Storyteller looks at those left off Noah’s Ark
by Alli Marshall
Mountain Xpress

“I was one of eight kids, and one of my fantasies was to live in an ark,” admits artist Ellen O’Grady, author of Outside the Ark: An Artist’s Journey in Occupied Palestine.

“The image was of a storm outside, but safety inside.”

These days, she’s probably not the only one who’s looking for a vessel of mythical proportions. But for this author, the symbolism of Noah’s Ark took a serious detour.

“I heard the story in Sunday school,” she related during a recent interview with Xpress. “All the kids were mesmerized, until one kid called out, ‘What about the bodies?’” In other words, those unfortunates who failed to make it aboard Noah’s floating menagerie. The teacher pooh-poohed the subject, but O’Grady had an epiphany: “As a kid, I suddenly saw the flip side.”

Girl meets world

“We’re all part of this Judeo-Christian culture, but we don’t often see all sides of these stories,” the artist imparts. And though right now it’s easy to draw parallels to the flood, what O’Grady wanted to wade through – as a college student in the 1980s – were the Old Testament fables that had moved her as a child. So, she went to Israel and Palestine.

“I was a theology major when I went to Jerusalem,” she notes. “I hardly knew where Palestine was in relation to Israel before I left.” In fact, O’Grady, more interested in Eastern spirituality, had planned a trip to Nepal. However, a travel advisory worried her parents. Hoping to win approval for Nepal by naming a more dangerous trip abroad, the artist suggested Jerusalem. Surprisingly, her parents bit and she was Middle East-bound.

“I became really involved over there. I became more aware of what the occupation [of Palestine] meant,” she says (see sidebar). After college, she returned to Palestine, where she worked and lived for years. Her jobs included teaching art at the Atfaluna School for the Deaf in Gaza City and at the Ramallah Friends School, in the West Bank.

“I felt it was my responsibility to tell people at home [in the U.S.] a little more about what’s going on,” O’Grady says. “[Americans] just don’t get the context. We might hear about a suicide bomber, but we don’t know what it’s like day-to-day for Israeli and Palestinian citizens.

“It’s so cliché[d] – but these are people just like you and me.”

Why a picture is worth so many words

O’Grady confesses she originally intended her book to be an academic tome, not an artistic tapestry of paintings and stories. “What’s now in the book was originally to help me cope,” she says, laughing. “But once I showed this to friends, they made it clear: This was my voice.”

The childish paintings, sometimes collaged with photos, illustrate poignant scenes of daily life in the war-scarred region. “Aseel’s Dream” uses vivid oranges and watery blues to show a young girl’s world of make-believe. In the midst of curfew, while her family sleeps, she flies out the window on the tail of a kite.

“Adnan and Mamoun,” which resembles Monet’s poppy fields, depicts three laborers in the shadow of a mammoth pair of combat boots.

Planning to commit her travels to paper, the author decided first to take another trip back to Gaza. “I knew it was time for me to share my experiences, but it had been six years since I’d been there,” she says. “I went back in 2002, partially as a response to 9/11. [I was] concerned about what would happen next, and afraid of further demonization of Arabs.”

What she found was that the occupation had progressed. Distressed by the situation, she returned home, taking solace in art – the art that would become her book.

Personal politics

Far from sharing the cerebral text she’d envisioned, O’Grady on book tour now shies away from too much CNN-style discussion of the Middle East peace process. “Since I first went [to Palestine] in 1986, I’ve been struggling with these questions and trying to share these stories. Where am I in this, as a U.S. citizen? I’m not innocent.”

She says that audiences, prior to the current disengagement process, asked questions that revealed their hopes for peace. But the new political climate “doesn’t change how I tell stories,” O’Grady insists. “I think there’s a temptation to sometimes answer people’s questions with political analysis I’ve read, but that’s not my voice. I try to bring it back to what the kids [in Palestine] are feeling, or what a friend of mine in Gaza is experiencing.”

For this author, keeping things simple has a profound effect. “Liberation is only going to come to all of us – to me – by understanding the other person is basically like me.

“It’s always the poor people who suffer most. So I tell their stories.”

“If you know that terror is approaching in terms of hurricanes, and you’ve already seen the damage they’ve done in Florida and elsewhere, what in God’s name were you thinking?… I think a lot of it has to do with race and class. The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people.”

–Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, quoted in New York Times

Heading out to North Carolina’s Outer Banks this morning with Claudia and her dog Zak. We’ll visit my brother Joe for his birthday. Go kayaking. And tomorrow to Ocracoke island where my friend Ann is organizing a book event. Ann, a member of the Zen Peacemaker Organization, has reportedly covered the island with event flyers. Ann: “Wherever you go, there you’ll be”.

I’ve been thinking more about living out of a camper. Anyone read Rahl Dahl’s “Danny the Champion of the World”? Mom, do you remember?

I have been in Orcas Island the past two days and have just arrived in the Seattle airport with about an hour before we begin boarding. Time to catch up on emails and the news. Just read a good article by Alison Weir on how the New York Times minimizes Palestinian deaths and defames media whistleblowers…

www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=7730

Tomorrow night will be my last event. I go back home on Saturday and begin to lay out the “what next?’ I have thoughts of continuing the tour in the fall, heading up to New England and through the Midwest to Colorado and New Mexico. And returning to Palestine within the year, maybe next spring. I have had flashes of buying a camper of sorts, something I could sleep in as well as carry books, art supplies, and clothes. I’ve been eyeing everything on the road that fits that description. I would love to be able to combine camping with touring.

Below is another painting by Michael Brophy. It reminds me of a moment when I was driving through the Northern Cascades. I had stopped and gotten out of the car to take in the view of the mountains. I had not seen another car for about an hour when a station wagon pulled up along side of me. The couple inside didn’t get out of their car. They just took a picture with the windows still up and then drove off.

Michael Brophy
“People’s View” 1999

Friends will soon be arriving at Sooze and Benjamin’s for the Seder. Sooze used to be a professional cook and has prepared dishes from Surinam, Persia, Italy and Morroco. The Haggadah that they have assembled includes words from Israelis and Palestinians. And begins with Desmond Tutu:

We must remember that liberation is costly. It needs unity. We must hold hands and refuse to be divided. We must be ready. Some of us will not see the day of our liberation physically. But those people will have contributed to the struggle. Let us be united, let us be filled with hope. Let us be those who respect one another.

Though I was a little hung-over from my late night of tv watching, the Eugene event went well. It was held at DIVA (Downtown Initiatve of Visual Arts) and attracted a good number of artists.