Embroiderers gather for peace — each stitch represents a person killed in Gaza

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

For months, a small group has gathered on the University of Michigan campus on Tuesdays to protest civilian deaths in Gaza. They protest through embroidery. NPR's Neda Ulaby explains.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: You may have seen the traditional Palestinian embroidery called tatreez - colorful designs and intricate, graphic shapes.

BETH BAILY: Thirty-two and eight is 40.

ULABY: This is tatreez Tuesday, a group of mostly women who work at the university. It includes Jews, Arabs and others heartsick over the ongoing carnage. Everyone who shows up gets a needle, thread and a pattern of tiny abstract blocks suggesting the shape of a Cypress tree.

BAILY: It represents eternal life.

ULABY: Beth Baily helps organize tatreez Tuesdays. Every stitch and every color, she says, represents a Palestinian killed after the attack led by Hamas in October last year that left more than 1,200 people dead, according to the Israeli government. Since then, at least 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

BAILY: White represents children. Green represents elders. Red represents adults.

ULABY: And purple represents babies. Each tree is 94 stitches. Most of them are white for children.

UNIDENTIFIED EMBROIDERER: Each stitch is a memorial. It doesn't matter that I didn't know them. But in that moment, I'm connected to that individual.

ULABY: This embroiderer does not want to give her name. Dozens of people with university jobs like hers around the country have been fired or disciplined after participating in pro-Palestinian activism. Meeting to make something with kindred spirits is a way, she says, to grieve - and to address despair, says another embroiderer named Asma Baban.

ASMA BABAN: Honestly, before I came here, I felt like I was just kind of a shell of myself. I was doing everything I was supposed to, and I was able to have conversations with people. But there was this heaviness, and I just didn't know, like, what to do with it 'cause I felt so powerless and so hopeless.

ULABY: Sitting and stitching in compassionate community helped release her, she says, from doomscrolling.

BABAN: It's numbing, and I needed to break that cycle, and I needed to find something. And being here, it's healing.

ULABY: Tatreez Tuesday gives people a way to recharge, regroup and deepen relationships, says organizer Beth Baily.

BAILY: This fight doesn't end when it falls off of the news cycle, and neither should our love.

ULABY: Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.