The painting projected on the screen in front of me is overwhelming and chaotic.  I try to pick out the Arabic letters and words. They are all tangled together, written in different sizes and rotated to every angle making it impossible to read most of the words. The piece, called “It is Happening There,” is Khaled Al-Saai’s most recent painting.   He explains that it represented his response to the evolving conflict in his home country, Syria.  I sit there feeling somewhat defeated, assuming most of the meaning of the piece was lost on me.

This was the first day of the Arabic calligraphy class I took with Khaled at Wellesley last spring. This lecture, given by Khaled himself, was my introduction to both the artist himself and his work. He insisted we call him by his first name, a request that reflected his modesty in spite of being a world-famous artist. Although I had never taken an art class in college, at that point I had been studying Arabic for almost three years, so I figured I was reasonably prepared for what was in store for me.  However, the complexity and precision of Khaled’s piece was immediately intimidating and swept away any confidence I had had when I walked in.  Khaled presented his work, then had us spend the remainder of the four-hour class drawing the most basic letter, alif, over and over again.  When written, an alif is a simple vertical line, not unlike a lowercase L. I had always thought of calligraphy as a more complicated and highly-stylized kind of writing, so I had hoped that my frequently-complimented Arabic handwriting skills would reduce the learning curve I faced in the class. However, from day one Khaled made it clear to us that “calligraphy is not the same as writing.”  I struggled to understand what he meant by this.  Even though I had written a thousand alifs in my Arabic homework, my exercises looked like a child’s drawing when compared to Khaled’s work. Calligraphy seemed insurmountably difficult to understand, let alone create.

In Islam, the depiction of living beings is prohibited.  As a result, calligraphy has become the dominant art form in the Islamic tradition. Calligraphy varies in style by region and context: for example, the Taj Mahal in Agra is decorated with verses from the Quran written in Thuluth script, while the walls of al-Azhar mosque in Cairo are lined with Kufic.  More contemporary Arabic calligraphy like Khaled’s combines these traditional styles with a more modern use of color and shape. In our class, Khaled teaches the basics of several types of script, with a focus on the Sunbuli style (Sunbuli takes its name from the Arabic word for a kernel of wheat, sunbul.) Khaled explains that the basic leaf-like shape of the style echoes that of the wheat, a shape incorporated into every other letter in the alphabet. Considering that Arabic calligraphy is composed entirely of letters and that I had such trouble mastering the most basic one, I had little hope for my artistic prospects.

A few weeks into the semester, Khaled gave a public lecture about his work.  The audience in the library conference room was a mixture of his students and community members from the town of Wellesley.  The lecture was not unlike the presentation we had received on the first day of class.  He gave a brief overview of the history and different styles of Arabic Calligraphy before showing a sample of his own work, ending with “It is Happening There”.  At the end, there was time for questions.  One woman introduced herself as a resident of the town and commented, “I can’t read any Arabic; to me this is just shapes.  It’s beautiful but is there some kind of meaning that I am missing?” Khaled paused for a moment and responded, “In some ways I think that you have an advantage.  My students get caught up in trying to read the words and they forget to see the bigger picture.”  He continued, “In this piece I wanted to convey the chaos and the confusion of war and of trying to understand it from afar.  Do you see that?” The woman said she did and the audience echoed her response with nods of agreement.  Khaled explained that, yes, the words did have meaning but understanding them only added nuance to the bigger ideas.  In the case of “It is Happening There,“ many of the words are the names of towns and cities in Syria, under siege or overrun by violence. However, it is by no means necessary to grasp this detail in order to see the big picture of the piece.

It became clear to me that Khaled’s painting transcended the meanings of the words with which it was created.  Arabic calligraphy is not so much writing as it is painting.  Khaled’s work especially depends less on the literal meaning of the words and more on the overall movement and color of the piece to convey meaning.  This style makes his art accessible to people with little knowledge of its background.

That lecture took place a year ago. Today, in the context of increases in Islamophobia and misconceptions about the Middle East, sharing this kind of art is even more important.  Exposing the American public to Middle Eastern culture in a context other than the news helps to break down existing assumptions and stereotypes. Although there is more depth to be explored by reading into the meaning of the letters and words, grasping the emotion of Khaled’s calligraphy requires no more than an open mind.