The man behind Hanzala

Khalid Al-Ali talks about his late father Naji Al-Ali, the Palestinian caricaturist, to Kavitha S. Daniel


Caricatures set life bare, spread life on strings in the open air and public streets, capturing life wherever found and taking it to the surface for the world to see, where there is no opportunity to hide the gaps and flaws of life. In my opinion, caricatures preach hope, revolution and rebirth.
– Naji Al-Ali

His alter ego is always the diminutive Hanzala. The late Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali's illustrations constantly featured little Hanzala, through whom he spoke to people. The barefoot Hanzala always appears with his back to the world, clad in torn clothes, his distinctive, outsized, tonsured head sprinkled with a few spiked strands of hair. And, he always has his two small hands clasped behind his back.

It could be construed as a belligerent stance, a sign of vulnerability, rejection or as a mute witness to the events of the world. But, it cannot be denied that for many years he served – and still serves – as a mouthpiece for the revolutionary Naji Al-Ali, who paid for his views with his life when he was assassinated in 1987. He was 51 years old.

As Khalid Al-Ali, the eldest son of Naji who is a London based fund manager and organiser of his father's exhibitions around the world, reveals in an interview: "My father created Hanzala in 1969. He made him a child because it is children who can always speak their mind openly. He was also his conscience and a compass to lead him back home."

Home being Palestine for Naji Al-Ali, a refugee of the 1948 invasion, who unreservedly pursued the dream all through his life, of returning to his homeland one day.

Thus, his cartoons circle around the Palestinian issue and events in the Arab region, comments Khalid Al-Ali, who is presently in Abu Dhabi to arrange an exhibition of his father's work at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation. The exhibition will go on till December 31, to coincide with Naji Al-Ali's 15th death anniversary.

The 180 cartoons of Naji Al-Ali on display at the exhibition, completed between 1980 and 87, seem to concentrate primarily on the Israeli invasion and the U.S. involvement in the Arab world. It depicts compromising and apathetic politicians, Palestinian hopes of getting their homes back and has plenty of other images associated with their struggle like keys, crosses, stones and flowers.

American intervention in the region is emphasised in a number of sketches – of American soldiers with wooden keys for legs, parachutes landing on a field full of keyholes, Israeli tanks travelling in a land deserted except for a row of black crows perched on a farmer's plough. Others highlight class inequality in the region, while yet others mock television shows on the Palestinian issue, with one showing a television set fixed in the middle of a wall in the Palestinian settlement area. A caricature features people drowning in a sea of question marks, while yet another shows a leader sitting before a chess board, while the common man, fed up with the political manoeuvres, places a bullet on the chess board, and still another of a band of human like figures with their mouths muzzled by a zip that traces the letters USA.