Sabhan Adam Monography

August 11, 2007. It's my third meeting with Sabhan Adam. Its purpose is the publishing of his monograph. Once again, he came straight from Hassakeh, after an eight-hour road trip. And once again, he is slightly early. I chose to meet him outside Beirut, in a small restaurant facing the sea. He accepted it, for our meeting place is not the point.

Eleven in the morning. We are done with the regular politeness - both of us prefer minimum of the kind, in fear of the never-ending rituals of our countries. Sabhan Adam is lightening the second of the fifteen or eighteen cigarettes that he will be taking out of the pocket of his shirt during our long two-hour conversation.

The Hassakeh painter is still as rebel as ever and meticulously organized. The meeting's topic is crystal clear: "I am the only one who knows who I am. The cultural world put a great spoke in my wheels when I intended to publish a book of my drawings. Therefore I want our conversation, here and now, to be my book's text. No analysis, no critics, I don't care. My words, right now, are the right ones".

Sabhan Adam takes his time to speak, slowly inhaling his cigarette. His first sentences are almost dictated: "My name is Sabhan Adam, I come from Hassakeh, close to Iraq and turkey, and I love my neighbor". "My Childhood memories are obscure to me; that time of my life looks like me. During the first five years of my life. It was weird. You have to rack your brains to understand language, relationships between men and women, old and young people. Black and night ruled my childhood".
"I saw soldiers in 1973, the ones who fought during the October war. They talked to me a little, and that was hard".

Moving forward through time, until his fifteenth birthday in fact, he often mentions the female subject: "I remember my older sisters, the coldness of women, until now. I remember Wardani, a Christian doctor married to a Muslim. She would dye her hair red with a mixture made of thyme. I ate this mixture blended with sand. My stomach ached for a while. I had a great interest in women, but it has almost vanished. I am having a hard time understanding them".

On a lighter tone, he keeps displaying images of his mind: "I remember my parent's house; I have this image of an ant pushing soft soil up. I was watching cartoons, playing the dices. A child knows how to play with his own spirit." He stops for a while, looks at the sea and tells me: "When I was eight or nine, I had to go to school, I followed the others. I wanted to be a dustman: what was the point of learning? I understood the only thing that mattered for me was the Arabic language. It was the opening of my understanding of the world".

"Between ten and fifteen, nothing special happened. I had a beautiful childhood, without harsh words. I had a contradictory thought on every thing. Chaos and construction interested me; I didn't think like the children of my age".

No Boundaries

"When i was sixteen, i met the journalist Abdel Barco; I liked his job. I felt very beautiful things when reading 70's poets like Ounsi el-Hage and Paul Chaoul. But each time I wrote something, i was told that it had been already written; so I gave up on poetry. I tried cinema, drama and politics: by doing so, I was making fun of all those who believed that I would chose one of these careers. Behind every beautiful thing lies ugliness: that thought pleased me and scared me at the same time. I don't think like everyone else".

"So i tried to draw and I liked it. It began with blue, red, which ever color, on the cardboard that helps folding shirt that my parents sold. The painting wouldn't dry on them." He confided this strange thought: "I should never have given up on poetry", before he adds "I didn't like the writing and journalism environment". I sensed a touch of bitterness in his words, which he never stop telling me since we first met: "If i had known that painting was so difficult, I would never have begun"? As we agreed I let him speak.

"I was seventeen when I first showed my works, at the Hassakeh Cultural Center. The roughness of my language scared the people there, so i took the opportunity to change my name, Sabhan Hussein Mohamed, into sabhan Adam. Whenever i could, i removed my paintings from their place to put them somewhere else. I remember how strong my link was to the visitors, and how I found one-hundred Syrian pound-pill on my way to the center".

"Then I became a ware of my strength and my energy; I said to my self "You don't have to be what you see of your self in the mirror". There are no boundaries to me. I admired Zorba, or a dancer, or a tailor, or a football player: they don't question what they do and I like that".

" I also remember the portrait I did of a Syrian soldier and that is a pretty strange memory to me. I had some quit tough years. I work very slowly. I cut my self off at home and I work nonstop. Sometimes, when I am exhausted, around midnight, I wonder if all this is really happening to me. And I can be someone else overnight. Come what may. There is only me and my work".

He throws a glance at the sea view and tells me: "The sight of the sea and birds are not for me. I am a man of hard work. And tough stories are beautiful. I don't know how to talk about pain. Reality is empty and I watch from above, and I see I am a man, living in an Arab state, that's all. Human history doesn't matter. Children grow up and destiny takes them to their own lives: that also is quite weird".

He mentions his work once again: "I dislike explanations. How to explain drawing? Its more than just canvas and color, like for music. What I do is not linked to any theory or ideology. It is between sensation and soul. What matters is what I see and that I put in my paintings. And the only thing that lives in it is what I guess from time. Stubborn, obstinate, reluctant: that is what we are, me and my drawing. My drawing is a donkey I trained to walk down the road.

Sabhan Adam, aware of how important his words are for him and that I am writing them down, compares himself to his fellow men: "Every body wonders why and never about the questions the being. God is behind every thing and I follow him! I deeply love human beings, in their tiniest lives. I belong to those who became mad, like Van Kogh. My life is like 1910's movies: its end is nonsense".

Painter or Dustman, so what?

We are finally served tea and Nescafe; his thoughts go on: "I am having hard time understanding people. I enjoy God's company: I could have a coffee with him! I talk from the inside, and most of the people are not interested in that. I do embrace time and space in a single move". Another silence, another sharp turn: "My talk is like the wind. I wonder why people talk or write about me; what I am is something else. I hate human relationships, openings, I love nonsense; I love God and the prophets".

"Humanity is just like hunger or sleep, that's all. Beggars kings, it's all the same, and that is the way they are in the in my paintings. Joy is not my topic. Pain, disabled and handicapped people, that is my world. Things change around me, I don't. People talk without being connected to their spirit: may God demolish their houses!" He stares at a beach cleaner passing by, the skin on his face damaged by depigmentation. With a smile he tells me: "Do you see this man? He could be in one of my paintings for sure!".

He stresses his talk around the monograph that he wants so much: "I don't care about what people will think about this text. This is my talk, and in ten years, I will not change a thing. This is may be my last interview. I want the book to be my talk, my truth, with my drawings. If something ever happens to me, I know it is here. And if somebody wants to know how I lived, I drew, he can open that book".

"The only thing I own is my drawing. Most of people sit on chairs, talk numb and don't understand what I am going through, and that blood is coming out of my eyes. Only my parents saw my drawing". Another silence, then: "In the middle of the vertigo of my spirit, a path takes from and takes form and leads the way". He hesitates and says: "if I hadn't drawn, I would have been nobody. I don't want to hear the sound of the sea the way it should be heard, some times, I wish I had burnt my paintings. Present is the only thing that matters. Painter or dustman, so what?". The majority of cultural establishments and galleries that I dealt with of art merchants, etc... their role was negative, depressing and depending on blackmail, but this is no concern to me, and I do not think about it. They were never as genius as I am...

Sabhan Adam becomes silent. We have a light lunch of fish and a few words. Then the car is waiting for him. So is Hassakeh.

Diala Jumail