Badr al-Din al-Wahaibi - Tunisia
Khadija climbs the slippery road between the pine trees and the kina. In the face of this terrible place, he stabs himself in a daily journey to search for the clay from which the pottery dolls are made, inspired by the spirits of the ancestors.
The village of Svanan, west of Bizerte province, north of Tunisia, was known as the Cretaceous civilization that emerged from the ancient stone ages and continued until the Middle Ages and the modern, and continues to raise them in the mountains until today, and was also the battlefield of Allied armies and Nazis during the Second World War.
| The entrance to the city of Svanan is adorned with a statue symbolizing the pottery trade (the island) |
She returns with the clay as she goes, enveloped in deep silence, and haste - despite the weight of the bucket - as if something is following her and watching her movements and her dwellings. And with the disturbance of the pregnancy in her hand, the water-filled mud sounds as if he asks her, "Where is the path?" She squeezes her hand as if she is reassuring and responds to a new creation. "He said.
Living history
Khadija, 40, has mastered the clay puppet industry since she was young. She smiles and says she found the grandmother and mother practicing this craft, and without realizing it, she found herself a little girl tugging at her muddy clumsiness to recognize the ecstasy of creativity despite the strangeness of her genitals at that age.
She adds that she lives in the clay puppet industry and does not realize that these brides have been sent through her for centuries. This has made UNESCO include the knowledge associated with this craft on the World Heritage List.
A stone's throw from Khadija's house hints at the rocks in which the Qabisites sculpt their graves, in perfect fusion with the pristine nature that surrounds them. Graves of the dead for thousands of years attest to the celebration of a life in the foot in a quiet rhythm dancing on puppets of mud.
| A site to extract clay from a forest near the house of Mrs. Khadija pottery maker (Al Jazeera) |
A stressful day
Khadija begins her day at dawn, like every rural woman in the early stages of cleaning, cooking and milking cows. However, her agenda is different as soon as the sun rises, to focus all her attention on the rest of her day to provide the pottery and clay dolls before entering the workshop.
Khadija discarded her place in the courtyard of a country house. The workshop is a complete, unfinished building. It is certainly not protected by wind, rain, or stinging sun stings, but when we observe it, we know it is moving to another time that does not weigh such factors.
Our earth is disturbed by the dust and the mud and the water in a regular form, not distracted by our movement around it or the stones that hit her hands and let her aside unobtrusively. It is a cumbersome process that lasts for more than an hour. As for gravel, it goes dry, but what benefits Khadija stays in the bucket.
| Khadija is formed - after a technical and historical struggle - a bride full of features joking ethnicity (Al Jazeera) |
Mud and memory
She looks at us as she removes the remnants of her battle with her hands, to tell us that when she stumbles on a mud pit of excellent quality, she resorts to camouflage the place and guards it from afar for fear of wasting her valuable treasure. It simply guards mud and memory without knowing.
Start with the manufacture - or to begin to invoke the spectra of history hovering over the place - slowly form what features are made. It is not possible to determine the nature of the thing or the stages of completion accurately, but at the sight of Tbbtk eye of the bride of clay and Tmrk fear and wonder, as the eye of Walid opens the first time.
Khadija recovers her breath after this artistic and historical labor, and also leaves the opportunity for this newcomer to listen to the forest and the birds spur around her to make up the place, to form a bride full of incandescent features.
| Clay dolls for sale (Al Jazeera) |
Childhood joy
Khadija goes with her new baby to the fire, perhaps she wants to teach her the first lessons of skin and cling to life. Is a necessary test to discover the hardness and cohesion of elements that have been traversed for hundreds of years. Here there is no place for fragility or fragmentation. Life is written and followed by steel and subject to strength.
After an hour or so, Khadija removes the rest of a fire that has begun to fade. She looks at us with a childish joy, the features of a girl who has completed her fourth year, to tell us that the bride has been successful in the test and now has the right to adorn and shine like her peers throughout the ages.
To decorate, polish and prepare a clay bride are materials extracted from nature, as there is no room for the use of materials manufactured or chemical. In two prisons, craftsmen such as Khadija use the "seductive" coating extracted from the tulip plant to obtain dark and dark green colors.
| Some of the artifacts and pottery manufactured by Mrs. Khadija (Al Jazeera) |
Global shine
It is possible that the clay brides would not have known the light without the recruitment and alignment of a number of university graduates and cultural frames from the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs to push the profile of the clay maiden to be on the World Heritage List.
Mr. Mounji Bejawy, President of the Society for the Preservation of the Environment, said that he and a group of university graduates have prepared a large part of the nomination file, and the completion of an integrated documentary tape, despite the simplicity of the possibilities, reviewing the history of this craft and its stages and techniques.
Mr. Sami Al-Mashraqi, Director of the Culture House in Sijanan, added that the craftsmen have the right to be proud of what has been achieved. Many challenges remain on the discussion table before the actors to further push this craft to international and national markets.
Waiting for the books of the officials' discussions and negotiations to lead them, someday someday the mysterious little daughter of Khadija will wake up to follow her mother's steps into the abyss. On that day, as centuries have passed, the forest will silence and speak mud.
| Pottery made by Mrs. Khadija (Al Jazeera) |