A picture can indeed be worth a thousand words…or in this case: sixty years.
I was reading the Seattle PI’s world news section online, and was browsing though the “The Day in Pictures” section when I came across the photograph above. The caption:
I was struck by it, not only because it summed up the tragedy of the Palestinian struggle, but the strange, melancholy mixture of hope, sadness, and remembrance that Palestinians–and Muslims around the world living in oppressive condition–feel A woman, representing a collective past, reaches for the key to her home–being given to her by a younger descendant, embodying the future. A key from the tragic past opening the door to a new hope? One state or Two states? Who knows.
In a way, the irony remains that it is a symbol, and not a current reality. The lady in this photo can’t return to her home–if it is still even standing. But perhaps there is value in symbols such as these–and in a larger context, like there is value to every symbolic piece of land that Palestinians–and all those expelled from their native lands–demand to return to. No matter how small, it is a mode of remembrance, a way to commemorate and recognize what was taken away from them.
And that, folks, is the power of political symbolism. As Indian Muslim, every time I look at the Taj Mahal and Jama Masjid in Delhi, or visit my family’s ancestral lands taken away by the Indian government during Partition I feel that connection to my history, and the history of millions of Muslims dispossessed in India and abroad. Like the Palestinian woman above, engaging in remembrance of one’s homeland has a deep symbolic value: It reminds us that a struggle never dies as long as it lives in the hearts and minds of people.
“…It is better to die on your feet…then live on your knees”
-Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolution
A Picture is Worth 60 Years
Posted in political commentary--mideast with tags political commentary--mideast on May 8, 2008 by SultanaA picture can indeed be worth a thousand words…or in this case: sixty years.
I was reading the Seattle PI’s world news section online, and was browsing though the “The Day in Pictures” section when I came across the photograph above. The caption:
“Palestinian Yamnah Ibrahim Harab, 95, reaches to hold the key of the house which her family left in a village near Tiberias, northern Israel, in 1948, from a relative in the West Bank refugee camp of Kalandia between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Israel is will mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state starting Wednesday night, but Palestinians see the founding of the Jewish state as a tragic event which they call it al-Naqba, Arabic for “the catastrophe.”
I was struck by it, not only because it summed up the tragedy of the Palestinian struggle, but the strange, melancholy mixture of hope, sadness, and remembrance that Palestinians–and Muslims around the world living in oppressive condition–feel A woman, representing a collective past, reaches for the key to her home–being given to her by a younger descendant, embodying the future. A key from the tragic past opening the door to a new hope? One state or Two states? Who knows.
In a way, the irony remains that it is a symbol, and not a current reality. The lady in this photo can’t return to her home–if it is still even standing. But perhaps there is value in symbols such as these–and in a larger context, like there is value to every symbolic piece of land that Palestinians–and all those expelled from their native lands–demand to return to. No matter how small, it is a mode of remembrance, a way to commemorate and recognize what was taken away from them.
And that, folks, is the power of political symbolism. As Indian Muslim, every time I look at the Taj Mahal and Jama Masjid in Delhi, or visit my family’s ancestral lands taken away by the Indian government during Partition I feel that connection to my history, and the history of millions of Muslims dispossessed in India and abroad. Like the Palestinian woman above, engaging in remembrance of one’s homeland has a deep symbolic value: It reminds us that a struggle never dies as long as it lives in the hearts and minds of people.
“…It is better to die on your feet…then live on your knees”
-Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolution
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