Now that another Christmas has passed, looking back at how Syrians lived through it returns a bleak image. One of Syrians caught up between the military conflict, the open prisons and the refugee camps. This image is, as every other aspect of the Syrian tragedy, depicted by Syrians through very graphic and intense forms of art.
The christmas activities that marked the celebrations in 2012, when there was still hope for an eventual resolution to the people's plights, were visibly absent this time in the face of hunger, exhaustion, siege and war.
The only christmas trees drawn by artists and activists were ones of dust and rubble flying from an airplane bomb. The poster, made by a the Syrian Fingerprint group, was widely distributed on social networks this past month. The powerful imagery in the photo comes as both, a condemnation of the regime’s barrels of death dropped on civilians, as well as of the unbearable price Syrians have been made to pay for their uprising.
Syrian artist Sulafa Hijazi, who moved to Frankfurt, Germany several months ago, described the tragedy of Syrians in this season as one of a dichotomy of meaning between “celebration and tragedy, intimate family rituals and displacement and refuge, the warmth of the home and coldness of the prison.”
On her own life in exile, Hijazi says in an interview with Syria Untold: “Like any exiled Syrian, I’m torn between the place I live in, and that which lives in me.” She continues:
“This year’s christmas celebrations, with their intimate family gatherings and joyous social rituals, came with a terrible snowstorm that blew over all these Syrian refugees as well as those inside the country. The blizzard was hardest on those who are deprived most.”
The christmas tree in Hijazi’s painting comes loaded with these double meanings, as naked bodies of Syrian detainees and refugees squeeze into each other to form a very unique Syrian christmas tree.
This very Syrian christmas can also be found in Wissam Al Jazairy’s depiction of Santa Claus standing alone with his gifts in the snow. Santa Claus, in Jazairy’s painting, can’t find any more children in Syria to give them gifts. The children are either dead or in a refugee camp out of reach of Santa’s sled.
This christmas season, that came with an unprecedented snowstorm, could only find its way to the paintings of Syrian artists. But even in their paintings, christmas becomes only a background to the horrific state of need and hunger. This year, bread, cooking gas and heat are more important than trees and carols.
