In the original Palestinian folktale, a man must find a remedy to cure his two wives of their/his infertility. He seeks the advice of thesheikh (village chief), who tells him that the answer lies with the village ghoul (evil spirit/shapeshifter). The ghoul in turn points him in the direction of the ghouleh (female ghoul). The ghouleh agrees to help him because he secretly suckled from her breast as he came upon her and found her sleeping. Now having tasted her milk, he becomes dearer to her than her own children and she therefore guides him to the pomegranate tree by the enchanted spring which bears pomegranates that cure the infertile. He is consumed with hunger on his return journey and eats half of one pomegranate. Months or years later, one of his wives gives birth to twin boys, while the one who ate the half-pomegranate births “Nos-Nsais” (Half-a-Halfling), a half-child. It is never clear in the folktale who or what the half-child is, even when they are most certainly positioned as being an outcast.
Abboud was inspired by this figure and the condition that breathed life into the halfling’s story-being. She rediscovers Half-a-Halfling beyond the adventure and triumph of a half-child. This figure is reimagined as a body of water, or a piece of memory that returns — unfixed in time — to a place desiring confrontation and belief. The video’s narrator traverses between the past and present, and between multiple voices of child, mother, animal, water source and spirit, recounting a tale that ultimately originates out of the unbearable state of “halfness”.
Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation – 2020. Conceived in gratitude to the co-support and collaboration of Sakiya art/science/agriculture, ‘Ein Qiniya community, the Water Diviners group Palestine, Issa Freij and the Sharjah Art Foundation.
See video for full credits.
