Palestinian artist Lina Abojaradeh releases new poem and painting about the Intifada

Lina Abojaradeh, who was featured on this website before, is a multi-talented Palestinian artist. Not only is she a gifted painter and graphical artist, she also writes poems and produces videos, some of which are speed tutorials that explain how a painting is made.

In her latest release, she has combined a few of these talents into a striking production that expresses support for the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, the Intifada.

It is our pleasure and honor to feature this beautiful and powerful work of art at the Musical Intifada. We get to watch the artist paint an abstract painting from scratch, while she recites her own poem with a pleasant voice that properly relates the emotions of the poem. The result is a work of art that is nothing short of stunning.

Watching such a powerful painting come to life is in itself already quite impressive, but the poem and the narration that it is combined with in the video make this new release one of her most effective and powerful works of artistic resistance for the Palestinian cause.

Below, you can watch the embedded video both in its Youtube and Facebook versions. Under the videos is the poem itself. The video has subtitles, which can be enabled if you click on CC. The best thing you can do if you support our cause, is to make sure as many people as possible get to see Lina Abojaradeh’s powerful message!

Colors of the Intifada – by Lina Abojaradeh

Once it was white…
The color of the dove of Peace
that now evades our reach.
Then came the black,
the Night,
the Oppression suffocating human rights,
And giving birth
to the glint of a knife.
Knives that are our tongues
when the world is deaf
to our alphabet.
This is the intifada of the knife.

And each Intifada is the air we breathe,
the way we’re free,
the way we seethe.
It is
Life
And Death
in response to strife.

We carry wounds the color of rust;
The blood of our ancestors
left to oxygenate in dust.
Always, to remind us
that living isn’t living
If not through the lungs…

Of our Homeland.

The Intifada
Is us not forgetting

It is us remembering

the yellow summer sun that
supervised the Lydda Death March.
When Babies nursed from dead mothers
and elderly bodies fell one after the other.
Throats, parched
Praying for water,
for Dignity
for the intimacy
of belonging to a home.
Still parched.
They walked
And we still walk,
This Death March.

It is us remembering

the blood,
stacked up in piles
from: the British executions
the Hagana prosecutions
The Nakseh
The Nakbeh
The massacres of Jineen
Sabra and Shateela
And Al-Khaleel.
How bruised is Gaza
And how weary is AlQuds!
Can you not see the blood
On their guns? On their tanks?
On their hands, through their ranks.
It turns into gasoline
for the fires of our rage,
Teeth of fury erupting
when our hearts can fit no more pain.
We are made of limestone
that cries and burns,
but does not break.

It is us remembering

the sea that carried
our boats… and dead bodies
from the port of Yafa.
We are still drifting in the sea-
always drifting,
waiting to wash upon the shore of Filasteen.
Wave after wave of sadness
breaks upon the cliffs of our sanity.
We are not free.
And what is life without freedom?
We are robbed of even our history.
Bleak clouds occupy our beaches,
And we wait….
We wait….
We wait.
for a Blue Sky,
and the gratification of a Dream.

The Intifada is a face
For the faceless.

Children who desperately try
to fit smiles
in the space between bullets.
Children born with
67 years of wisdom,
and targets puncturing their foreheads.
Children whose faces fade to the unknown;
Too many
too many
to hold.

Young Palestinians
who are suspended in a scream
of rage.
From throats
of hearts,
that are forced to beat
within a cage.
Young Palestinians who
sell their entire future
In return for one moment of justice.
One moment of dignity
Of holding our head high
and standing tall
In Victory.

And the faces
of Patience.
Of Hope.
Of the quiet calm.
Of a cup of mint tea.
Of prayers at dawn.
Of a quiet truth
that numbs the pain.
Eyes irrigated with tears,
Producing gentle rain.
The sadness that holds us all
In one embrace.

These are the colors
of the Intifada.
And we hold the brushes.
We hold the brushes;
the knowledge
the stones
the rhymes
the knives
the microphones.

To paint our way…