A 50-year-old pictured leaning over a drawing table surrounded by plastic storage bins. Jamal Hussein has salt and pepper hair, glasses, and is practicing calligraphic art. Arabic calligraphy was classified last week by Unesco as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Arabic calligraphy, Jamal Hussein learned it in the 80s. And it is perhaps in one of the plastic bins of his workshop, that he stores the forty certificates and medals that he has since won. .
What we also see in the photo of the Kurdish calligrapher from the Iraqi city of Raniyé are his hands. The left hand, stained, holds an inkwell, the right a calamus, this stalk made of a cut reed. But what we do not guess is that these hands, most of the time, carry cinder blocks, and erect buildings. Because, Jamal Hussein told the AFP journalist who met him, “the art of calligraphy no longer feeds its man in the contemporary world.” Neither her man nor her family. Jamal has eleven boys and girls. So, he plays the mason, and hopes that his government will help and support calligraphers like him.
Arabic calligraphy, says Unesco, offers endless possibilities, even on a single word. It is fluidity, harmony, grace and beauty. It is also sacred, adds the calligrapher. Or it should be. Blame it on modernity.“Because of technology, the sacredness of calligraphy has declined”, regrets Jamal Hussein. “It requires more time, more effort, it costs more. People are moving towards cheaper technological production”, he adds.
We imagine that the calligrapher puts heart and poetry in the few works that are entrusted to him. Some posters, storefronts, funeral stelae. Yet there was a time when calligraphy was displayed on shops, on walls, on copper plaques in Beirut, Amman, Baghdad or Cairo. You will tell me that Unesco sometimes classifies oddities. Grass mowing competitions in the Kupres region of Bosnia and Herzegovina or sauna culture in Finland, but Arabic calligraphy is more endangered today than the sauna. This is why Jamal Hussein is asking for state support.