I set out to the Miffal after a sleepless night with a vomiting 4-year-old, and a morning spent futilely trying to calm my nine-month-old. I left her at the babysitter, not knowing when and if she would calm down.
Yet as I took the small alleyways down towards the Miffal, they opened into the Morrocan gardens that line its back--one of my favorite secret jewels of Jerusalem--and i felt peace and focus start to seep in. Even the monstrosity of the modern hotel behind it couldn't ruin the charm.
I entered through the back door, to see the mural immediately, and so that I could be struck by the experience of what Julia had done.
I do like the way the image creates a liminal space, defining the entrance into the building.
Julia had worked mostly in pastel, which added another layer of texture. She wrote to me that she had spoken to Nomi Brikman, who told her that she had worked mainly in pastel, not paint as I had thought--so the introduction of the medium would create a link to the back wall. The colors of her drawing of Claire were also much brighter and sharper than what I had done so far. It presented a challenge: how to integrate the two languages?
When I entered, the floors were still wet, and the place was just waking up, but unlike last time, where I felt edgy and out of place, I was starting to feel at home. Netta had set up a workspace for us. Julia had left some supplies. And i now had a shelf to begin unpacking what I had brought from the studio.
Julia had sent me the video clip of Claire's visit to the Miffal. I decided that the first step was to look at it. Only then would I be able to respond to Julia's addition of the image of aged Claire.
Badly shot on a cell phone, the movie was haunting. Snatches of words going in an out. A switch between Arabic and English. The intense relationship between mother and daughter--who looked almost like the same person at different stages. I sat with my sketchbook open, jotting down facts, quotes, and sketching.
I had grown up in the Old City, surrounded by people who had been forced out by the Jordanians in 1948. My first-grade teacher spoke of being given hours to pack. One bag. The streets being blown up as they left. No way back.
And what struck me was how much Claire's story echoed these stories. The same dates. The exile. The looting. No way back. And then a laughing return, which is not a return, because history is not reversible. A trace is not a home.
"I came once," said Claire's daughter. "They were furious at me. It was never a house, she said. It was always a school. And I said, no it's my house, it's my mother's house."
How there is always that attempt to erase history, which refuses to be erased. Lingering in the walls and dust.
I scribbled down quote after quote. These, I feel, need to be integrated into the mural eventually. I am not yet sure how. In Beit Alliance, I used multiple approaches to text: oil stick, engraving, painting.
As I wrote these quotes, I was struck also by the echoes of the work of my friend, poet Sarah Sassoon, who often writes of her grandmother, who had to flee Iraq in the wake of the Farhud. In so many ways, all these stories are one. Variants on the endless tale of exile, loss and dispossession.
Sarah had suggested coming to visit the Miffal anyway, to see the progress of the mural. When she got there, I suggested a writing session, inspired by the quotes I had jotted down. We sat in the beautiful serenity of the central hall, writing together.
I kept circling and parsing the quotes, unable to break away from the specifics of the history of the space.
Sarah wrote and wrote. When she read it, she had included every single quote I had shared--yet at its close, I realized that the poem was about her grandparents and Iraq, not about--or not only about--Claire. "It really is one narrative," she said. She had touched on something universal that I am not yet able to reach, broadening the whole project.
***
After Sarah left, I returned to the mural.
I was suddenly struck by how this project was about time. "I was so young," the old Claire says, almost wonderingly. "So young," like for the first time, in retrospect, she could see her own past.
I had felt time embedded in the building. But its passage was most embodied in the two images of Claire; in Claire slowly, hesitantly, entering what had once been her newlywed bedroom, and was now a workshop.
I decided that the pastels, with their sharper texture and color, would be used to depict the present, while ink and paint would be used for the past.
I went back a very loose sketch I had made of the artists in the Miffal uncovering the historic wall decorations and redid it in pastel. The image of Claire and Albert's wedding was now framed by the contemporary use of the building as an art center.
I also went back into the image of the wedding, this time in acrylic, sharpening it and layering it to make it work better with the more detailed pastel.
Then, in response to Julia's plate, I went back into the patterns. Again, I looked at the historic wall paintings, but integrated them into the cracks and texture of the wall. I had them connect both sides of the wall, and used them to highlight Ann Deych's wall "butterflies" :
For next time, I know I want to go into the text, and the juxtaposition of the two Claires.
The history of the building as a school and shelter seems less important now.
Though the name of the school was Yehuda Halevi. Poet of longing and loss. "Zion, will you not ask for the peace of your prisoners / those who seek your peace, the remnants of your herds". Another point of connection.