Scratched Horizon—In the Wake of Arabs’ Bread

Manar Zuabi
01/06/2024 - 14/09/2024 | BALQEES Gallery, Nazareth

In the exhibition “Scratched Horizon—In the Wake of Arabs’ Bread,” Manar Zuabi meanders through Hassan Khader’s wonderful text, Arabs’ Bread. The text deals with the author’s attempt to follow the memories of his father’s family, which were forced to flee from their home in Al-Jaladiyya village when Israel occupied the area in 1948. Al-Jaladiyya was located on the southern coastal plain; in the mid-1940s, its population was 360, all Muslims. In summer 1948, the Israeli Army initiated an offensive on the southern flank of the village in order to expand the area under its control southward, towards the Negev. Al-Jaladiyya and many villages in the area between the coast and the slopes of the Hebron hills were conquered that summer, and at least 20,000 Palestinians fled, utterly destitute, in the searing July heat. “Did they leave at night or by the light of day? Did they release their grazing livestock into the fields or lock them up in corrals? Did they leave enough water for the chickens? Did they remove winter clothes from their storage cabinets? They did not release them, did not leave water, did not take out their winter clothing. They just left.” In Scratched Horizon—In the Wake of Arabs’ Bread,” Zuabi reenacts the moment they had to escape their home. With artistic sensibilities, she sketches the residues of that day. Remnants of demolished walls are scattered across the table, and the remains of what once was a magnificent floor. The aroma of abandoned coffee pierces the throat, as though gripping the remnants of the fear and panic that led to the moment of escape. The trauma and the devastation that remained. The pain and sorrow that will forever be twined with the memory of that day. The terror that overtook lives truncated in mid-course. Or, as Khader aptly describes it—the terror that sits latently in the Arabic word “rakhil”: leaving, migrating, departing—a terror that began at the moment of the hasty escape from home and mounted as the distance from home increased.

The project was funded by Mifal Hapais.