Damascus-SANA
I attended the experience of the martyr plastic artist Naji Al-Ali at the festival held by the Cultural Center in Kafr Sousa, which included a literary symposium about his life and the stations of his struggle, in addition to a poetry reading and a short play on the same subject.
A short documentary film directed by Sobhi Salem Musa was also shown at the festival, which was titled Handala at the age of ten, in which the poet Khaled Abu Khaled, the plastic artist Ghassan Joud, the researcher Rafea Al-Saadi, the artist Tayseer Idris and Souad Saleh, the wife of the martyr Naji Al-Ali spoke about his life until his martyrdom in the British capital, London in 1987. At the hands of an agent of the Israeli Mossad.
In his axis, the Secretary of the Palestinian Writers Union, poet Khaled Abu Khaled, explained that the martyr al-Ali resisted with a loud voice and faced the Zionist occupation and was exposed to many dangers and threats, but he remained steadfast and adhered to his ambition of liberation and return.
Then Abu Khaled spoke about his close relationship with the martyr and about their meeting in Vietnam and his drawing of the Handala painting and what it means of evidence, indicating that Naji Al-Ali was a good, moral person worthy of martyrdom, and he rejoiced for every just victory and for every liberation of the land, engaged in the resistance, as he followed several training courses in Syria.
The researcher Rafi’ Al-Saadi presented a literary text in which he lamented the martyr Al-Ali in a literary and artistic style, in which he presented the life of the martyr in the struggle and how to draw it on the walls, and what these drawings inspired to the Palestinian and Arab people from a call for resistance, especially as they reflected the concerns of children and the displaced and what the character of Handala means, which emulates the feelings of children about Palestine He asserted that it was a miracle in plastic art.
Al-Saadi indicated that the most important dreams of the Most High martyr was to return to Palestine, which he sees represented in the Arab world, from the ocean to the Gulf, and it cannot be abandoned, and this is one of the most important reasons for his martyrdom.
In his poem, which was delivered by the poet Qassem Farhat, entitled Handala, the struggle for liberation was the most important of its meanings, in addition to the embodiment of the Handala painting.
The young artist Hossam Ghazel presented a short play entitled Handala, in which he called for steadfastness in the face of the Zionist occupation and not to give up any inch of land, no matter how high the price.
The festival, which was moderated by Ali Odeh, concluded with the opening of a retrospective art exhibition of some of the paintings of the great artist.
Muhammad Khaled Al-Khidr
