Stories -- Hope - To be Natural - Tying up those Camels Part Two: An on-going conversation with Yahya (Ya-hee-ya) about the joys and struggles that are faced in the Middle East and how he has chosen to respond. Click here to read Part One."Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can be used to empower and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity." - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from 'The Danger of a Single Story.'The Citadel, Amman, Jordan.YAHYA: 'I feel (that) my life is a series of stories and each story opens up another. The Middle East... we are in the middle of the (cartographic) world, of the world's geography. In the middle of historical action. We are all from the same (historical) region, our language, habits, foods are the same. We are all human and we are looking for our concept of peace. Before the revolution, people are thinking about what they want. You can feel and touch it, it is in the eyes of the people, that there will be a revolution.There was the Arab Spring and now our private, personal Springs. You can feel, you can smell something is burning, our peace is damaged. Some people try to defend it. Like us, we try to defend this small light by our hands, our discussion, our talk. Different ways to protect this light in the storm of changes. We are not weak, we are strong and we can do a lot of things. Our voices can reach the other areas, we are part of this world and we will continue. (The Naqsh community) we meet, we discourse with each other, our thoughts, our opinions, this is most important at this time, for all of us. To make the world more beautiful and sunny, to make waves of the light.'Sunflowers at Naqsh, Yahya's archive'If you don't know what you love, you are lost.' - Haruki Murakami // 'I am the unlucky lover, I cannot give myself to you, and I cannot go back to myself.' - Mahmoud DarwishYAHYA: 'This tattoo is a memory for two reasons. The time when I created this, was when Palestinians and Lebanese were working together/fighting/defending Beirut for the right for a normal life. (They were known as the) children of RBG7. Children fighting in the refugee camps against the Israeli forces, the air missles, defending Beirut and the camps with RBG7's. I was twelve years old. I witnessed this and wanted to make something that was important. So I decided to make a tattoo of a Klasinkoff (Russian gun). At the time it was a symbol of peace through guns - we will defend our rights to make peace! (These were) my thoughts at the time, now I feel completely different. Now, (I believe in) how to prove your right as a refugee, to search, for the right of return to your homeland in peaceful ways. My mother was laughing, in a kind of hysteria, when she realised I had used the elastic from her bra to make the powder. 'You think your homeland Palestine will be liberated from my underwear??!! Yahya this is not the way!'As a Palestinian I feel despondent of war, I don't like it. I want peace. I want to prove my right to go back to Palestine. I studied international law and wanted to find ways that (allowed Palestinians) to be free, free to decide. The most sensitive and delicate issue in UN is how to resolve the problem/ question of refugees. To solve war in the present and the future, (I feel) that it is wisdom, the only way, (we must) let immigrated people have the choice. Yahya's nephew and graffiti, age 8. Yahya's archive.This photo is of a Yahya's nephew and a wall with painted graffiti of the Handalah. Yahya painted this in the Baqa'a Refugee Camp when he was this boy's age - 8. He took this picture when he came back from Cairo after the Arab Spring, watching his nephew mimic the stance of the painting.YAHYA: 'I see what I have created (the trajectory my life has followed).' 'The 'handalah' - it is a poor child, hands behind his back, showing his back to the world, looking to go back to his homeland, dreaming of (it). The handalah was the main character in my life. I learnt a lot - how to keep myself full of hope, how to cross borders within (my) life, how to access even that which is denied'Handalah looking over to Palestine. Found web image, unknown origin. Naji al Ali - was a Palestinian cartoonist best known as the creator of the character Handalah, who became an icon of Palestinian hope for return. Naji al Ali was killed in 1987 in London. 'We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by society.' - Alan WattsYAHYA: 'Freedom is a concept. Freedom is something very delicious. Why did Naqsh become a free space? For all people, especially the youth. Listen, this is important. Once I was in a coffee shop with my girlfriend. She tells me she has leukemia, I am shocked. My position was so difficult. My reaction was direct. I kissed her lips. In Jordan this is a brave reaction. This is my answer to her that I am with her. Lips are the most sensitive area in the face. Especially for Arab girls - lips mean a lot of things, it is deeper. I hugged her, kissed her lips. The waiter came, he was objecting to what I was doing. The coffee shop is a public place. I told him - I'm doing something which is normal. He says - this is shame (haram). There was a gap between us / between what we believe to be right. I wanted to tell my girlfriend - I am with you, to the grave. The waiter was doing his work, following the rules, telling me shame, haram, yet to me this was the opposite - halal (permissible). More than halal. I have to respond the way I did, otherwise I am fake. When I think of Naqsh - it is an open space, where if someone has to share news that requires some kind of demonstrative empathy, they can. People can hug and kiss one another and they are free to do so. I care about nature. What is natural. 'Rooftop Gardening, Yahya's archive.'God gave you camels but you still need to tie them up' - Islamic proverb.ELISE: At this point in our conversation, I am thinking of many things, but mostly of this idea and impact of colonisation - there is the one on the surface, the one many of our cultures are a byproduct of, and the one of our mind. How we are colonised by media, advertisements, our nationality, traditions and take these thoughts very very seriously. No matter where we are from, we can see situations where ideals overturn what is right. How do we undo the perceptions that separate us? How do we take wisdom and live it in our every day lives, without contradiction? How do we tie our learnings up? And how do I know if I have a healthy camel?? This is an on-going conversation; ideas and philosophies and life experiences unfolding into one another, dissecting and integrating through the shared desire to understand the struggles and joys of our brothers and sisters. Please hold the conversations and relate to it, recognising the symptoms of what-is-going-on everywhere, under different guises. To see the mirror and not reject our own reflection.
