What Did You See??
Tatreez takes one to the sun
Tatreez takes one to the land
Tatreez returned me to the land.
With these reflections, visual storyteller Rasha Al Jundi embarked on a collaborative exploratory journey with fellow Palestinian photographer Ali Asfour through the multimedia project “What did you see?”. The project combines Asfour’s black and white analogue images of occupied Palestine and Al Jundi’s hand applied Palestinian tatreez and short reflections as text to selected prints.
“What did you see?”, is a simple question that pops up in the Palestinian exile’s mind whenever they sit with someone who has been to the inaccessible homeland. This visual collaboration aims to share some answers with the viewer, and leave room for one’s own interpretation of what it is that one actually sees, and fails to see, when they visit a colonised land whose rooted people simply refuse to be erased.
We will be sharing more from this ongoing journey over the next weeks.
Image made by Ali Assfour at Jalazon refugee camp, Ramallah.
Tatreez applied by Rasha Al Jundi includes: the saw, the route, the belly of the snake and the missile.
“Didn’t you see?”
Another question that crosses one’s mind when they hear people’s anecdotes after visiting the homeland and being able to freely move and see our occupied lands since 1948, and yet only reflect with how beautiful and “developed” it is. Really?
Our country is beautiful indeed. But didn’t you see the occupation? Didn’t you see the oppression? The countless checkpoints? The police at the gates of mosques and churches? The home demolitions? The white people who don’t resemble our land’s soil? The European cypress planted on top of our orchards? The skyscrapers that shield our sun from view? The uprooting of our dead for their conservancies and settlements to expand? Didn’t you see colonialism in its obvious and obscure details?
Didn’t you see the cacti (patience) of our land?
Perhaps some people choose to bury the trauma of facing the colonizer. But we have a responsibility to bear witness and mentally/physically record every image that passes in front of our eyes of how our land is being dissected, shredded and defaced by the colonizer in every way possible. It is not a matter of travel and leisure.
Between us and them lies a stream of blood, tears and long vengeance.
So we ask you again: what did you see? Didn’t you see?!
Image by Ali Asfour in Jalazoun refugee camp.
Chosen applied embroidery by Rasha Al Jundi is cacti from Al Ramleh
“Nablus is never fully imagined— something is always missing, erased, burned.
Did the film leak light? No, the film grasped it before me —
The city only reveals itself wounded, fragmented, eroded at the edges.
Every image has its loss, its martyr, its vanished street, its demolished home, its burned olive tree. When I pressed the button, I thought I’d capture it, but the image beat me to it.”
“The Nablus governorate is known for its olive groves, its oil, and the other bounties of this tree—a symbol of Palestine.
And Nablus, the city and its district, is known for offering martyrs who resist the occupation in all its forms: soldiers, settlers. It’s become known for its burned olive trees—now a symbol of the erasure of Palestinian existence.
When I saw Ali’s image, and the effect of the film roll’s ending—as if it were an image of Nablus charred,
like the olive trees of its villages…
like the presence of its people…
like besieged Gaza…
like the very essence of Palestine.
What I felt as I embroidered it surpassed grief—
even anguish and despair fell short
of what now spins through my mind and heart.”
Image of Nablus city by Ali Asfour.
Chosen tatreez is the olive by Rasha Al Jundi.
“My grandmother dreamt of heaven at night. The next day she gave birth to my mother, and named her Houria..”
Image made by Ali Asfour by the shores of the Dead Sea.
Chosen and hand applied tatreez by Rasha Al Jundi is “flowers” from El Khalil region.
Photographer Ali Asfour in his own words:
“I have a passion for elderly people. I love observing them—without them noticing—and asking myself: What have they lived through? What have they seen? How was their life? What kept them going? And what, even now, makes them hold on to hope in this wretched world?
This photo shows the hands of Umm Al-Abed, an elderly woman I met in the village of Aboud. She was sitting on her chair, soaking up the sun, watching people as if she were the chosen guardian of the neighborhood, clutching her prayer beads as if counting moments in some private order. When she noticed me, she smiled. I walked over to her, and she asked, “Whose son are you?”—the question we’re always asked in Palestine, one that carries warmth but also defines your roots, your lineage, and whether she knows anyone from your elders. When she recognized my family, she insisted I join her for tea. The pot beside her was still warm, as if she was always expecting someone—or as if a neighbor might drop by for hospitality.
Umm Al-Abed had a quiet dignity, a presence that needed no explanation or many words.”
Chosen and hand applied embroidery by Rasha Al Jundi: the butterfly motif from Ramallah
(a continuation of the motif on Umm Al-Abed’s thobe).
Throw Your Stick!
A Palestinian scene on Haifa beach
after the erasure of the settler
colonial zionist entity from existence.
Throw.
Revolt.
Resist.
Embedded text translation (top to bottom):
"Weaker than a Spider's web"
"I threw Sinwar's stick"
Image made on the beaches of Haifa city.
Embroidery is “the spider’s web” motif from Gaza & “the stick” from all areas of Palestine.
“The Amulet Flood”
Words by photographer Ali Asfour:
Qalandiya is a place torn in time. Before the Nakba, it was a village of olives and limestone, a quiet stretch between Jerusalem and Ramallah, a land that bore witness to continuity. Then came 1948, and like so many Palestinian villages, it was transformed into something else—an archive of what was, and a holding cell for what’s been denied. What remained was repurposed, absorbed, surveilled.
Words by visual storyteller and embroider Rasha Al Jundi:
“When my grandmother made me an amulet, I didn’t understand back then what it meant when she handed it to me, blessing me with protection. But as I began to embroider, I noticed how many amulets appear in our traditional embroidery—all the way from the northern Galilee to Beir El Sabe’. Over time, the amulet motif, in all its forms, became one of my favorites. It’s what protects the land with its trees and bounty. It’s what shields the land’s native peoples and strengthens them to hold on. And perhaps—with its triangular shape, often inverted—it even inspired the resistance, becoming one of its symbols. In the image: amulets hail from Beir El Sabe’ El Khalil, Ramallah, and Gaza.
We will remain… khawa.”
“What will you tell God on judgment day?”
A question posed by martyr Naji Abu Yousef, also known as Abu Hamza, spokesman of Al-Quds Brigade (PIJ) in a famous speech broadcasted on January 30, 2024.
Indeed, what will we tell God after all that we’ve seen?
Image made by Ali Asfour in Jalazoub refugee camp, Ramallah.
Applied embroidery by Rasha Al Jundj is the sword motif from Ramallah.
The image’s story, made by Ali Assfour:
“It was 2:00 am when the Jewish Zionists demolished this house in Jalazoun refugee camp, Ramallah. This was not just a building; it was a sanctuary for six families and three generations of Palestinian refugees since 1948.”
Embroidery by Rasha Al Jundi, is a selection of Palestinian birds from Bethlehem, Gaza and Ramallah. Because, no matter how much one takes away and destroys a bird’s environment, no matter how far a bird migrates, it will always return, re-build its nest in its original homeland… because nowhere else resembles it..
Where should we go?
Time is blood 01.
And the Palestinian is left alone to face the colonizers, the traitors and the whole world. Our blood has watered the soil that produces sprigs of basil.. sprigs of resistance.
May God bless the souls of our martyrs and may He not forgive anyone who let us down.
Image made at Jalazon refugee camp cemetery (Ramallah) by Ali Asfour.
Applied embroidery is basil motif by Rasha Al Jundi.
Time is blood 02
Uncle, how many games have you played on this table, while waiting to return back home?
Uncle, your friends, where are they from? Do you think you would have been friends with them if you were not uprooted from your village to this camp?
Uncle, how many games did you win here? And how many did you loose? How many news headlines about massacres did you hear about while playing cards?
Uncle, what time is it? Is it time to return home?
Image made in Jalazoun refugee camp, Ramallah by Ali Asfour.
Chosen tatreez is clocks from El Khalil by Rasha Al Jundi.
Our Naksa’s Snake
They called him a symbol. Draped in a kuffiyeh, he roamed through European parliaments like a pet with a cause. The West needed a brown man they could stomach. Someone who would compromise: not too angry, not too armed.
Arafat was perfect. He kissed their hands with one while the other signed us away — Oslo, the bullet dressed as a dove. He took the blood of the fedayeen and diluted it into empty handshakes, into exile labeled as self-governance.
After Jordan bled us out in Black September, we thought Lebanon would be different. But he turned it into another stage. Civil war bloomed and he kept playing president of nothing. President of promises. Of funerals. Of compromise. Always compromise. We buried too many for compromise.
They said he died a martyr. We say he lived a traitor. He didn’t liberate, no. He negotiated our erasure in phases. And what came after him was worse. A factory of suited thieves calling themselves a government. From Tunis to Ramallah, they built a palace on our backs and called it leadership.
He gave them everything on a golden plate and called it peace. But peace is a lie when it sits on the rubble of your homeland. We’re still here, neck-deep in the consequences. And he’s still framed on walls like a saint. But we don’t light candles for traitors. We light fires.
Photo by Ali Asfour in Ramallah.
Embroidery of the "Feathered Snake" from Ramallah by Rasha Al-Jundi.
The idea..?
The idea is that you are all fucker$.
Literally (actual translation of the graffiti on the wall).
Image by Ali Asfour from the entrance of Jalazoun refugee camp, Ramallah.
Chosen tatreez is “Nathrat” from the Galilee region and the “flood” designed and applied by Rasha Al Jundi.
Graves..
Qalandiya.. barriers.. checkpoints.. gates..
We used to describe prisons only as slaughterhouse..
Today, one views the whole homeland as one big slaughterhouse .. and one is on the edge of their grave, even if they are one day old.
Waiting at the barrier checkpoint.. where are you heading to? Your grave?
Image by Ali Asfour at Qalandiya checkpoint.
Embroidery by Rasha Al Jundi: the graves motif.
Poppies
In this photograph, a poster of Arkan Mizher—fourteen years old when the Israeli military killed him in Al-Dheisheh Refugee Camp in 2018. I have photographed his brother, Ghassan, who is now the same age Arkan was when he was murdered. In this image, other posters of martyrs appear—another teenager, another child reflected in the glass—childhoods suspended in time.
These posters are how Palestinians remember and resist erasure. Each one is an act of defiance against a colonial project obsessed with disappearance. When the Israeli army raids the camp, part of its violence is linguistic: to tear down, to overwrite the dead with Hebrew slurs like Death to Arabs, to desecrate memory itself. The sun too participates in this erasure—fading faces, bleaching dreams—until another martyr falls and their image is pasted atop the last. Layers of grief and endurance accumulate on the same walls, where time folds, where history refuses to end. Yet even as the paper decays, the images persist, shimmering through dust and damage—a testament that the Palestinian child, even when denied a future, remains eternal in collective memory.
Image and words by Ali Asfour at Al Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem.
Chosen embroidery is poppy flowers from the El Khalil region, a symbol of martyrdom.. a symbol of Palestine and its native blood.
Rotten blood.
Slaughterhouse is the term commonly used to describe colonial prison structures in occupied Palestine. Although the concepts and practice of harsh torture methods during interrogation and detention have been long practiced, yet it’s only over the past two years that the world has read, watched and learned about the sadistic applications by zionist gang members on the Palestinian body and mind, which are also green lit as Talmudic interpretations. In fact, the world has watched jewish rapists of Palestinians receive standing ovations!
Today we live in a world that celebrates rape, awards torture and devours sweets during “execution events” of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian body, whether male or female, has become a lab for oppression tests and altering the self in the name of God.
And so, our world is drowning in rotten blood, that is not confined to the enemy’s prison gates or the borders of occupied Palestine. This rotten blood will flood every human who has seen, heard and is aware, yet is satisfied with saying “God is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs”.
Image by Ali Asfour in Sinjil Ramallah.
Chosen tatreez is a mix between the “net” motif from the Galilee and the “leech” motif from Ramallah region. The leech symbolizes healing as it has been used by many ancient and modern cultures in treatment by sucking old blood.
Palestine, the prison.
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying.
[Excerpts from the poem by Noor Hindi]
Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.
Image by Ali Asfour at the colonial annexation wall in Bethlehem city.
Chosen & applied tatreez by Rasha Al Jundi: the moon of feathers from Al Ramleh region
(Note: featured poems are two distinct pieces of work for two different individuals).
Scribbles on the wall
When I saw this portrait by Ali, I felt the calm strength of a little boy from Al Ama’ari camp shine from the image. I loved that it was the end of the film roll (another one in this series), as it gave me space to create the tatreez that I wanted in that space.
Initially, I wanted to add variations of the clove/carnation motifs that are present in many different variations in our embroidery archive. But then the words of freed prisoner Ayham Kamamji crossed my mind and inspired me to place the star of Canaan motif in various colours to reflect what I saw in this boys eyes. The words are as follows:
You, who have forgotten our homeland and let it down
Listen, you will learn about our land in seconds
[For it is] the origin of ascend of our prophet [Mohammed] and the first Qibla
Jesus’s birthplace, and we are originally Canaanites
Then came Ali’s story of this boy: in March 2023, Ali set off with a fellow photographer to document how children would interact with a plain white canvas, acrylic colours and spray paint when provided with those tools in the street. They found a spot close to an UNRWA service centre, which was perfect with its smooth surfaces and white walls, and they put up the canvas there.
At first, children (mostly aged between 5-8 years) were provided with the acrylic colours only and they started interacting with different parts of the canvas. Then suddenly, a boy, about 10-11 years shows up. Clearly older than the rest, and physically portraying higher authority, grabbed a spray paint canister, went up to one of the walls away from the canvas and spray painted a penis!
An act of boyhood, rebellion or macho behaviour.. it is all those things put together for his choice of placement and type of drawing. With his “leadership”, all other children followed suit and started painting on the walls, leaving the confinements of the canvas behind.
I laughed really hard at the story when Ali shared it and could only think of adding to the tatreez motif letters of the word “Khawa”, which is local street Palestinian Arabic that loosely translates to “in spite of you”.
Palestinians will always find a way beyond the canvas you set for them.. “khawa”.
Image by Ali Asfour, Al Ama’ari camp for forcibly displaced Palestinians, Ramallah.
Chosen tatreez is the star of Canaan, by Rasha Al Jundi.
“And now as I walk to my fate, content and convinced, I found my answers. How foolish I was! And is there any statement more eloquent and expressive than the deed of the martyr?
I should have written this many months ago, but what prevented me was that this is your question—you, the living. So why should I answer on your behalf? Go and search for yourselves. As for us, the people of the graves, we search only for God’s mercy.”
Excerpt from the will of the intellectual martyr, Basil Al A’raj (1984–2017)
Image by Ali Asfour, souq Al-Laban, El Khalil old city.
Chosen and applied embroidery by Rasha Al Jundi includes: the tiles, grapes and vine from El Khalil region.