Camera Palæstina by Issam Nassar Stephen Sheehi and Salim Tamari

Author:Issam Nassar, Stephen Sheehi and Salim Tamari
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520382893
Publisher: University of California Press

FIGURE 4.17. Hussein Hashem and his carriage. Jawhariyyeh Album 1, IPS Beirut.

Jawhariyyeh, in his retrospective memoirs, which I will discuss below, created a divide between the war years and the prewar years. His nostalgic projections were surprisingly focused on the war years and the “three years of anarchy” following British occupation—which saw an abundant spectrum of musical activities and flaneurism. By contrast the prewar years, which include Hussein Hashim’s lonely trek to Beit Susin, were seen as years of formative youth, and stability for the city.

But the juxtaposition in the Beirut album creates an illusion, induced by the order of the images’ presentation. In the Athens collection, the two photographs are instead separated by a number of sequences. The horse carriage in the muddy road appears much earlier in the album, and here is clearly identified in Wasif’s handwriting—“Hussein Hashim al-Husseini and his Tuk carriage on the road to Beit Susin, 1907” (fig. 4.18). The dating is ten years earlier than the surrender date. Beit Susin was one of the Husseini estate villages, and was periodically visited by family members to oversee the crops and collect revenue. While the sense of ­melancholy is evoked by the muddy road and the greyness of the wintery landscape, the picture was taken, we now realize, when Hussein Bey was at the height of his prestige and power. He had won the mayoral race by a majority vote and had embarked on a project of modernization and renovation of the city’s infrastructure, including the building of a modern sewage system.54

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