FIFTY finely detailed and decorated mosques stand in orderly rows outside the house of retired Air Force Col. Darwish Al-Salamah in Jeddah. Not one is taller than 60 centimeters; not one remains standing in Madinah where they used to be. They form part of Al-Salamah’s work over the last 34 years after he retired from the Royal Saudi Air Force.
His whole house and its courtyard are crammed with models of buildings from the Arab world. Many are mosques, but tucked away in the joyful tumble of mosques is a replica of the Ottoman-designed Madinah railway station. Almost hidden by foliage in a flowerbed — a favorite with one of the several cats that stalk imperiously across the miniature roofs — there is a miniature complex of the tombs of Madain Saleh. It is quite remarkable in its detail, especially as Al-Salamah has never been there and created the complex from photos alone.
How he changed from flying jet fighters as a pilot trainer to full time model-maker began with the hard ditching of a fighter in the Gulf and a moment of truth before he was rescued. He tells the story without histrionics and with a minimum of drama. The plane, a Saber, encountered problems in bad weather when he was out with a student pilot. When he sent a distress call to base, he received no reply. “I don’t know if they received it or if I was not able to receive a reply,” he mused. “But at that point we were on our own.”
Deciding to ditch in the sea rather than eject, Al-Salamah descended and spotted a ship. “We hit the water and bounced two or three kilometers, breaking up as we went,” he recalled. Then we sank. I remember it was deep and very dark.” Al-Salamah released the canopy and harness and surfaced. He paused. “We never found my co-pilot,” he said quietly. “He continued down with the plane and to this day I don’t know what happened to him.” On the surface, three-meter waves battered him. “I had a pain in my back — later I discovered I had broken it in the impact.” After a while his moment of reckoning came. “There came a point when I could see nothing. I gave up; dying was easy at that point. I simply asked God either to take me now or save me.”
He was rescued. The injury could have been worse and he transferred to other aircraft — C130’s and helicopters — for some time and in due course applied for retirement. After such an active and responsible life, the emptiness of retirement soon palled. “I felt bored,” he said. “I could not adjust to sitting idly, I had to do something.”
While still in something of a slack-water period, Al-Salamah, for no reason he can put a finger on, felt moved to make something; model houses and mosques spontaneously occurred to him. “I was told — it just came from inside,” he explained, “now it is something I feel deeply.”
After a life in the tenuous medium of air and too close an encounter with death, Al-Salamah has taken to building and using the very solid medium of concrete to express himself and fulfill his life. He gives the impression of being completely absorbed in what he does and it is clear that it brings him some deep, inexpressible and very private satisfaction.
With no training or previous experience — he did not even make models as a child — Al-Salamah started one day to create the first pieces of what was to prove his full time occupation for the next three decades. Nothing is designed or planned on paper. “I can’t draw or put anything on paper. But I can create it with my hands and see it take shape,” he said.
The first model, still very much in evidence, was a mountain in one corner of his tiled courtyard. Made of concrete over a wooden frame and steel netting, it is now home to a variety of miniature buildings and scattered plants watered by a small fountain that trickles down from the top. After he became familiar with the technique, Al-Salamah moved on to smaller and more complex models and gradually every available space slowly filled with models which overflowed into the street and along the base of the walls round his house. Several hundred line the street and, in testimony to the respect that his work generates and the cultural restraint of passers by, not one of them has ever been vandalized. Many have been on the street on public display for 20 years.
His subjects are in the main mosques from the Kingdom and other parts of the world. However, interspersed with religious architecture are other famous buildings and structures. Dominating one corner of the courtyard is a model of the Masmak fortress in Riyadh.
“That we had to build with bricks first as it was just too big,” said Al-Salamah. The exterior is coated in hand applied cement — textured and colored to look exactly like the original mud plaster of the original. Tucked away below it and well camouflaged by the nature of the materials used to build it is a basalt rock house typical of the Aseer region. “We built that entirely from the stone chips of the region, each piece put in place one at a time,” he said. It is a perfect replica of the characteristic architecture of the region. “Any time I see anything interesting in a magazine or a newspaper, I do it,” Al-Salamah said. “Sometimes I visit mosques and look at them, but mainly I get the information from photographs.”
As Al-Salamah filled the available spaces for three dimensional models, his creativity spread to the plane surfaces of his house and courtyard. The whole courtyard is tiled with hand-made ceramic and concrete tiles, each made to a general pattern but each unique. Too heavy for one man to lift, each tile hoisted into place and set after completion. “Everything you see — models, tiles, everything is made of concrete,” he said. “It will last a hundred years.”
The walls of his house have not escaped his attentions. Intricately carved miniature roshan (window screens), areas of intricately patterned tiling and some delicately carved Moroccan- style gypsum plaster work adorn most of the walls. Providing access to the courtyard is a large wooden gate supported by matching towers. The wood was taken from various sources, aged and bolted to a steel substructure. The twin towers are hollow, the same structural technique of steel and wood substructure with concrete overlay used as in the models — but on the grand scale.
Now he has run out of space, Al-Salamah only chuckles when asked if he has finished. “Finished?” his eyebrows shoot up. “No. I want to do something — I need another house — or somebody who wants me to do something,” he said. Currently he is building fifty plant holders, each modeled on a characteristic architectural style, for the Khalil Museum in Jeddah. This inspired man is baffled by idleness. “People who have money — I do not know why they don’t want do something like this when they just sit in their houses.”
Although the models may be capable of lasting a hundred years, they may find their lives cut short. As Al-Salamah’s manual dexterity has increased over the years and he has become more familiar with the subtleties of cement and concrete, some constructive demolition has been done. Earlier more crudely-formed models are replaced with later generation and more skillfully made editions. “It’s a continuous process,” he said. “I have run out of room and I really need another house!”