"FREE PALESTINE"

 

This piece of Arabic calligraphy was written by my dad's childhood friend. They grew up in Damascus, Syria.

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When he was a young boy, he worked at his baba's calligraphy workshop where they made designs for local shops and businesses in the area. He told me that they specialised in gravestone calligraphy for PLO martyrs, and remembered the beautiful designs they would create to honour the fallen soldiers that were brought back home to be buried. He hated leaving the workshop to go to school and would spend every moment he could at the shop observing his father's craft - a skill that he'd carry with him forever. This calligraphy represents the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. There is no in-between. There is no argument for "both sides". This is apartheid. This is genocide.