Syrian Women's Forum for
Peace Paints for Peace
Author: Mustafa
al-Haj
Posted - October
9, 2014
AN-NABEK, Syria — The "Peace Walls" project does not
intend to beautify or underestimate death, or to disrespect those who
are haunted by death. It is an initiative to say that in Syria, there are people who deserve life and want peace,
and to avow that we will keep giving and constructing to create a better
and more beautiful future for all Syrians.
Summary
- The Syrian Women’s Forum for Peace
has launched a new project to paint murals across Syrian cities, in an
attempt to spread peace and life in the hearts of Syrians who are suffering
from the effects of the war.
Author Mustafa
al-Haj -Translator(s)Steffi
Chakti – October 9, 2014
The
volunteer team (photo by Syrian Women’s Forum for Peace)
This is how
Amira Malek, the executive director of the Syrian
Women’s Forum for Peace, described Peace Walls, launched on Oct.
1. The forum is civil society organization that aims at mobilizing
local and international opinion to pressure decision-makers into adopting
peaceful methods in their political dealings and building a democratic
state. As a first project, murals were drawn on the walls of the cemetery
in the city of An-Nabek
in the Damascus countryside.
An-Nabek is a
city with a Christian minority, located at the heart of the Damascus-Homs
highway, about 80 kilometers (roughly 50 miles) north of Damascus. It fell under the control of opposition militants
in 2012, after a year of peaceful protests and security clampdown, only
to be transformed into a theater of bombardments and sniper operations.
The Syrian army would respond every time the rebels
carried out military actions or kidnapped a member of the army on the
highway. The "city of grapes and harisseh" (a local dish) was
the arena of murder and kidnapping until it rose from the ashes of war
after the Syrian army put an end to the bombardments when it restored
control over it in December 2013.
The idea behind
Peace Walls was to spread art beyond the realm of exhibitions and
make it accessible to a wider spectrum of society. The project uses art
to convey a message of peace through a team consisting of painters and
volunteers from different governorates. The team will visit the selected
cities, get to know them closely and leave an imprint of peace.
Malek spoke to
Al-Monitor about the reason behind choosing An-Nabek to kick-start the
project. “The city witnessed bloody incidents, claiming the lives of many
civilians. I'm a resident of this city, which explains my emotional
attachment to it. My father was buried in the cemetery whose wall we
painted.”
She said, “We
seek, with this project, to integrate art and peace through a mural
called ‘Peace Walls.’ We chose as a slogan ‘from death to life.’ This is
why we will be painting the walls of cemeteries.”
Al-Monitor
arrived at An-Nabek in the early morning of Oct. 1, after passing through
four Syrian army checkpoints and an hour and a half on the road. In front
of the cemetery wall located east of the city stood 30 young men and
women from Tartus, Damascus and Suwayda, the majority of whom are art
students. An-Nabek has become a city of destroyed buildings with
bullet-pierced, blackened walls. Soon, the brush strokes of the artists
transformed the walls selected for the first nine murals.
An-Nabek
residents were waiting for us, including youth and senior citizens, and
brought the volunteer artists water and food. Hours passed, and a team
from Deir Atiyah, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) to the north of An-Nabek,
joined in. The front yard of the cemetery was bustling, and the mural
started taking shape. Swallows, grapes and wicker baskets, representative
of the city of An-Nabek, were illustrated in one of the paintings. Another
painting depicted a mosque and church separated by old houses and a peace
dove. Another was made up of a number of different cubes representing the
diversity of the Syrian people. After seven hours of nonstop work, the
gray wall was transformed into an 83-meter (272-feet) mural of vivid
colors.
Al-Monitor met
with one of the volunteers, Sulafa Abu Senn, a resident of An-Nabek and a
teacher of feminist art, who had brought 12 students. She said, “I
participated in painting the wall with my students to show that
An-Nabek’s war wound has healed. I wanted to give my students a moral
boost. I haven’t seen them this enthusiastic before. I hope this fire
will also be ignited in the hearts of the residents, so that life in
An-Nabek will go back to what it was before, and optimism will be
restored.”
“The cemetery has always been a symbol
of death and end of life. However, when the residents will walk past it
today, the colors will remind them that life goes on,” she added.
Peace
Walls stresses building peace in Syria through different means as
well as through empowering women. The project will not end here. It
will move to other cities to spread the “from death to life” concept and
build other Syrian peace walls, combatting the prevalent culture of war
and violence.
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