Maha Saca
Posted on | March 10, 2009 | No Comments
Founder-Director of Palestinian Heritage Center
The past 18 years I’ve worn black. I’ve been with martyrs and refugees. I’ve attended demonstrations and visited people in hospitals. I used to wear black to these occasions and when I returned, I’d change into the colors I love—red and yellow. But I wasn’t taking a stand if I dressed in black for a martyr and then changed. I vowed that after Jerusalem is our capital, I’d wear color again. For now, I add embroidery to connect to my heritage through fashion.
How are heritage and fashion related?
Our heritage is our roots and this land. We have to show that this land belongs to a people through our culture and heritage.
I’ve done a lot of research in the refugee camps to find out more about my culture. I learned that for the women, the most important thing they held onto was their dress. The reason is that the dresses traced the identity of the different villages and towns in Palestine where their homes used to be. The dress speaks a story about the village because the women, they wrote by the design, what surrounded her and what she thought about it. You can tell where a woman is from her dress. That’s why I’ve spent so much time researching Palestinian dresses with their beautiful designs, colors, and motifs.
Tell us about the exhibits you’ve put together from Palestinian dresses, and what kind of impression they make in the global market.
I took photographs of all the historical, archeological, and religious areas from which the dresses originate, and I joined them with the dresses together in a map of Palestine in 1948. I put the Bethlehem dress with the Nativity church, the Nablus dress with the historical area of Sabastia.
I also participated in a big competition sponsored by the United Nations featuring garments from 60 countries around the world. I represented Palestine with my pictures of traditional Palestinian garments and won first place. The beauty of our culture can be appreciated worldwide. I’ve done more than 40 exhibitions in Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. One of the most important exhibitions I’ve done was at the museum of the University of Chicago.
That’s why it’s upsetting when Palestinian culture is made invisible. There was an encyclopedia published on exhibitions of traditional dresses, in which my grandmother’s dress was referenced as an Israeli dress.
It’s important that these dresses be recognized as a part of Palestinian heritage. It’s a peaceful political statement when I exhibit the culture and beauty of Palestine. I manage fashion shows, and people cry when they learn about the villages and their histories through the dresses.
Have you exhibited the dresses in Israel?
Many times. My aim is to show we are a good people, we have a good heart, and we need our right to live together as two states. It’s hard to believe in this century that we’re under occupation. Peace comes from the heart, not a wall. We have accepted to live on 22 percent of historic Palestine but they are not satisfied. Why do they build more settlements and this Wall? It separates not just towns from other towns, it separates us as human beings from one another.
How do the checkpoints and Wall affect your life?
If I want to go to Ramallah for a 40-minute meeting, I have to spend six or seven hours because of the checkpoints. It’s too difficult to make it to Jerusalem. They can stop you there with no excuse. And what hurts me the most is that while we have good hospitals in Bethlehem, the women living in the surrounding villages can’t go there for medical help. You hear many stories of many, many women who die at the checkpoints or they deliver their babies at the checkpoints and many of the babies die in the car. The university students can’t come from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Why? What will we take with us? Nothing. The land is for God, not for us. We’re just people who live on this land.
We’re in Bethlehem. What would Jesus think if he were here today?
I think if Jesus heard of these big problems between people, he would not come to this land. Did Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses come to create problems? I don’t think so. They came for peace. We want Bethlehem and Jerusalem to be open for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. I believe in the three religions, but I don’t believe in occupation.
You have a big smile. What makes you sad?
Just my mouth is smiling, not my heart . . . They refused me permission to see my father in the United States when he was dying, they said other people were there to take care of him. I’m the only family still here. My mother and children live outside. So, at the Center, I say, now the Palestinians are all my family.
Saca’s founded the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem to continue the work of her political father, who was forced to live outside of Palestine. She gathered and displays artifacts, especially the traditional and wedding dresses of the Palestinian local cultures on the land pre-1948. Her exhibitions have been shown in more then 40 exhibitions around the world, where the garments evidence a rich cultural life.
