The earth, our planet, hosted us with its trees and white areas, made us breathe, eat, and asked us nothing in return. He only asked to be respected, loved.
At the sunset of thought, a mind takes refuge in the heart, seeks shelter from the deceptive time that reduces our human soul every day, holding a ruthless clock that never stops. But this is our fate—nature, where we are born and then leave it to those who continue on the unknown path.
The harmony of nature, between aggressive rains, earthquakes, urgent, absurd winds, were part of us. We know it as a distant apparent, who did not warn us of his arrival, yet we welcome him, between tears and colourful surprises.
But COVID-19, who is it? …A back of man’s whims? A bad dream that never wants to pass, wants to take root in us and scare us? We don’t know who he is, invisible, with a crown of sharp teeth that eats our soul mercilessly. Someone says that he—COVID, he’s right!
The earth, our planet, hosted us with its trees and white areas, made us breathe, eat, and asked us nothing in return. He only asked to be respected, loved. But the wrong, overbearing man does not respect what nature gives, not even himself. He believes himself to be a child, but he is only defensive, bad, and deserves a real lesson.
We do not deserve the evil that we built with our own hands, and we cannot say that we did not know it! We thought that we are the masters of the earth, but it is not like that, we are poor, deluded, mischievous and we are paying for it.
People go away suddenly. Many people suffer from pain. Nobody knows who is Mister COVID. Then, it touches us to smile too, since we have an invisible guest who lives among us and we know not who he is…
Everything so strange, a nightmare that digs into us every day, and we don’t even know how to react.
I paint and write so as not to be afraid and not to feel alone. I shy away from distant memories of my ancestors, I call it with my soul to try to be saved.
Fathi Hassan, 2020.
Fathi Hassan is a Nubian artist with heritage from Egypt and Sudan. He creates mixed-media paintings, drawings and installations incorporating the written word to explore ancient languages erased by colonial domination.