AIN AL-HELWEH — In a refugee camp in south Lebanon, a group of Palestinian women are bent over intricate works of embroidery, recreating motifs from a lost homeland.
Wafa Taha weaves cross stitches in red on the black fabric of a "thawb" -- a traditional gown embroidered in distinctive local styles and worn by generations of Palestinians.
"Each Palestinian town has its own motifs and colours," from the vivid coloured fabrics of the clothes of Nablus to the brilliant white thawbs of Ramalla, the 47-year-old refugee said.
Red dresses are reserved for married women while blue and green ones are worn by single women.
Born in the Ain al-Helweh camp, which means Eye of Beauty, near the coastal town of Sidon, Wafa learned the art of embroidery aged seven from her mother, who had been taught by Roman Catholic nuns in her hometown of Nazareth.
"After the exodus my mother embroidered to make a living," she said, referring to the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
There are hundreds of Palestinian patterns, with names such as "foreign moon," "cow's eye" and "old man's teeth," she explained.
"It is this richness and this art that we must preserve," said her friend Jamila al-Ashkar. "From childhood we embroider for our dowry and the new generation is doing the same."
The camp, the largest of Lebanon's 12 official refugee camps, has 80,000 people crammed into a small space with shops bearing nostalgic names such as Al-Awda (The Return), Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Yaffa (Jaffa) lining dusty streets.
"I have taught the art to my three daughters and even to my son who pulls the threads out of the canvas," Wafa said.
She and Jamila work for the Palestinian Perpetual Folklore Exhibition, a project created in 1985 to promote traditional Palestinian costumes and to provide jobs to female refugees.
Twenty-five women are employed currently by the project.
"We seek to preserve Palestinian heritage because a people without a heritage is a people that doesn't exist," project director Aleya al-Abdullah said.
She said that although the traditional Palestinian costumes are rarely worn nowadays, the dresses are a hit with foreign tourists as well as with Palestinians.
"On a humanitarian level the project also helps needy families," she added.
Wafa said she is paid per piece and earns 100 dollars a month.
"A thawb takes three months of work and is sold for a minimum of 200 dollars," said Jamila. "The price varies according to the quality of the fabric and threads and the finesse or sophistication of the embroidery."
Silk gowns are the most sought after and expensive.
But the camp's access to visitors and potential buyers from the West and the Gulf countries has been severely restricted because of security measures adopted since the bloody 15-week battle between Islamist militants and the Lebanese army at a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country.
The fighting ended on September 2 and left about 400 people dead, including 168 troops.
"Sales have since hit rock-bottom," project director Abdullah said. "And to make matters worse, we sell in dollars but purchase our materials in euros and end up losing with the exchange rate.
"Still, we stick with it to preserve the tradition."
Wafa frees the needlework on a gown she has been working on by meticulously pulling individual threads out of a white canvas. The painstaking process is necessary in order not to ruin a week's worth of work.
"This work needs patience, but we Palestinians have plenty of it," she said. "We have been waiting to return home for 60 years."
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