LiminalSpaces

Sameh Abboushi
Born 1947, Haifa, Israel. Studied architecture in Turkey. In 1970, he came
to live in Ramallah, where he co-founded the Balaleen Drama Troupe. He
participated in writing and acting the plays produced by the Troupe until
1976, the year he left to work in Dubai. Here turned to Ramallah in 1983
and opened his own architectural office. Besides practicing architecture
and interior design, he writes and illustrates children?s books and
has participated in several contemporary-art workshops and courses. He
is considered a multidisciplinary artist who combines his architectural
background with his literary interests to produce strong visual artworks.
Jazz@palnet.com

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Sameh Abboushi
The Promised-Bedroom
Since graduating and working as an architect, I’ve had Israeli friends,
both on the professional and the personal level, always believing that
Palestinians and Israelis are partners: partners that share a Present, a
Future… a Promise. (I remember once raising my voice to a soldier who
was contemptuously shouting at me “Talk to me as a partner” I said).

So you can understand how alarmed I was when I realized that I had been
avoiding the Israeli artists during the conference at Qalandia. Taking the
tour with all participants near and about the “Security-Fence” /the
Apartheid-Separation-Wall, I felt that a separation-wall has grown inside
me over the years. Puzzled, I lay in bed searching for a meaning. What is
it that stands between me and my Israeli partners at the conference on
Liminal Spaces?

I found it full of accumulated, but forgotten, distressful memories and
painful situations related to the escalation of violence on both sides,
breading an endless cycle of fear, humiliation and blind vengeance.

The-Promised-Bedroom is a question about “Promises” that can turn the
haven of your personal bedroom into a battle field…with GOD taking
sides. The art form I chose is a personal reflection on the present, and a
question for the future. The mantel-piece/The calligraphic icon ‘ALLAH’
is a common decorative object in our culture as an icon of blessing and
Divine presence. At one stage in the process I had thought of transforming
it into a Hebrew-Arabic-icon that reads “Alla-oheem”. This mantel-piece
is not intended to be exclusive of one culture; it starts with a self-critical
point of reference, but outreaches to include others, as partners do.

In a bedroom, partners reach out to one another tenderly. They share an
act of love. They are rewarded with affection,warmth and ecstasy.

You can visualize what happens to your bedroom during a military
incursion. Half-a-dozen soldiers in full gear, over-alert, ready to kill,
using you as a human shield to search your apartment, then the other five
apartments in the same building, looking into wardrobes and under beds,
creating havoc.

After they leave, your partner, frightened and sleepless, suggests pulling
the mattress off the bed to the corridor floor to avoid stray bullets raling
tat-ta-ta-tat outside your bedroom window. The crackle echoes hard
intercepting the all terrorizing ominous drone of tanks. You can’t sleep so
you crawl to the nearest drawer; fill your ears with coon balls wondering
how to stop the tremor under your knees caused by the Merkava plowing
your street.