Bayan Fares learned Palestinian cross-stitching when she was 10. Now, she teaches others the traditional form of Palestinian embroidery to preserve this art form amid an ongoing war in her homeland.
Palestinian American Bayan Fares is passionate about preserving her culture and identity through art. The 28-year-old poet and writer was born and raised in the United States but moved to Amman, Jordan, when she was nine years old. She lived there until she was 14 to become closer to her culture.
During her time in Jordan, she learned Palestinian cross-stitching known as tatreez. Traditional Palestinian embroidery is practiced in rural areas and is typically stitched into thobes, tablecloths, cushions and other fabrics. The symbolic motifs use birds, trees and flowers to represent aspects of Palestinian life and culture.
In recent months, the Palestinian community has been finding solace in communal art forms like tatreez to spread their culture amid the ongoing war on Gaza. After 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes during the Nakba in 1948, some women saw tatreez as a way to stay rooted in their villages that have since been destroyed.
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Since the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel’s military response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians —mostly women and children in Gaza.
The war has left many in the Palestinian, Muslim, and Middle Eastern communities in the United States afflicted with a growing yearning for some connection to their identity.
In 2022, Fares started Badan Collective to foster community connection and spread awareness for those outside the Palestinian community. The Chicago and Indiana-based design house hosts workshops across the country to teach people how to cross-stitch. The collective also sells its crafts, curated by Palestinian artisans living in Ramallah in occupied Palestine.
Borderless Magazine spoke to Fares about her Collective, tatreez’s rise in popularity and how the community uses it to cope with the war on Gaza.
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I’m the founder of Badan Collective, a business focused on Palestinian embroidery known as tatreez. The collective runs workshops to teach people how to cross-stitch. We also design new items featuring tatreez patterns on clothing, scarves, and belts, along with tatreez learning kits.
Our collective is fostering a sense of community around embroidery. It’s our way of bringing people together, deepening community, and healing through tatreez. For many, this form of cross-stitching heals generational trauma.
My childhood was split between America and Jordan. Even at a young age, I came back with an understanding of both worlds. My parents wanted us to learn the language and the culture. Even if you’re Palestinian and you grew up in the U.S., you still don’t quite understand your culture until you spend some time in the Middle East.
I learned tatreez from my mom when I was about nine years old. At that time, there wasn’t much to do unless you were hanging out with your neighbors or going to school. I picked up tatreez to pass the time.
I feel like tatreez is my culture. My culture includes things like my family, my own interests, my own personal human interactions. As a Palestinian, the act of tatreez is my roots and culture. It’s always been there.
I vividly remember the week I started Badan Collective. I could not focus on anything else. There was this shift in the air, and this creativity had to come out of me. This needs to happen for the community, and if you don’t take up this mantle, someone else will. You might as well channel your creativity and put it into the world.
It’s different than poetry because, with poetry, you use words to convey emotion. I don’t approach my pen and paper until I’m ready to write. I have the words semi-formulated in my head. Whereas, with tatreez, you just play. That’s the word I love. Art is play. You just pull on colors. It doesn’t even need to become anything.
The reaction to the Badan Collective has been overwhelmingly positive. When you’re standing for something important, the community automatically wants to uplift you — especially in artistic spaces.
Art is a process. When you try to fit that into a capitalistic society that only cares about results, sometimes you have less of a good product than you would have had you just enjoyed the process. That’s why I don’t even talk about what I am creating until it’s ready to be released. I will refuse to speed up the process for something that needs more time.
This past winter was very draining with everything going on in Palestine. I also felt burned out, in part, because there was so much interest in workshops and the products. It was almost beyond my capacity. But in the last few months, I’ve seen the tatreez community grow. I see people picking up the mantles in different spaces across the country, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming anymore, but rather inspiring. It makes me proud to be a Palestinian artist.
We’re in a day and age where we’ve had enough of being isolated, and we want our community to come together. Art is what brings people together. Tatreez is art and brings people with a shared interest together. You don’t have to be the same ethnicity, the same religion, or the same age. I think Palestinians have been deprived of their community and of their kin for so long, that when you do come together, you start realizing what you’ve been missing your entire life, which is this sense of village. You don’t have that sense of village because you’re disconnected from the homeland and you can’t go back, even if you wanted to. You’re always in search of that.
Now, as an adult, I’m trying to choose where I want to live in the world, and it’s like – why can’t it be Palestine? It’s my forever home. You’re always deprived of that as a Palestinian. You’re always in search. You’re always mobile. You’re never still. You’re never stable because you’re just lingering as a Palestinian. A lot of Palestinians feel that whether they acknowledge it or not.
When it comes to our Badan tatreez, there’s this element that is healing for Palestinians and people who come from places with generational trauma. They are able to reconnect with their roots and create with their bodies. It is a great way to deal with trauma stored in the body that can’t be healed through talk theory.
We’ve been passed down generational trauma, but we’ve also been passed down the tools to heal from it as well.
Tara Mobasher is a Northwestern Medill Reporting fellow at Borderless Magazine. Email Tara at Tara@borderlessmag.org.
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