“Will Handala grow? He will grow up when he returns home. He will remain at ten until he returns home. Only then does Handala begin to grow. The known laws of nature do not apply to him. He is an exception because the loss of the homeland is an exception.”
Time stops at the words that describe “Handala,” the caricature that Naji al-Ali created in his drawings to express Palestinian resistance and identity, and through which he also reflected on his life. As al-Ali said, “the ten-year-old boy represents his age when he was forced to leave Palestine, and he will not increase his age until he can return to his homeland.”
Handala became a symbol of rejection of injustice and aggression, not only in Palestine but in the entire Arab world.
In an interview in Budapest in 1984, the writer Radwa Ashour posed a question to Naji al-Ali that remains unanswered. At that time, Ashour asked al-Ali, “When will Handala be seen?” al-Ali responded, “when dignity is not threatened and when the Arabs regain their sense of freedom and humanity.”
Handala lives on 35 years after his creator, Naji al-Ali died at noon on August 29, 1987.
Credits to “A Child in Palestine” with an Introduction by Joe Sacco, 2009.
