Maha Taitano
Sound Healing From Israeli Bombing
Photo, Mixed Media
NFS

I have few memories of Beirut, Lebanon. One is pretty vivid to this day. I am scared, and it is so loud. My mother is yanking my arm, yelling at me to run. My father is several feet ahead of us, clutching my baby brother. My father is yelling at my mother to “pick her up!” I turn and look at the street and I see people duck under cars. I close my eyes, hold on to my mothers pants and try to run as fast as I can.

I’m 28 years old and hanging outside my apartment building with my family and friends in Alameda, California. Suddenly, the Blue Angels Navy Aerial Fleet roar above our heads during a practice run. I duck next to the side of the building, my brother does the same while my daughter covers her ears and bends down. Everyone else looks up at the amazing spectacle, with no fear. My trauma has passed down through my DNA to my daughter.

Three years ago, some cousins came to visit. I have not seen him in 20 years. He reminisces of our arrival to California in 1983. His mother and my grandmother prepared him and his other cousins to be careful and not play too loud with my brother and me. We still wake up crying to the sounds of garbage trucks.

The reverberations of bombs are my trauma I pass down to my children. I think of all the Palestinians absorbing the same trauma from Israel’s bombing but for even longer than my experience. Decades of sound trauma.  

This piece is my attempt to counteract the sound trauma with sound healing while I hold the Palestinian people, in Gaza and abroad, in my heart. Through this piece, I come to realize, there will never be complete healing, for anyone in our lifetime. There is not enough time in one’s life to absorb enough sound healing. I look forward to celebrating the freedom of Palestinians, until then, no one is free. 

Artist Bio

Maha Taitano is a sculpture and installation artist who works with all mediums from metals, wood, fabrics, papers, plastics, and more. She started her education in 2004 at Laney College in Oakland and then transferred to UC Santa Cruz. Maha’s work has mostly focused on the subject of identities and the many-layered aspects and complexities of one’s identity.  One of her recurring subjects is gender role norms within subcultures to contemporary ideologies.  Currently, she also focuses on racial equity using her own positionality. Part of Maha’s art practice is the process of making; she enjoys multiples and the idea of repetition and turning her studio as well as her body into an art factory.