Our community — visible or invisible rift?
I am one of those whom Allah bestowed with limited drawing talent, but I haven’t developed this talent for reasons that may be discussed somewhere else.
However, I can still recall stories, occasions and circumstances that restore my passion and interest in drawing. Since my childhood, I was keen to read books about the lives of famous painters and I still have these books. Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Van Gough, Jamal Qotb, Dali and Picasso are not just names to me. They are people whom I know and with whom I lived. They mysteriously drive me to take decisions in my life in some hidden way.
In the modern era, there was an Italian artist called Pietro Antigone who was highly talented, humorous and starred in the 1950s.
Narrating a funny story about one of his most important paintings he says, “It was back in 1952 when the landlord of the building where I rented my studio offered the building for sale. I was in love with this studio and was used to each of its stones for years. It was hard for me that the owner would sell the building, which would go to a real estate investor who could deprive me of my studio and reutilize the building in a different way.
I said to myself, if there were big holes or rifts in the walls, it would be very difficult to sell the building. I rushed to drawing holes and rifts trying to make them look as realistic as possible. I finished my work with drawing a very real, deep, wide and terrible rift that extended from the roof to the window frame. The result was beyond all expectations. For 18 months many potential buyers came to see the building and left without turning back for fear that the building may collapse on their heads.
If I were one day asked, ‘Which is your best piece of work?’ I would certainly say ‘the rifts which I drew on the walls of that building.’ ”
This case reminds me of the life we live. We have a lot of problems. We suffer from high unemployment, from crime and poverty, and we are full of anger and resentment. On the other hand, we have people who are fighting with every living cell in their bodies, especially on official levels, in search for solutions.
Nevertheless, we are blaming imaginary rifts in a solid wall. Take curricula for example, different entities blame curricula for being the reason behind every mistake.
Some go far to blame curricula for the emergence of Al-Qaeda and expiatory doctrines. This campaign is supported by inducements, pressures and persuasions coming from abroad and which we are naively convinced with whether out of fear or extreme admiration and imitation.
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