In an article first published by the World Council of Churches news service, KATJA DOROTHEA BUCK reports from Egypt on how icon painters are commemorating 21 martyrs killed on a Libyan beach by the so-called Islamic State in early 2015…
Hany Saweres and Edmon Kamel are icon painters in Cairo with a special mission: to paint the 21 martyrs who were beheaded by the Islamic State in February 2015 in Libya. A church in their memory is currently being built in El-Minya (Upper Egypt) – with funds from the Egyptian state.
The video of the mass execution went around the world. On a beach on the Libyan coast, terrorists of the Islamic State beheaded 21 young men. Worldwide, the clip caused fear and terror. But the Copts in Egypt saw in it more than only a cruel murder. They analysed the video and discovered that the 21 young Christians, at the moment of their death, had the name of Jesus on their lips.
The fact that these simple migrant workers, even with the knife on their necks, had not abandoned their faith, was a consolation to many Copts; a sign of God that He had not forgotten the Christians in Egypt. In El-Minya, where many of the young men came from, a church is now being built to commemorate them, paid for by the Egyptian state. This has never happened in the history of Egypt where 90 per cent of the population is Muslim.
ICONOGRAPHER: Hany Saweres at work. PICTURE: Katja Dorothea Buck/WCC
Hany Saweres and his partner Edmon Kamel are commissioned to paint the icons for this church. In their studio in Cairo’s Ezbet an-Nakhl district, however, Mr Saweres first had to solve an aesthetic problem: where on the icon of the 21 martyrs should he place Matthew, the only non-Egyptian? Matthew was from Ghana and had correspondingly dark skin.
“If we had put him somewhere on the edge of the group, the viewer’s gaze would automatically have stuck to him and distracted the viewer from the other 20”, Mr Saweres says while Mr Kamel is tracing the contours of a face with black paint. The two by two metre screen is attached with adhesive strips on the wall.
“The Coptic art actually is based on symmetry and uniformity. That’s why the faces do not really differ”, Mr Saweres explains. “But if someone in his earthly life already had a darker skin color, I cannot ignore that on the icon.”
The studio is an apartment on the ground floor of a residential building. As in many other places in Cairo, the houses in Ezbet an-Nakhl are built so close to each other that no sunlight penetrates through the windows on the lower floors. Neon lights on the ceiling burn throughout the day.
ICONS
Icons play an important role in most Orthodox and Eastern Churches. They are the word of God painted in color. Icons are not to be considered as pieces of art. For the faithful, they are a window through which the divine becomes visible. The icon is considered an instrument for God’s revelation. That’s why he does not sign his icons.
There are different traditions in which icons are painted, such as the Byzantine, Bulgarian or Slavic-Russian tradition. Coptic icons are characterised by strong symmetry and balance in the arrangement of the figures. Also, the eyes of the persons are represented particularly large as a sign of spiritual purity.
“We gave Matthew the middle seat,” says Mr Saweres, pointing to the group of the 21. And in fact, looking to the martyr with the dark skin, the other 20 stay in the view of the observer. All are dressed like deacons, the altar servers in the Coptic church.
Mr Saweres is not the first one to think about Matthew. When the Coptic church, shortly after the murder, declared the 21 officially as martyrs, the question was whether someone not belonging to the Coptic church could become one of their martyrs. The Coptic patriarchate quickly decided against dogmatic discussions and for Matthew as a martyr. “I do not know if I had the strength to hold onto my faith like them,” says Marina, the wife of Mr Kamel entering the studio with some tea cups on a tray. “Maybe God chooses only those who can persevere something like this until the end.”
Martyrdom is one of the pillars of the Coptic church. Over the centuries, there have always been people who, despite being tortured, did not deny their faith and remained firm even facing death. Till today, Coptic children listen to these stories in their Sunday school classes. So it was with the young men in Libya. They knew the martyrs of their church.
Mr Saweres dips a brush in a plastic cup with clear water and goes over one of the faces. The assorted colors would mix better, he explains. Several times he was in El-Minya on the construction site of the church to take measurements for the icons that should decorate the church once. Sometimes he meets parents and siblings of the martyrs and goes to the old church in El-Minya where the martyrs used to worship.
“That means a lot to me,” he says and goes to his desk. From a drawer he gets a postcard that shows the photo of a young man, framed by images of saints. The postcard shines oily and on closer inspection, dark streaks can be seen on the man’s cheeks.
“This is Mina, one of the martyrs,” says Mr Saweres. “As the man’s parents don’t have a grave where to mourn they had placed a photo of the son in their home. On his first birthday after the murder, the photography started producing oil, healing oil,” says Saweres.
Mr Kamel stops painting. For a moment they watch each other, as if asking whether they should continue this conversation on something which is very precious to them. They know that in the Protestant faith of their visitor there is no space for miracles. But in the Coptic faith, miracles play an important role. The Copts see in it a sign of God that He has not forgotten them; that He heals the sick, that the uneven ground becomes level, and the rough places a plain.
But enough with this heavy issue. Mr Saweres takes out his smartphone, scrolls for a while and suddenly starts to laugh. He taps on a photograph showing a bishop capped and gowned consecrating one of his icons. Icons get sacred only when every square centimeter has been anointed with holy oil. The photo on Mr Saweres’ phone shows the seven-metre-high painting of the apse of a church.
“For that, the bishop needed a paint roller,” he laughs and enlarges the picture. And indeed, the white and gold dressed bishop works with a simple, light blue paint roller on the telescopic stick as it exists at any hardware store. That, too, is Coptic reality. The rite itself is important, but not the tool it needs. According to the plan, the icon of the 21 martyrs of Hany Saweres and Edmon Kamel will be consecrated in February 2018.
Katja Dorothea Buck is a religious and political scientist working on Middle Eastern Christianity. Since her studies in Cairo in the late 1990s she often travels to Egypt for research. This article was first published by the World Council of Churches.
