle, the kind of goatee you'd find in Shoreditch, and American hip-hop clothes. 

The conversation has moved on slightly. The Jewish woman's spooning up kubbe and smiling again. And I still don't know what to say. OK, now I do. 'I think you meant that as a joke,' I tell Karim, 'but I found it offensive.'

'Why? Are you Jewish?' he says.

'I am, but even if I wasn't, you know, I'd still say it's wrong.'

'But I think it's funny!' the Jewish woman says. 'Don't you see? The power imbalance. Between our two groups. It's funny because of that!'

OK. So you feel better if you get the shit ripped out of you. Somehow, that way, you pay.

Back in the car with Karim, and he's still on his Jewish trip. I'm kind of tired. 'Listen,' I tell him, 'don't do that. You know it feels bad.'

'Jews – yeah, Jews are everywhere. They stole his car.'

I turn my face away. We're still driving, up Yehuda Hayamit. 'Enough,' Zahi says, but he's laughing and it's not enough, yet, for Karim.

'There's a Jew in the car! I can smell a Jew.' He's staring hard ahead. 'Smells like a Jew in the car.'

I slam out as soon as we arrive. Karim follows me and we're both pacing up the hill. We go into the restaurant and sit down – there are five of us at the table. Four men, and me.

'You're not still mad at him, are you?' Zahi asks.

'Why? What happened? What did he say?' Abed wants to know.

So I'm sitting here at this table with these guys in the restaurant where they always go, and I have to say it. 'We were driving in Karim's car, and he told me ... he said ... Smells like a Jew.'

The whole table bursts out laughing. Abed's laughing. Zahi's laughing, Mustafa's laughing. Karim looks around, then bursts out laughing too. I'm just sitting there and I really wish to be swallowed up by the ground. Instead, I push back my chair, and I go to the bathroom and all of it, Gaza, Jericho, East Jerusalem, the death and the killing, all of this hate, swells out of me, and I cry.

Nothing's wrong

Canadian teenager with gun, Tel Aviv, taking part in a Birthright Israel tour

Jericho. Mount of Temptation. Forty days for Jesus on these rocks. Today, I'm riding the cable car. Me and Khaled, Jamilah and Abdullah, our guide. Last sun shreds the black sky as we descend. Jamilah and Khaled steal a kiss.

Rockets are falling. Jamilah's mother calls. She is crying. Come home, come home.

We stop at the checkpoint outside Jericho, going into Israel. Khaled is driving, I'm with Abdullah in the back. A soldier looms into the window. Khaled winds it down and hands over his blue ID. The soldier takes it, looking slowly into the car. 'Where are you all from?'

'Yafo - she's English.' Abudullah takes my passport and gives it to the soldier, who pages through.

Silence. We sit there. Jamilah straightens her hair.

'Get out of the car.' The soldier points to a lay-by. 'Over there.'

Everyone gets out except me. I can't move the seat forwards. I'm trying to get out and another soldier with dark brown eyes, about 19, looks in. 'Where are you from?'

'London.' I'm still trying to move the seat. 

'Do it.' The soldier indicates to Abdullah.

I get out. We stand. Soldiers pace around the car and look inside. There are five of them, armed.

'What's in there? Open the back,' one of them says to Khaled, as if to a dog. He's nervous, Khaled, I can tell from the way he's trying to open the boot, small by the soldier's bulked-up green. It opens, then falls back shut - Khaled fetches a stick to make it stay. 'What - you've come to hit me?' the soldier sneers. 

Abdullah is pacing. His chest expands as if about to explode. 

'Look relaxed,' Jamilah says. 

'Come this way,' a tall blond soldier tells me. Shit. I go.

'What are you doing here?' he says in English.

'I'm doing a photography project in Jaffa and she - I motion to Jamilah - is my student.'

'She's your student?'

'Yes.'

The blond is translating for the brown-eyed soldier, who seems to be his superior. 'She's the teacher. They're doing a project in Yafo,' he says.

'Yes,' I hurry on, 'photography - we're doing a project.' 

'And everything's OK? You're all right?'

'Fine, fine.'

The soldier looks at me for a moment, then over at the others by the car.

'Nothing's wrong? Are you sure?'

'I'm fine.'

'OK. You can go.' He hands me my passport. 'Sorry... Sorry for the questions,' he says.

Israel no love

Adjami, Jaffa - candlelit vigil for Gaza 

At Jamilah's house Al Jazeera is on the TV. Al Jazeera shows what bombs do. Limbs come off. Eyes melt shut. Dead children have white faces from the dust. Jamilah's mother puts her head in her hands and cries.

Jamilah reports that a colleague at work (they're all Jewish except her) demanded to know today, are you for or against Hamas? 

'Why should I tell you that?' she says to her colleague. But he won't let up, so she tells him, 'look, it's not like you see on TV - you know only half the story. We see the whole picture.'

'We have to do it,' the guy says. 'We don't kill children on purpose.'

'Did I ever ask to talk politics with you?' she says.

'You're a traitor,' he replies.

The manager calls Jamilah in and Jamilah's shouting, she can't stop shouting: 'Look what he's doing to me!'

'It's not the case,' the manager says. 'You provoked him. That's what he told me.'

Jamilah's big-boned brother is lying on the sofa. He turns to me and says: 'Israel - no good, no bad ... Israel - no love.'

All that's left

IDF fundraising banner, outside army radio station Galgalatz, Jaffa

My neighbour is worried about me. He sits me down earnestly and tells me I am in danger. It's the Arabs. My Arab friends. 'Because, you see, it's not just in the West Bank. In Jaffa too. They can kill you here too.'

I'm friends with Arabs, although I'm a Jew. That's not normal here. Oh, it's accepted, tolerated. I'm a lefty. They feel sorry for me. I'm European – I don't really understand.

'There are many faces of things here,' my neighbour says. 'There's the obvious face – the one we all see. But the Arabs who live here – we humiliate them every day. They hate us. You hear that–?' A car is driving around the square, playing Arabic music really loud. '–it's not just some young guy having fun. He's saying fuck you Jews. And one day he wants to get his own back. And that's why I'm worried about you. One day you might be sitting with some family in Jaffa – some nice Arab family–'

'Friends–'

'And someone who knows someone will come... I'm worried you'll get hurt.'

'But why pick me? There are Jews everywhere here. They can kill anyone they like.'

'You're the soft target,' he says darkly. 'You hear about that girl up north who got raped by six Arabs? We hate Jews, you fucking Jew, they told her.'

On the TV are black-masked men shooting huge rocket launchers at distant apartment buildings. 'Palestinians,' my neighbour says. 'Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Arabs. I just don't want to live with them. We've tried the right way to solve this conflict. It didn't work. Now all that is left is the wrong way.

'We're all fucked. If we can't do it the right way we might as well fucking shoot the Arabs. Shoot them all. If we can't solve it the good way, I want to be the one holding the gun.'