#hanan mikha'il ashrawi

[mothgenes]

My self-directed final for my digital illustration class, an illustration of this poem by Hanan Mikha'il Ashrawi. Free Palestine.

Alt text underneath the cut.

Alt text: First image: This is an illustration contained in a white boarder with an uneven frayed appearance. In a war-torn scene absent of human life, streams of missile smoke rise from behind the central figure against a red sky that grows increasingly yellow towards the center immediately behind the central figure. The central figure is an Israeli Occupation Forces operative with his Israeli flag patch visible and a single blue eye with a white Star of David to reflect the flag inside it, the other eye consumed in shadow. The face is devoid of all visible expression, and a crack is visible coming from the shadowed eye over the clay-like skin of the soldier, meant to reference the concept of the IOF as a golem. The IOF officer raises a smoking automatic rifle and gazes down the composition with a lack of feeling. He stares down a little girl with long hair blowing in the wind who's back is to the viewer, with a bleeding crosshairs over half of her face where her eye would be. She wears a Palestinian flag over her shoulders that is also blowing in the wind, and the red triangle moves beyond its borders through the bloodstains that are on it. In the wreckage visible around the soldier, there is a fallen cross visible, close to the subtle shadow of a human hand, and destroyed buildings, bringing to mind the common lie that it is a religious conflict by reminding the viewer that churches and Palestinian Christians are also being murdered and struck with missiles. In the center of the image there is white handwritten text, of the first verse of the poem "From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old" by Hanan Mikha'il Ashrawi. It reads, "Tomorrow, the bandages will come off. I wonder will I see half an orange, half an apple, half my mother's face with my one remaining eye?" Page 2 alt text: The background is black with a trail of red smoke crossing the composition from the bottom right up and over to the top left in an uneven organic curve. At the bottom right there is the shattered clay head of a golem in a broken army-green helmet. One eye has been shattered and most of the face has been destroyed. There is a smear of blood over a shatter mark on our left's side of the forehead of the golem, as though made by a stone from a sling intended to subtly reference David and Goliath, with the IOF as Goliath. The smear of blood covers the first of three characters that make up the text usually down on the foreheads of golems. In folktales, the way to deactivate a golem is to wipe away the first character of their text, which normally reads "emét", which is truth in Hebrew. Removing the first character makes it say "mét", which means death. This calls for the retirement of the IOF as an entity as it does not help anything- only harms. White text is the main focus of this piece. The white text reads: From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old" by Hanan Mikha'il Ashrawi Tomorrow, the bandages will come off. I wonder will I see half an orange, half an apple, half my mother's face with my one remaining eye?

I did not see the bullet but felt its pain exploding in my head. His image did not vanish, the soldier with a big gun, unsteady hands, and look in his eyes I could not understand

I can see him so clearly with my eyes closed, it could be that inside our heads we each have one spare set of eyes to make up for the ones we lose

Next month, on my birthday, I'll have a brand new glass eye, maybe things will look round and fat in the middle— I've gazed through all my marbles, they made the world look strange.

I hear a nine-month old has also lost an eye, I wonder if my soldier shot her too—a soldier looking for little girls who look him in the eye— I’m old enough , almost four, I've seen enough of life, but she's just a baby who didn't know any better.