These worn rags are closer to garments than to clothes, barefoot, lost in the streets of big cities in search of some food to be granted by passers-by. Homeless by heredity, oppressed by nature, and broken by default. Two brothers, the eldest leading the younger, who follow him in what he says or does, who look with a broken eye, asking for help and support. The artist added to the atmosphere of the work a faded austerity, pale color, and subtle detail. The yellowness of their faces was hidden by the blackness of their skin, which was burnt by the summer sun and solidified by the frost winds that ravaged the bones. Their ancestors were picked up from their first homes as ripe prey by hunters under the threat of rifles, to be shackled with handcuffs and oppressed, and to be shipped as litter in the basements of the rickety ships that the seas crumbled upon them. After a while, the rest reached the new land on which the enslaved people were auctioned. They were sold at the lowest prices to their new masters and were led on another journey of torment to the cotton and grain farms. He who was born of their miserable type, on that “promised land” with him, was marked by his skin, was sealed in his present and future, from which he inherited all oppression, struggle, torment, poverty, and miserable distress. It is the misery of the sovereign man.

The artist painted this work in a realistic style, one of the styles that she rarely worked with. She experimented with more than one style over her long career in the plastic arts. She toured many cities and was influenced by many styles. She painted a portrait of a contributing blonde woman in this undated work. She elegantly arranged her hair in the iconic 1950s hairstyle. She wore her conservative clothes with elegance and modesty, wore her lipstick, and surrounded her beautiful neck with a pearl necklace. Contemplating her inner beauty, she twists her neck with coquettishness and guiltlessness.

We see decorated walls surmounted by projections, giving a luxurious royal style guarded by a torchbearer that lights the way for visitors. The fortified place has a massive door, opened wide, welcoming those in and out, a sky enlightened by its stars. In the far corner inside, there is a trace of the shrine of a saint or a prophet. Around him, featureless figures encircle the shrine, reduced through abstraction. There is only peace and silence, no characters, no human movement, only the sky’s light and the open doors. With the warm colors that dominated the work on earth and in the sky, Madiha Umar suggests to us the intimacy and sanctity of the place. She painted this work in a style classified as Abstract Expressionism.

The Arabic letter carries an apparent beauty and resilience inherent in its charming form (regardless of its linguistic connotation). Using it and inspiration from it, the artist can unleash their creativity and exploit the potential within it as they please due to the softness, tenderness, delicacy, and precision of form. Since the end of the forties, the late Madiha Umar tried to follow this direction and adopted it as an artistic style that remained in her work until her death, with limited exceptions. Thus, she is considered the first modern Arab Hurufiyya artist! We have known her art throughout the ages; from this standpoint, her historical, aesthetic, and deliberative importance is firmly established.

As an American citizen who lived in the United States, graduated there, earned her nationality, and was from an intellectual and well-off family, what drove her to paint two fountains from tears? Why two? Did she capture a glimpse of her eyes, which were tears of sadness over something? Did she think about Iraq? And what happened that would shed tears as if they were flowing from two fountains? The artist painted this work using different materials, such as ink, acrylic, and watercolors, with letter abstraction that hinted at the title and date of the work. The artist employed the form and the material abstractly and elaborately, drawing plant parts with elegant, organic, curved lines, rarely finding a trace of the pure straight line in nature. Madiha Umar abstracts the shapes of nature and the shapes of Arabic letters to combine them with a gratitude that integrates the laws of the universe and its signs, consoling them to the original design and the glorious creation.

In abstraction, the artist releases the unconscious to control their hand and brushes, and their consciousness contemplates the events that unfold with a childish spontaneity. The drawing begins with a point as things start in the creation process. A process of systematic or non-systematic recall, conscious or unconscious, with a rhythm determined by passion, emotion, will, and need. A symbol here and a mystery there, lines seem random but thoughtful and purposeful, touches of azure denote childish absurdity, codified by lines that do not continue. Zigzag lines are drawn with a skillful hand. Red nodes and spots spread blood-red grid lines along the lines of longitude and latitude on the world map and its continents. Our imaginations are sparked by the perception of mythical beings spreading violence in the name of a color that is meant to be sacred.