Gaza Artist Embroiders the 'Pain' of War in Paris

"Before the war, I used to embroider for happy occasions, but today I sew my pain," says Maha al Daya, needle and thread in hand, as news from Gaza echoes in the background of her Paris studio.
Daya, her husband, and their three children—ages 8, 15, and 18—are among the hundreds of Palestinians who received visas to France after the war in Gaza began in October 2023.

Stitch by stitch, this 41-year-old artist embroiders the traces of the conflict. On opaque materials, she writes messages in Arabic with black wool thread, such as "Stop the Genocide," or marks the devastated areas on a map of Gaza with red lines.

For more than 21 months, Israel has been carrying out a devastating offensive in this Palestinian territory in retaliation for the Islamist movement Hamas's attack on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023. The Palestinian commando's action resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.

In Gaza, with its two million inhabitants mired in a humanitarian disaster, Israeli operations left more than 59,000 people dead, most of them civilians, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry, considered reliable by the UN.

- From Wedding to War -
For centuries, Palestinians have sewn long black dresses adorned with bright red embroidery that are still worn in rural areas, at weddings and other celebrations.

Daya now uses this technique to denounce the suffering of her two million compatriots in the face of Israel's air and ground offensive.

In April, the artist was able to show her work to French President Emmanuel Macron during an exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.

She presented him with an embroidery with the words: "Where will we go now?"

"Everyone says that because we're being displaced all the time," Daya explains.

"Just a few days"

She and her family lived through the first six months of the conflict in the Gaza Strip before managing to escape the Palestinian territory.

A few days after the war began, Daya fled her home in Gaza City with only a few clothes in backpacks.

"I thought, 'It's just for a few days, we'll come back,'" she recalls now. "We had no idea it would last so long."

The family found shelter with friends of a nephew in the southern city of Khan Yunis. They didn't know them, but they were incredibly kind, she explains.

But in mid-December 2023, a bombing hit the house. Two of her nephews were seriously injured. One of them had to have a limb amputated.

The family moved into a tent, where they lived for four months. "The cold was unbearable. In winter, the rain would pour down into the house," she says.

They then heard from a Cairo-based agency that she could put their names on a list so they could leave the territory through the border crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt for a fee of $4,000 (R$22,200 at the current exchange rate) per person.

A Bethlehem artist raised funds to pay this amount in exchange for future creations by her and her husband, also an artist.
- "It's hard to find peace" -

In Cairo, she began embroidering, and her husband picked up his paintbrushes again. "We were like birds freed from their cage," she explains.

A charity created to help Gazan artists, called Maan, helped her apply for a French government program for vulnerable artists and researchers.

Her application was accepted by Sciences Po University and the Paris branch of Columbia University in New York.

After nine months in Egypt, the family landed in Paris.

Daya began taking French lessons in the morning and embroidery in the afternoon. In the evenings, she returns to her family in the university residence where they live.

Her children have returned to school.

"When I arrived here, I was happy," she says. "But at the same time, there's a kind of pain inside. While there's still war there, while people are still dying, it's hard to find peace."
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