Israeli and Palestinian are an artistic odd couple

By Megha Bahre

When a Palestinian and an Israeli get together, they don’t have to be at war. Hani Shihada, a Palestinian artist, met Ran Mor, an Israeli, when Mor saw a painting of his on a sidewalk on Seventh Ave. and 10th St. in New York City last August. Mor liked it enough to set up a meeting. Neither man was aware of the other’s background. Now, their relationship is close enough for them to debate not only the designs they want to create, but the future of the region they both consider home.

Villager photo by Akiko Miyazaki Hani Shirada sits under interior wall design he collaborated on with Ran Mor at Webster Hall. Mor is currently traveling abroad.

Shihada has been drawing Renaissance classics in pastels on New York’s sidewalks for 18 years. Mor moved to the United States three years ago to conjure visuals for shows using psychedelic lights and decorations. They both fled their homelands, separated by a mere hour’s drive, to escape constant war and met up 5,666 miles away.

“We were completely shocked when we realized who the other person was,” Shihada said. Nevertheless, they decided to work together and for their first project they made a 40-ft.-tall banner last October for Webster Hall, a historical ballroom which is now a nightclub in East Village. The collaboration was so successful that the two men were signed on to create a 100-ft.-long mural festooned with Styrofoam Buddhas, Arab dragons, Chinese birds and Hebrew zodiac signs for the same club.

“When I told my family that I was going to work with a Palestinian they were worried. They thought his family would pressure him to kill me,” Mor said, as he stood on a ladder applying white paint to a Buddha statue. “They thought his family would brainwash him. They were scared. Under pressure people tend to do foolish things.”

The two men met again and decided to risk a partnership. “Both of us had run away from reality — I ran away from the Israeli army and he had run away from the P.L.O., and we were both here in New York. So we just decided to give it a try,” Mor says.

For Shihada, 43, this turn of events was a complete change from his earlier life. He was eight years old when he got his first taste of war in 1967 with the outbreak of the Israel-Palestine war. Shihada, along with his parents and 15 siblings, fled his home in Beitexa near Beit Hanina, west of Jerusalem and took refuge in Amman, Jordan. Two of his older brothers died fighting the Israelis.

In 1968 Israel attacked Jordan, targeting Palestinian guerrillas there in what was called the Al Krahma war. Civil war broke out the following year with most civilian Palestinians at the mercy of the local population. For the next decade, until the time he completed high school at 18, Shihada lived in a constant state of fear and hatred. “By age 11, I had seen three wars. I’d seen my mother and sisters scream and cry, and my brothers and my father lie on the floor and cry like babies. I hated all Israelis and wanted to kill them all,” he said as he smoothed plaster onto a Chinese bird at the other end of the mural from Mor.

Art, his only reprieve, was limited since the conservative Muslim society that he was living in did not encourage it. “I was desperate to get out of Jordan. I hated my life there, and all I wanted to do was paint but didn’t have any money,” he recalls.

In the late 1970s Shihada moved to Rome to study at the Academy of Fine Arts but ran out of money within two years. He turned to the Palestinian Liberation Organization for money that he was entitled to since two of his brothers were “martyrs” — they had perpetrated suicide bombings. But in the P.L.O. office in Iraq he was told that to study art he had to join the Baath party. He refused, and went back empty-handed.

Two years later he again became desperate for financial aid. This time when the P.L.O. told him that he would have to first fight in the war in Lebanon for three months, he agreed. He was waiting in Syria for a jeep to take him to Lebanon when his mother dragged him home. She refused to sacrifice another son.

To earn some money Shihada picked up the Italian tradition of painting on sidewalks, an activity that he continued in New York to earn money when he first moved to here 18 years ago. Today he charges $40 to $100 per sq. ft., depending on the work.

New York was a revelation. This was the first time Shihada remembered seeing a Jewish person, and also saw the Arabs in a new light. In his early days he recalls doing a painting for the Democratic Front of Palestinian Liberation. The organization auctioned the painting for $1,700 and donated all the money to the first intifada without consulting him. “This was a time when I didn’t have enough money for my rent and they didn’t even pay for my canvas,” he recalled.

Another time a wealthy Palestinian asked him to do four big paintings for his house and said he’d pay him $400 for the whole job. “That’s the difference between working for Jews and Arabs. Jews have always appreciated my work and have valued it, unlike the Arabs who just want to take advantage of you,” he said. “I wish I could do more for the Palestinians. But they have never done anything for me, and have always let me down from the beginning.”

Mor, 30, in contrast, grew up with both Palestinian and Arab friends and before the intifada visited areas that are today Palestinian and off-limits. Like Shihada, Mor too had run away from war and the Arabs. He had enrolled in the army at the age of 18 but within 11 months realized that he just couldn’t do it. “It was a huge conflict. The army was not for me, but at the same time my whole family would have been in danger if it wasn’t for the army; I knew the history of my land — we can’t afford to lose, because we are surrounded by enemies and have no where else to go,” he said fiddling with the plastic glove he wore to protect his hands.

Mor pleaded that he was “cuckoo in the head,” got out of the army and headed to India. For three years he roamed there and played with visuals, fabrics, light and color. “I started experimenting by painting T-shirts to earn a living,” he said. His particular favorite were the masks worn in Kathakali, a dance style in the southern part of India. Equipped with ideas Mor moved to Germany where he lived for the next five years before finally moving to America. In Germany he made a profession of putting together events for audiences of 50,000 and more using lights, fabrics and colors to create phantasmal worlds.

Today Mor and Shihada do not hesitate to call each other good friends. But they still get into arguments over the situation back home.

But where they are headed is anyone’s guess. Webster Hall management and Mor recently had a falling out over the budgeting of the project and Mor walked out, leaving the project incomplete. The owners and Shihada have now shaken hands over a deal where he will complete the project without Mor, and even re-do the entire place; a commission that would keep his pockets filled for a while.

“It is a great opportunity, and I will not waste this chance,” Shihada said.

At one point Mor referred to the differences between him and Shihada as the same that you find between any husband and wife. “It can be worked out,” he said. Maybe. For the moment, Mor has a project for another club in Manhattan. On this one he is going solo.