I.
"Look at this," my roommate from Sakhnin said lifting up his shirt, pointing to a red indentation on his chest. "Its from the soft bullet from the police." Now, by 'soft bullet' Nasr meant 'rubber bullet,' one of the many [at times lethal] non-lethal projectiles used by Israeli riot police to quell civil unrest.
"What happened?" I asked taking a hit from his water pipe like a professional (and ironic) orientalist. He pulled down his shirt and sat up as I exhaled, filling the air with the fragrance of sweet apple shisha. Gesturing for the pipe, he said "You know Intifada?"
Certainly, I studied it. I read about it. I knew about it, but I did not know about those specific local happenings, those under-discussed struggles and riots that took place in the small Arab enclaves of Israel proper.
It turns out that the setting of the story behind his scar, his "symbol of luck," was one of these under-discussed riots—the Sakhnin riots.
A chapter of the larger Second Intifada, the Sakhnin riots erupted in October 2000, the product of mounting Arab unrest in the city of Sakhnin. Though Nasr survived, thirteen young Arabs—some his childhood friends—were killed and subsequently honored as shaheeds, witnesses, martyrs.
When I visited Sakhnin shortly after and studied the monuments dedicated to the thirteen youths of 2000, the Land Day martyrs of 1976, and several others, I saw for the first time a very particular phenomenon marked by a very particular aesthetic: the cult of the shaheed. I took the following photographs while there.
The photo depicts a poster commemorating the thirteen youths killed in 2000. The header in Arabic reads دمهم لن يذهب هدرا — "Their blood will not go wasted." // لن نستكين حتي يقدم—"We will not rest ever."
The monument photographed above is dedicated to the Land Day martyrs of 1976.
The wreaths read المجد و الخلود لشهداتنا الابرار—"Glory and eternal life to our innocent martyrs."
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II.
"Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord; They rejoice in the bounty provided by Allah. And with regard to those left behind, who have not yet joined them (in their bliss), the (martyr's) glory in the fact that on them is no fear, nor have they (cause to) grieve." - al-Qur'an al-Kareem 3:169-170
The cult of the shaheed is in Sakhnin, in the narrow corridors of al-Quds, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in France, and on the web: on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and Google (WARNING: Links may contain graphic content). The cult's spaces are united as spaces of broader commemoration, as cemeteries of hope and symbols of the transubstantiation of Loss into curvy Arabic script, desert slate and concrete.
The gritty yearbook-esque photos of familiar unfamiliars, of tragic smiling youths backdropped by black and red, green and black, are ever-present in both benign and militant forms. They represent a new mode of the old; the mixing of professional print, modern multimedia and Web 2.0 technologies with good will commemoration (as we see in France, Sakhnin, Palestine and in the most political sense with Neda in Iran) and ironic ascetic fundamentalism (as we see in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa).
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III.
"Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the Garden (of Paradise): they fight in His Cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in Truth, through the Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur'an: and who is more faithful to his Covenant than Allah? Then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme." - al-Qur'an al-Kareem 9:111
Always a tragic figure, the shaheed can attain his status on accident, as the victim of circumstance, or on purpose (killed by the infidel kufr), as the victim of fundamentalist self-treachery.
The shaheed, then, is both the found and the lost, the young and the old, the innocent and the guilty; a subject of veneration and politicization, mercy and merciless passion. The shaheed is Zarqawi, the murderer, just as the shaheed could have been Nasr, my friend.
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IV.
In France with the commemoration of the four youths killed in 2005 and 2007 banlieue riots.
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In Afghanistan with the commemoration of 'mujaheddin' Abu Sulyman.
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In North Africa, with its fallen 'soldiers.'
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A militant cult.
impressive.