Hamada Maddah is the story of a Syrian sculptor who set off from the Golan and landed in Jerusalem

The Syrian plastic artist or sculptor descended from the village of Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights, thus he prefers to be defined apart from any other name that does not include him and the Syrians on the plateau within the framework of a people who have been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

The artist, Hamada Maddah, was born in the occupied village of Majdal Shams in 1980, and received his primary and secondary education there before heading to the Syrian capital to join the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus.

Al-Jazeera Net met him to explore his enrollment in the world of sculpture on the one hand, and for his choice to live in the city of Jerusalem, to which he belonged since his childhood, on the other hand.

His smile does not leave his face. He wears a chain in his neck that ends with two old coins, topped by a circular blue bead. Gray hair has begun to invade his beard, and half of his head is devoid of hair.

He talks calmly and smoothly about his childhood stage, which he said was not without social and political education, as he grew up in a family that adheres to its Syrian roots and does not stop recounting the history of its uprooting from its Syrian depth and isolating it on the plateau geographically and politically from the motherland.

A maddah who carried out art sculpture workshops with thousands of Jerusalemites (Al-Jazeera)

Jerusalem tent

When he reached the age of ten, Hamadeh began to enroll annually in the camps set up in the "Maghareq" area in the apple fields of the Golan, and there he met Palestinians from the occupied interior, Jerusalem and the West Bank, where they gathered for camping.

The tent in which Hamada was chosen to camp carried the name of the city of Jerusalem, and from there he began to get to know this city more, in addition to hearing the news on the radio, and receiving information about this occupied capital from his parents.

Since then he felt that this city should not go unnoticed in his life, but he was too young to make any decisions, and he did not know that it would be his permanent residence and the greenhouse that contained it, as if he was in the capital of his native country, Damascus.

The maddah loved art classes at the school, and at home he used to bring gypsum-like material and make figures like an ashtray, a ship and other small sculptures, which he would give to people and sell them sometimes.

At the secondary level, he joined the "Fateh Al-Mudarris Foundation for Arts and Culture," and went into depth in the field of arts, and made his decision to join the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University.

"I had not visited Syria before at the time, my eagerness was great to meet relatives there and get to know every inch in my country that I had grown away from forcibly. Getting there is painful, as we get on buses from the Golan to the Quneitra region, and there we cross an Israeli checkpoint and then pass At the United Nations observation point, and upon reaching the Syrian checkpoint, the gate closes for us and we board buses that take us to Damascus. "

The gate closed to Hamadeh, so he isolated him in his homeland from his family in the occupied Syrian village, and he lived in the Mezzeh and Jaramana regions in Damascus between 2000 and 2006, and it was not easy for him to adapt far from his family, especially since the means of communication were not easily available at the time.

He says, "I did not always talk to them on the phone, but in Majdal Shams there is an outlying area called Tala al-Saihat, to which the parents go up from there and we come to the opposite side from Syria and we talk to them through loudspeakers and see them through binoculars. Mother's Day was the first time I went to that The place I saw my family from afar, I talked with them and cried a lot, and it was the first time that I saw my town from the motherland, and I always saw my country from my occupied town. "

Hamada became attached to Damascus and learned a lot in it after his openness to cultural and social life, and after completing his university studies in 2006, it was difficult for him to leave it, but he thought from a point of view that all the young people of the Golan think of, and if they left the occupied plateau, who will the land remain?

He returned to Majdal Shams, and the idea began to grow in him that the Syrians in the occupied Golan and the Jerusalemites in the occupied capital face one fate, and he began searching for people who live the same concern.

In 2011, he left the Golan and lived for a year in the Palestinian town of Birzeit, then crawled towards Jerusalem, and began a journey to get to know this city and its residents more, and worked in artistic workshops first through the "My Palestine School", which was located next to Bab Al-Hadid, one of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

He says, "My work in the Old City allowed me to meditate in all its lanes, alleys and stones until I memorized the details of the old city by heart, and every day everything in it reminded me of the old building in Damascus, so I felt a strong belonging to it and decided not to leave it."

Maddah left the Golan and lived for a year in the Palestinian town of Birzeit, then crawled towards Jerusalem (Al-Jazeera)

The Sculpture and the Jerusalemite Society

Regarding his journey in sculpture courses with Jerusalemites, he said that the idea was not acceptable at first due to the inherent idea that the carved figures are idols whose making contradicts religious teachings.

"After my understanding of society, I conveyed to them the truth of the art of sculpture through what is sculpture and why do we sculpt? And that we make models for artistic and aesthetic purposes and to express ourselves and certain situations."

Since 2012 until today, Meddah has carried out carving workshops with thousands of Jerusalemites between the ages of 5 and 60 years, and he drew his attention to the fact that many of the sculptures are related to the events of Jerusalem and its characters and the obsessions of adults and children in this city.

Despite the list of many workshops he has carried out with several institutions, the Syrian sculptor considers the sculpture course that he carried out for a group of competent people as the most exceptional experience in his artistic career, which culminated in his work in this field and gave him a different imprint in the art world.

“What these people have made far exceeds the ability of the sighted, because they see everything with their hearts, and this is deeper than seeing things with the eye. One of them carved a face with very precise features, and the last carved a cartoon character based on his son’s description of its features. ".

Maddah concludes his speech to Al-Jazeera Net by describing the city of Jerusalem as the twin sister of Damascus, and about his wish, he said, “I am addicted to sitting at the Damascus Gate, which is also called Damascus Gate because convoys used to depart from it heading to Damascus. And foreign colonies. "