“Unveiling the Hidden Craft: Discover the Secrets Behind Rayya Liebich’s ‘Hands of a Maker'”
When I hung it on the line to freshen the fibres, it swung in the breeze like the Red Dress Project honouring all the murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls in this country. I want to tell her I found the occasion to wear it again. That the zipper was still smooth, the raw silk parting to welcome my middle-age frame. The gown hugged my contours, so I was again 18 and again a reflection of my mother, bending time, a history helixing backwards. I wore it to The Mir Centre for Peace, in a restored Doukhobor dwelling on stolen lands, surrounded by golden larches in October. I wore it as an invited guest, to an event called Peace in the Middle East. I explained that the title of my book “Min Hayati” means “who is my life, who is my beloved.” My mother’s name was Hayat, life. I was her beloved, but I did not tell them this. When I said the word Palestine, I pictured the maker’s home which was occupied and stolen long before this moment. Long before the world could not look away. I stood in a room and looked at my hands holding pages of poems. The blue raw silk casting a shadow of protection. The embroidered threads of the neckline giving me voice. I pictured her hands. The hands of a maker. I want to thank her; in this moment of darkness, the hours of her labour continue to bring light. I wish I could hold her hands like I once held my mother’s.
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