Hanthala Outlasts Naji Al Ali as He Predicted

By the time he died on August 29, 1987, he had a collection of 40,000 cartoons. Naji Al Ali, the famous Palestinian cartoonist, had been in a coma for five weeks after being shot in the head by a gunman outside the London offices of Al Qabas newspaper on July 22.

Although till now nobody is certain of who killed him, Al Ali’s death was a result of decades of rebelliousness against the Arab status quo, his longing for change in Arab society, and the introduction of democracy.

He felt this would be translated into political strength to fight for the return of Palestine. Al Ali had the knack of weaving politics and culture together. His drawings had distinct messages: they were contextual, fighting against injustice and oppression in the Arab world.

Naji Al Ali was one of a kind. In few simple lines, he could depict the drama of a whole population and convey messages sometimes so sharp and rich in symbols that the viewer’s attention was effortlessly drawn to understanding the hidden meanings.

Though his messages were politically-driven, he always maintained he was apolitical and that politics did nothing for him.

This is despite the fact that his life had come to be dictated by a series of political actions. His expulsion, along with his family, to Lebanon in 1948, and ending up in Ain Al Hilweh camp, was but the first of these actions. Al Ali was only 10 or 11 when he was forced out of Shajara, a village of 400 that were destroyed by Israel.

Given a chance

In the 1950s, before being given the chance to go to Kuwait, his life was immersed in politics. He took part in demonstrations and served time in Lebanese jails. During this time, he started drawing on the walls of the camp and in prison.

“I felt within me a need for a different medium to express what I was going through,” he used to say. He often said he felt it was harder to censor a cartoon than an article. Al Ali’s talent was first discovered by Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian writer and activist killed by the Israelis in the early 1970s. He was visiting the camp at the time, came upon Al Ali’s work, took a sample and latter published them in Al Hurriya, the magazine he was working for.

This may have given Al Ali the opportunity to work in Kuwait in 1964 at the Al Talieh magazine, a now well-established weekly, representing the voice of the nationalists. There, he made his professional career as a cartoonist, though he did other things as well. In 1971 he returned to Lebanon where he worked in the well-respected Al Saffir.

It was in Lebanon he found the best and most productive years of his life, he would later write. “There, surrounded by the violence of many an army, and finally by the Israeli invasion (1982), I stood facing it all with my pen every day, I never felt fear, failure or despair, and I didn’t surrender. I faced armies with cartoons and drawings of hope and flowers, hope and bullets.”

But, contrary to this cheerful attitude, one also felt there was a degree of anger, mixed with cynicism and despair within Naji Al Ali that always prompted him in his cartoons; it was the failure of action, of ineptitude and the lack of Arab resolve.

That’s why he may have created the Hanthala cartoon that always came to appear in his sketches from the 1960s onwards. In fact, in an almost perceptive vision of his death, Ali would say Hanthala would outlast him and would live long after he was was dead.

Hanthala, whose name means bitterness in Arabic , represents the aspirations of the camp refugees and the right of return. We never see his face as he is never shown facing the reader.

Naji Al Ali described him as a bare-footed child with spiky hair, with his hands firmly clasped behind his back as a symbol of rejection to what happened to the Palestinians. He will only turn his head, when Palestine is regained. Hanthala will remain 10 years old until he returns to the homeland, when he will start growing up again.

After 1982, Naji Al Ali went back to Kuwait to work in Al Qabas, but there was no let down in his political message. In 1985, he was expelled, but continued to work in the newspaper’s London office.

His cartoons continued to appear in many daily newspapers across the region in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon.

Did Al Ali’s untimely death at the age of 51, mean Hanthala will never turn his head, or will he wait for someone to redraw him.

Whichever the case, and in the spirit of his creator, he will continue with his back to the audience until Palestine is liberated.

This article, written by me, is reprinted here from the archives of Gulf News.