Gaza- He was a child no more than five years old when he stood in front of a crowd of people to make his voice heard at a kindergarten celebration. His stance was the first step in an artistic journey that lasted for more than 30 years.
“Inherited from his grandfather’s grandfather,” Umm Hamza Abu Qaynis reveals the secret of her son’s melodious voice, and continues, “The whole house I have has a sweet voice,” as a metaphor for her husband and children, male and female. Hamza passed away, and he was not her first martyr, but her last. The war did not spare any of its men, as it lost its three sons and their father.
“He was kind, compassionate, intelligent, intelligent, well-educated, and a man in the full sense of the word.” Umm Hamza goes on to list the characteristics of her son, whose loss broke her back, as she said in her conversation with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “I lived as an orphan. I gave birth to him when I was 18 years old, and he was my friend, my brother, and my father.”
Lost after longing
Hamza was her comfort when her two sons left her and helped her to be patient. She had not seen him since the beginning of the war. She was displaced with his wife and children to the south and he remained steadfast in the north. She recalls their last call days before his departure, in which the phone was ringing on the ears of his three children and his wife. He then asked to talk. With his mother, “Razia, mother?” She replied, “My heart and God are satisfied with you, my love.”
This was the last of his melodious voice to reach his mother. As for the people, there are songs that have crept into the hearts of millions of them, which he immortalized with his melodies and have not disappeared. Although the news of Hamza’s martyrdom was hard on his mother’s heart, there was peace that God bestowed on her, as well-wishers flocked to him for his martyrdom despite her not knowing them, in addition to the good people standing up and interacting with his passing, which eased her affliction, as she says.
As for his close friend, Osama Qasim, he believes that the reaction of millions to the martyrdom of Abu Qaynis was due to his honesty and the sincerity of what he sang. He was the author of a message and his songs were an interpretation of the condition of the general public, including the bereaved, the wounded, and the bereaved.
Abu Qaynis finished recording the album “Clutching the Embers” shortly before the war, and he intended to announce it with a big celebration, but the entry of the war prevented that, so he decided with his colleague Qasim to publish the album’s songs during this war, and they subsequently gained great popularity and circulation, especially since they simulated the reality of loss. And departure and martyrdom.
His voice as a singer of “Sabil Ayouno” and his influence on “Tell me where I am going to catch you is not good” were associated with the lamentation of the martyrs, and it spread among people like wildfire on social networking sites, until they called him the graves of the martyrs and the shoes of the departed.
Qasim cries as he mourns his neighbor and closest friend, Hamza, who brought them together in the studio and artistic work for more than 20 years, as he is the owner of the company that produces Abu Qaynis’s works.
He recalled – in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net – their last journey, when Qasim was about to draw up a plan for their artistic works after the war, only for Hamza to interrupt him, “I will not be with you, but rather I will be at the top and intercede for you. My father and brothers are tired of waiting for me. I must go to them.”
Paradise Forum
The most famous singer in Gaza passed away, and Qasim did not accept the news. To this day, he still sends him text messages on his phone calling on him to come back and stop joking. He says, “It is impossible to find a picture on my phone alone without him. I walk alone without a companion after he left a void that will never be filled.” But what He comforts me with his famous saying that he always repeated: “The meeting place is paradise.”
Hamza did not achieve international fame during his life and did not perform concerts outside Gaza as he aspired to because he was banned from travelling, but the Arab and Islamic worlds mourned and mourned him and are still circulating his songs that penetrated the dams and borders after his departure.
Hamza’s ending is similar to the ending of the artist Mahasen Al-Khatib (32 years old), who was martyred a few days ago in Jabalia camp, from which she refused to leave despite the occupation’s siege. Her story spread and her expressive drawings became famous on social media platforms and media, but by describing her as a “martyr artist.”
Tel Aviv Tribune Net conducted an interview with Fatima Hassouna, Mahasen’s close friend, who had just seen a picture of her friend’s grave, as if it was the first evidence proving that she had truly passed away.
She said while shedding her tears, “The world has lost Mahasen. My friend did not want to die yet, so he took her from us and we lost her all.” Fatima, who lost dozens of her family members and other friends, adds, “I have been holding back my tears and holding them since I lost dozens of my family months ago, but today I released them and cried without stopping.” “.
She remembers her friend’s feeling that she recently told her, “I’m suffocated by the siege, Fatima,” and her last request, “I want your mother to cook me the usual grape leaves when we get out of the siege.” Between Mahasen’s feeling that was fulfilled and her request that did not have time to fulfill it, Fatima reviews her conversations and pictures with Mahasen, describing her as “an amazing breakthrough, a dreamy girl, very inspiring and strong, and satisfied and has never complained.”
She continued, “My friend was very honest, even with her given name. She combined the best morals and qualities.”
She was the breadwinner for her family after the death of her father, so she took responsibility for her mother and siblings, three of whom had special needs. Despite this, Mahasen worked with love and passion and trained hundreds of students in digital drawing, which she turned to despite studying mathematics at the university level.
Art is resistance
Israel demolished Al-Khatib’s dreams and projects, destroying the training center it had newly established before the war to give drawing courses. Despite that, it built her own world on the roof of her house in a small room where she could retreat after a hard day of cooking on firewood, bottling water, and performing household chores with her mother, which was difficult for her. She accepts the news, “because their souls are attached to each other,” as Fatima says.
Death was not a topic in Mahasen’s discussion, as she always talked about her dreams, ambitions, and projects in which she would realize herself after the end of the war, and through which she would convey the image of the Gaza tragedy to the world.
The war did not end, and Mahasen’s life ended, like dozens of dreaming artists, in direct attacks that “will not bear fruit,” says Mahmoud Salmi, director of the Artists Association studios.
Mahmoud believes that “art is resistance like a gun. We cannot give it up or despair of carrying it, and this is a firm belief among us,” despite the occupation’s premeditated and premeditated targeting of artists by assassinating them and destroying their headquarters. In the first days of the war, Israeli planes bombed the main headquarters of the Palestinian Artists Association and flattened it to the ground, which is the body. The only one that brings together Gaza Strip artists.
Mahmoud stressed – in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net – the artists’ continued attempts to rise from the ashes, as he extracted his destroyed tools and equipment from the rubble and repaired part of it. However, many challenges face artists today, such as the lack of electricity, logistical obstacles, the unstable security situation, and the bad psychological state they are experiencing after a year of war, during which they lost their homes, relatives, and colleagues.
Mahmoud pointed out the role of social media platforms in conveying Al-Ghazi’s messages and arts, and adapting them to serve his cause and highlight his suffering. He concluded his speech, “We will rebuild our theaters and artistic studios, gather our artists, realize ourselves, and continue our productions despite the occupation.”
Israel killed more than 20 Palestinian artists from Gaza, slaughtered their throats, smashed their palms, and destroyed their dreams, but their works remained a witness to the “Nazism” of the occupier, which they embodied in the form of a melody of words or colors on a white page or a scene on a stage, believing that art is resistance, despite its softness, except Its effect is strong and lasting.
