PORTRAITS OF DENIAL & DESIRE
Sepia Prints (2014 - Present)
Portraits of Denial & Desire Sepia

Dr. Mohammad Khalil. Digital Print. Sepia.
80 x 60 and 110 x 80 inches
John Halaka © 2015

Dr.  Mohammad Khalil.  Born 1925 Taybeh, Palestine.  Lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

Dr. Mohammed Khalil, was studying law in London in 1948, when he lost the ability to ever return to his homeland, Palestine, after it was declared Israel, in May of 1948. With the loss of his homeland, he also lost his entire family, and only saw his mother and father once after 1948, and that was in a family reunification arranged by the Red Cross.  His very brief visit with his parents occurred from across a series of barbed wire fences that separated West and East Jerusalem.  His mother and father never had a chance to embrace him, nor did he have a chance to hold them. That visit was the only time he saw his parents between the time of his sudden exile in 1948 and the time they died.

After finishing his law degree, Dr. Khalil, a legal scholar with publications in International Law, received refugee status in the Netherlands and later got jobs in Libya and then in Lebanon, where even with his professional successes, he still lives with the deep wounds of devastating loss and is treated as a stateless Palestinian refugee with very few civil rights.

Since the beginning of the Nakba in 1948, Palestinians living in exile are no longer viewed as a people by the international community and have been identified primarily as refugees.

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