Noora Khalifeh: Reviving Tradition, Empowering Artisans

Imagine a wide-eyed and wonder-filled girl exploring the familiar tunnels of Al-Quds (Jerusalem’s) old city as if for the first time, from her father’s souvenir shop through the many shops, kiosks, stands, and corners of the market, following the cadence of bejeweled headdresses, skirts, and wrists punctuated by the clockwork clanging of iron shop doors opening and moaning their call to the morning’s patrons. She dances forth weightlessly, under and between the kaleidoscopic array of hand-crafted and painted ceramics, embroidered garments hanging just out of reach of a child’s arms, and antique silver jewelry, contrasted and framed on all sides by the intimately familiar pale grays, beige, and creams of a stone so native as to be termed “Jerusalem stone.”